Blair Doak didn’t take the obvious path into sports performance. He started out on a business path. His first job out of college was in corporate HR. After some time sitting at a desk, he realized it wasn’t for him. So, he decided to become a certified personal trainer, and discovered strength and conditioning almost by accident. He saw a football strength coach running a team session and thought, "that is exactly what I want to do."

He then moved back to North Carolina and volunteered at two colleges simultaneously while pursuing a graduate degree online. He cut his teeth at the Division II and Division III levels before earning a spot at Duke University, where he was originally hired for a single summer. That summer turned into a year working exclusively with basketball. That year turned into a full-time role. And that full-time role put him on the bench during Coach K's final season, an Elite Eight run, and a Final Four appearance with one of the most talented teams in college basketball history.

"It kind of launched me into this," he says. "I didn't really expect to be working in basketball. My background growing up was football. But getting that opportunity at Duke just opened everything up."

When his path at Duke ran its course, Blair was ready for the next step. He wanted to be a head performance coach. Seattle University had an opening. He interviewed, got the job, and showed up with one stated goal.

"I told Coach Victor in the interview process: I'm coming here to go to the NCAA Tournament."

A Program on the Rise

This past season, moved to the West Coast Conference. This move wasn't just a scheduling change. It was a statement. A program that wasn’t even competing at the Division I level twenty years ago, now has to navigate what’s become one of the most prolific basketball conferences in all of the West. The jump was significant. 

But Seattle was ready.

In just its first season as a WCC member, Seattle finished fifth in the conference, took Gonzaga to overtime, beat Washington and Stanford, and earned a spot in the NIT. They built the kind of momentum that has players choosing to stay and recruits from power conference programs paying attention.

"It really feels like the school is invested in the basketball program," Blair says. "And I think next year we're even more poised to make a jump."

The identity of the program is built around defense and communication. Coach Chris Victor runs a half-court defensive system that finished 21st nationally in defensive efficiency and fourth among mid-major programs. Every game day, the same words go up on the board.

Compete with joy and unity.

"He would write that before every game," Blair says. "Three offensive keys, three defensive keys, and then that. It was always there."

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Learning the System

Blair came to Seattle University with experience working alongside wearable technology as part of the Duke basketball performance staff. But operating the technology and truly understanding it are different things. At Duke, those responsibilities belonged to dedicated sports science staff. When the opportunity to integrate PlayerData into the basketball program arrived, Blair was not intimidated. He was energized. 

He would get a chance to be the person responsible for everything.

"When they presented the opportunity to work with PlayerData, I was like, well, it's a no-brainer for me. I want to learn it. I want to get involved in it. What can I do to help these coaches make better decisions regarding practice planning, volume, intensity?"

His first year was intentional and honest. Rather than forcing data into decisions before he understood what the numbers were actually telling him, he focused on collection and context. He wanted to understand what normal looked like before he started defining what abnormal meant.

"I didn't want to make it to where we only had three weeks of data and now this is what we're going off of to plan practice," he says. "So I just wanted to collect. And then figure out what I could give back to the players that might be valuable."

What he gave back was simple and smart. After home games, he pulled up the top speed dashboard on the screen in the weight room during the team lift. Players could see exactly how fast they ran, how they stacked up against their teammates, and what the data actually looked like in a real game context.

"It created a competitive nature," he says. "I want to be the fastest. I want to show I was the fastest in the game. I just wanted to give them something meaningful so they could see what we were collecting."

The buy-in was immediate and it only grew.

"Guys started coming to me with questions. How many miles did I run in the game? How fast was I? What percentage of my max speed was that? They started becoming curious, more engaged, and more invested."

Building the Model

Alongside the work with players, Blair was building something for himself. Using AI to assist, he created a Power BI dashboard from the PlayerData CSV exports that visualized volume and intensity both daily and weekly. He could see distance, speed, acceleration load, acceleration load per minute, high decelerations, and how each player's numbers moved over the course of a week and a season.

The dashboard was not just for Blair. He started presenting it to recruits.

"I show them this is how I communicate to the coaches. This is how our volume and intensity looks on this day. Here is what we can do to monitor your load weekly and how it can start to influence how we develop you as a player."

He also built a drill quadrant system, mapping each practice drill against the team's established norms across four zones: low volume and low intensity, low volume and high intensity, high volume and low intensity, high volume and high intensity. The goal was to give himself a tool for communicating practice design to the coaching staff in a language that was visual, specific, and actionable.

"If the coaches want to make practice more intense, here is what we could do. If I want to add more volume, I can suggest the coaches run this drill longer. It helps plan practice days better so we’re not always in a high volume, high intensity state."

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98% Available

The number Blair keeps coming back to when describing his first year is not a speed number or a load figure. It’s an availability number.

Seattle only had five games missed across the whole roster the entire season. Those numbers didn’t happen by accident.

"The best ability is availability," Blair says. "The guys don't come here to be great weightlifters. They come here to hoop. I can periodize things. I can make a perfect plan. But I really have to tailor it to the player and to the position so I can help him perform his best and stay healthy."

PlayerData was part of how he made that case to the coaches. He used the session data to visualize availability directly, presenting it to the staff in a way that connected the performance work to the outcomes on the court.

"It takes an army. A lot of people think injury prevention happens in the weight room. But it’s also about what they are doing on the court, what they’re putting into their bodies, how they’re recovering. The data tells that story."

What Comes Next

Blair isn’t finished building. He has a season of data now, and he knows exactly how to use it. The players coming in this spring will continue to wear the units through workouts and conditioning. New recruits are going to see the dashboard. And the quadrant system is going to inform how practice is designed from the first day of fall camp through conference play.

He also knows what he’s building toward. A roster loaded with returning players. A conference that is changing in ways that create opportunity. A coach who has proven he can develop players and win games without overcomplicating things.

"I think we're primed to make another jump next year," Blair says. "I came here to go to the NCAA Tournament. That’s still the goal."

The data is going to help get them there. But Blair is clear about what the data actually is and what it is not.

"At the end of the day, you’re still coaching humans," he says. "The data helps you be better at your job. But the humans are still the ones doing it."

At Seattle University, those humans compete with joy and unity. Blair Doak is making sure they’re healthy enough to do it for all forty minutes every time the ball goes up.

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