You sit in the stands and watch your team play. Between the time they stepped away from the playing area and until they compete again, the coaches have plenty for the athletes to learn. Call it Getting Ready for Game Day. Nick Davis, a junior psychology major with a journalism minor, talked to the UR fall coaches to see what goes into all the activity before teams put on UR colors.

Football

There are only six days in between most regular season college football games. In those six days, teams are expected to learn their next opponent inside and out. How do they do it?
 
At Rochester, it starts with a review of their own most recent game. Much of the preparation starts with the coaching staff. Every play of the previous game is reviewed carefully by the coaches, then they repeat the process for their opponent.
 
"Staff wise, it's a long day," said Chad Martinovich, head coach of the Yellowjackets, "We break down every play and see how we want to attack it, and how we can exploit it."
 
It's these details that go into the scouting reports players receive Monday. It includes tendencies, personnel, and overall what the players should be looking for. The coaching staff expects each player to know the details of the scouting report by the end of the week.

 
"Our guys have access to everything. Just like a class, we expect them to know everything for the test. They study the game plan," said Martinovich.
 
Throughout the week, the team rehearses each aspect of their game. This includes everything from third down and red zone scenarios to special teams and even running a scout team that imitates their upcoming opponent. This gives the offense and defense reps against what the coaching staff thinks they'll face in the game and lets them get a feel for the best ways to beat it.
 
The team meets for hours throughout the week going through the mental aspects of the game as well. There are full team meetings, offensive and defensive meetings, and position group meetings where players and coaches work to all get on the same page.
 
However, it's not always as straightforward as watching film and expecting to face the same exact thing. Martinovich gave an example of watching an opponent play a triple option team. For the offensive game plan, you can't count on the defense attacking a triple option the same way they would a pro-style or spread offense. It's helpful to watch film of your opponent against a team that runs a similar system to you, but that's why it's also important for the coaches to watch as much film as they can.
 
Often times it's about exploiting numbers, especially when you're looking to cash in on a team that might be overly aggressive. When you can compile an opponent's tendencies, you can start to cue in on things like this.
 
The week goes by in a blur, and once it's Saturday the team has a pregame meal, brief meetings and last-minute reminders, then it's gameday.

Volleyball
 
When preparing for an opponent, film is a key aspect in any sport. For head coach Ladi Iya and the women's volleyball team at the University of Rochester, it's as much about their own film as their opponents.
 
"It depends most what we do on our side of the court. We're really trying to be the best team that we can be," said Iya. That starts with a focus on her own team, reviewing the games that they've just played and trying to see ways they can improve.
 
Each player is provided with a playlist of clips from their performance. They can watch how they executed in certain scenarios—good or bad. Along with the playlist, players are given a visual scouting report, an oral scouting report, and information about matchups they might be involved in.
 
Iya spoke about how each player learns a little differently so for some people watching film might be the best, for others being told verbally could be better, and for some hands-on experience is the best way. Practices leading up to a game will often times focus on things that their next opponent does well. Using a scout team can also be helpful if an opponent uses an unusual system.

 
"We try to get as much information as we can," said Iya.
 
The coaching staff works with other teams to get film of opponents so they can identify tendencies, strengths, weakness, key players, and other possible match-deciding features of an opponent.
 
Often times there are multiple matches in a week, or even in a two-day span. The preparation doesn't change as much as one might think. That's why there's such an emphasis on how Rochester's play has been.
 
"It's less about the opponents and more about what we do," said Iya.
 
Volleyball is a unique sport in that you have to win 3 out of 5 sets to win the match. Over the course of a possible 5 sets, teams can become very familiar with opponents' tendencies. This makes execution that much more critical—another reason to perfect your own play.
 
Field Hockey
 
Most sports team start to prepare for an opponent by watching film. The University of Rochester field hockey team is no exception. However, the team focuses on things that a typical fan might not expect, starting with their own play.
 
How many corners did Rochester earn? How many did they give up? What did they give up defensively? These are the things that head coach Wendy Andreatta looks at first.
 
"[We look at] what worked and what didn't. We think about ourselves first," said Andreatta. The coaching staff watches large volumes of film, dissecting not only their opponent but their own team as well. They can get all this footage—and more—through a film exchange program they're a part of.
 

After the coaches watch the film, they send out a scouting report to the players. It's detailed with specific times in games to watch, tendencies of other teams and players, and who to watch for on their opponent's roster.
 
"Typically, we know the key players on the opponent's side," said Andreatta. Rochester players are expected to know who these players are as well as what their tendencies include. Andreatta will quiz them to make sure of this.
 
But the players' week isn't just mental preparation, part of each practice are dedicated to recreating things like an opponent's corners through a scout team. Any information that has been given to the players through a scouting report is something that players should be prepared for—mentally or physically—and there's a good chance that it'll be tested at some point in the week.
 
But what about weekends with two games? Often times there will be a game Friday and a game Sunday. When this is the case, players get a scouting report on the bus. There's a shortened practice to stay sharp while keeping the players fresh.
 
