There's a phrase that comes up quickly when Youngstown State's Director of Football Sports Performance Mason Garrison describes his staffs approach with the players: tough but fair. High expectations. Early mornings. Seven days a week through the fall. And underneath all of it, a genuine care for every athlete who walks through the door.
"What we do collectively is not for the faint of heart," the strength coach explains. "But the love I receive from the athletes and the coaches alike makes it all worth it."
That culture didn't happen by accident. It was built deliberately, over years, by coaches who understand that developing football players means developing people first.
From Cincinnati to Youngstown
Garrison's path to Youngstown State runs through the University of Cincinnati, where he played linebacker and spent most of his career dealing with injuries. It was frustrating at the time. In hindsight, it was the best thing that could have happened.
"It just created that path for me kind of naturally," he says. The weight room became his calling. The relationships he built with Cincinnati's strength staff became some of the most formative of his career. When he graduated, the direction was clear.
After time at the high school level, where he fell in love with coaching but not the X's and O's, he found his way to Youngstown State. A program he describes simply as unbelievable. An institution he's proud to represent.
A Year With PlayerData
Youngstown State has been using PlayerData for about a year. The verdict from the strength staff and players is direct: invaluable.
What drew them in was the ease of use. In a space full of complex wearables that demand specialists to interpret the data, PlayerData does something different, we put the information in front of coaches and players in a way that actually makes sense.
"I've honestly really loved my experience with PlayerData," said Hunter Pembleton, Assistant Sports Performance Coach at Youngstown State. "I've used a couple different systems (previously). There were a lot of features that really drew us to PlayerData. First and foremost, the ease of actually using the unit, and on top of that being able to run everything right off your phone is super convenient."
PlayerData's infrastructure means the coaches can operate more efficiently as well.
"Being able to quickly change unit assignments is big," Pembleton continues. "In the summer, when we had three run groups, we were able to triple the coverage with the units. If we had 35 units, we were able to put 105 guys in units."
Further, PlayerData's portable LPS system has been particularly valuable at Youngstown State, where indoor training is a year-round reality. PlayerData's LPS capability gives the staff the same precision indoors that traditional GPS delivers outdoors at a price point that works for a program operating with real-world budget constraints.
What the Players See
The buy-in from players has been natural. When athletes can pull up their own data, compare their top speed to a teammate's, and watch themselves get faster over the course of a season, the technology stops being a coaching tool and starts being their tool too.
"It's cool to track and compete with other teammates," said Alex McDonals, a tight end at Youngstown State. "And it's also cool to see myself personally getting faster, what I'm personally capable of."
That's the standard at Youngstown State. Insights that coaches trust. Data that players actually use. And a culture built on relationships that make all of it worth showing up for every single morning.
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