Revolutionizing Athlete Recruitment: How CMJ Testing and Student Athlete Score Empower Student Athletes

Countermovement jump testing (CMJ) through force plate technology is revolutionizing the recruitment process for student athletes. By joining forces with our partner, Student Athlete Score, student athletes can track their athletic progress and promote themselves to recruiters by creating a profile consisting of performance metrics that include the data collected from their CMJ testing.

Our Hawkin solutions not only allow you to evaluate an athlete's off-field athleticism based on force output, jump height, strength, explosiveness, etc but can also detect left-right asymmetries that can increase proneness to injury. This feature is advantageous to all stakeholders involved in the recruiting process. For example, a CMJ test may reveal an imbalance in force between legs, leading to overuse of one leg over the other. In such instances, athletes can become more cognizant of their susceptibility to severe injuries such as an ACL tear. Catching these asymmetries early gives athletes the chance to acknowledge their areas of weakness and take action to reduce the risk of season-ending injuries that could damage their recruitment.

For university recruiters, Student Athlete Score’s athlete profile dashboard increases transparency in their decision-making processes. In the ever-changing NIL landscape in college athletics, recruiters can utilize this feature to take an athlete’s proneness to injury into consideration before making a significant financial investment in them.

On the coaching side, this partnership creates an innovative approach to roster management. When Student Athlete Score conducts CMJ testing using Hawkin force plates, coaches have the opportunity to assess asymmetries found in their athletes and effectively modify training programs to minimize those risks. Further, it empowers the growth of athletes based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Ultimately, Hawkin Dynamics and Student Athlete Score are leveraging the intersection of data analytics and athlete marketing to connect all stakeholders in the college recruiting process. The video below is a demonstration of Student Athlete Score’s coach’s dashboard, where coaches can manage their rosters by assessing the performance metrics of their athletes. It shows a scale of three safety zones consisting of the watch zone, caution zone, and positive zone. Each score is categorized into one of these zones, allowing coaches to gauge when an asymmetry becomes a concern and use the graph to track improvements over a specific period.