Florida high school basketball teams can play their first regular season games on Monday, Nov. 16, according to the FHSAA calendar and Sports Illustrated. Practices opened Oct. 26. District tournaments start the first week of February and the state finals run March 4 to 13 at UNF Arena in Jacksonville.
In a lot of gyms, the person in the top row with a phone on a stick is about to be replaced. Cameras that track the ball and the players on their own have moved from club soccer fields into high school gyms, and parents are buying them.
Three ways to do it
The first is a school or league system. Pixellot, which makes fixed AI cameras for schools, raised 35 million dollars in January to grow its service, according to Pulse 2.0 and the company's own release. It says it has 16,000 systems in about 9,000 U.S. schools and streamed more than half a million events last year. Hudl Focus and Veo work the same way: one fixed camera films the whole game, the software follows the play, and the file lands in the cloud for coaches and families. These are team purchases. The KSL report on Utah clubs found that teams usually split the cost and that the systems come with a subscription.
The second is a standalone camera a parent can own. XbotGo showed its Falcon at CES in January, a dual lens 4K camera that tracks players or the ball, zooms on its own and records without a phone or a subscription, according to PetaPixel and a MacVoices interview with the company. It also streams live to YouTube or Facebook, so grandparents out of state can watch.
The third is the cheapest route: a phone on a tracking mount. XbotGo's Chameleon and gimbals like the Insta360 Flow 2 Pro spin the phone to follow the action while the phone does the recording. Reviewers at The Gadgeteer and TechAcute found the Chameleon easy to set up and good enough for a season of soccer games, with one habit to know about: it can lag a few seconds behind a fast break, so the ball leaves the frame now and then.
What parents say
A Saratoga Springs, Utah dad told KSL he uses a phone tracker for his daughters' soccer games so he can watch instead of filming, and that relatives in other states watch the live stream. A club coach in the same report uses Hudl to cut highlight reels for recruiting. A family tech expert quoted by KSL added a caution: the AI can tag the wrong jersey number or miss a play, so check the clip before you send it to a college coach.
At AIM Sports, a 150,000 square foot youth facility in Seal Beach, California, KTLA reported that the fixed cameras give parents a live stream, automatic highlight clips and a player page with stats, without anyone holding a camera.
What goes in the gift bag
- A tracking mount or gimbal for the phone, the most common starting point.
- A tall tripod that clears the heads in the bleachers.
- A big power bank, because a phone that tracks and records for two hours will not make it through a tournament day.
- A large memory card for a standalone camera, and a clip-on mic for the postgame interview.
We put the current picks, from a memory card to a camera that runs the whole game on its own, in our guide to cameras and gear for filming youth sports. The gifts for sports moms guide covers the rest of the bleacher bag, and the gifts for coaches guide has the film tools a coach would use.
One more thing before the first tip: check the school's policy on filming and streaming. Most allow it from the stands, but some districts limit live streams of games with minors.