"Back to backs can be challenging," said Andreatta.
 
Men's Soccer
 
In order for a team to be successful, preparation is crucial. The University of Rochester Men's Soccer team understands this and that's why head coach Chris Apple focuses heavily on two aspects when he prepares for an opponent. How can his team can get better and the scouting of the team they will face.
 
It all starts with focusing on their own film. What can they improve upon and how can they further refine their strengths? "At least half of our work is on getting [ourselves] better," said Apple.
 
For the second part, they look to their opponents. The coaching staff will watch at least 3-5 of their opponent's most recent games and try to get everyone to watch the team live, if possible. If they're unable to watch their opponent in person, then they reach out to other teams that have played them and get some form of a scouting report from them. After they've done their research they look to condense it.

 
"We take all the information and boil it down to the most pertinent information for our team, and work on areas that we think will work best for our success," said Apple. It's the integration of what they know about their own team and their opponents that leads to a successful game plan.
 
Most of the practice is still focused on self-improvement throughout the week. A smaller portion is about emphasizing ways that Rochester will be able to successfully attack their opponent's expected system, key players, and set piece strategies. Most crucially, each player needs to know the player they will be matched up with (e.g. left back knows the right wing on the other team).
 
Players get a written report with all this information as well. There is also a tactical prep day, where an 11 on 11 scrimmage is held, in which one side is a scout team that mimics the opponent's system and tendencies. Apple compared it to a test, saying, "You're going to feel more comfortable if you go in knowing the problems you're going to face."
 
"If we play well, we should have success," said Apple. He continued to say the team makes small changes, not anything major, for any opponent, "We want to be who we are and play Rochester soccer."
 
Women's Soccer
 
When it's time to prepare for a game, the women's soccer team at the University of Rochester emphasizes a few things. First, the coaching staff gets video footage of an opponent. After this, the staff notes important tactical elements of their opponent's game, strengths of their opponent, and for the rest they turn to themselves and look to improve their own game.
 
Film exchanges are the most common way for coaches to obtain footage of their opponents. For the UAA, there is a film exchange all coaches have access to, but for nonconference opponents the staff will likely have to reach out to other staffs to see if they're willing to exchange film.
 

Once they have the film, the staff looks at specific parts of their opponent's game. "We want to know what they do on their free kicks, how we could be effective against their setup. Are they playing a formation we can attack," said head coach Sike Dardaganis. The staff will use this information to decide what they want to do, playing to their own team's strengths. The staff also provides a walkthrough where they identify things that they can expect to see during the game and how to react.
 
Outside of the walkthrough, a few things are expected of the players in preparation. The first is always maintaining a positive and competitive spirit. Dardaganis emphasized how crucial positive mentality and team culture is going into a game. He continued by saying it's the most important part of their preparation. Second, they like to put a spotlight on restart formations and their opponent's set pieces. Finally, the team is expected to know their teammates' tendencies. "Are you understanding what type of run your teammate is making off the ball?" said Dardaganis.
 
Understanding how each player on Rochester fits what they want to do is a big component in the success the team will see. "Athletes thrive when there's some consistency," said Dardaganis. Most of the work during the week is on self-improvement, keeping a schedule that provides consistency for the players.
 
One final aspect of preparation is making sure that athletes aren't overworked or feeling too fatigued for a game. The women's team uses a biometric tracking software that helps the staff to understand what workload players are under. They can use this information to taper to the right practice intensity and length in between a weekend with two games or just during a hard week of preparation.
 
Cross Country/Track
 
The preparation for most sports starts with film work. In cross country, film won't help much. So how do teams start to prepare?
 
"Unlike other sports, we don't live and die by competition," said University of Rochester head coach Edward Novara. Most of the preparation is done far in advance, through a training plan that will set runners up to race the fastest in the biggest competitions.

 
The director of cross country, Sam Albert, described this as delayed gratification. Albert said, "Doing things because they will help us months from now, not today or tomorrow," is a strength of distance runners. It's this same reason that the cross country teams at Rochester sometimes only race every other week. Training is often more beneficial than actually racing.
 
"Workouts mirror where we want to be in the race and we can practice race psychology in workouts. Then we can fill in specifics like who's going to be around you and who to look for when we get to the race," said Novara. He explained that often times the teams aren't talking about races until the day before. It's more important to be taking training day by day.
 
The coaches will also plan what meets they want to go to during the upcoming season based on the training that they're implementing. The goal of the teams is to get to nationals, and to do that the strategy is to give the teams opportunities to have success in the beginning of the season and then build upon it as the season progresses and the athletes' fitness increases. "Our sport more heavily weighs the results at the end of the season," said Albert.
 
"The goal is to challenge ourselves, but we don't ever want to feel overwhelmed," said Novara. The objective nature of running makes scouting other teams much easier than for other sports. It's easy to access any athletes' times online and all the opposing teams' data can be interpreted and compared to Rochester's. This is a useful tool for gauging how well teams stack up against one another.