Whitefish girls soccer is playing the numbers game

When you think of advanced metrics, the first thing that comes to mind probably isn’t high school soccer. It’s probably more along the lines of pro baseball — something like Moneyball, maybe.

While he isn’t using data to assemble the world’s best baseball team, Whitefish Bulldogs girls soccer coach Roland Benedict is the only coach in the Flathead Valley — and possibly the state of Montana — tracking on-field performance through advanced statistics.

Benedict uses an iPhone application called Ollie to track in-game stats, a method he’s employed for the last three years. It’s something typically seen at professional levels of soccer, but Benedict decided to start because of his own experience playing at a high level, where he felt that he learned and improved more through taking a deep dive into statistics and wanted to give his players the same experience.

“How do you get players to have buy-in that they’re actually doing the correct thing?” Benedict said. “It helps them comprehend how the game went outside of just subjective emotion.”

Some of the categories tracked are possession, shots, saves, passes (and passing accuracy), goals, assists, and shot quality. All that information is input by team managers during the game.

The coaching staff goes over everything with players post game in addition to game film.

There are caveats, though.

“The metrics are really great, but we don’t want the metrics to hold such value that it changes the decision-making of your players because they know they want to have a better metric at the end of the game,” said Benedict.

But an obvious benefit is being able to show a player a tangible way they make an impact in a game, even if they didn’t score a goal or have an assist. For example, creating a scoring chance or possessing the ball for long enough to limit the opposing team’s shots and time in the Bulldogs’ zone.

Whitefish plays a possession-based game, so keeping the ball is generally the objective outside the primary one of scoring goals. How effective players are with the ball is another consideration.

For example, in a Sept. 7 game against Polson, where Whitefish won 9-1, Benedict broke it down like this: Out of 25 shots in the first half of that game, 12 were on target.

“We scored three goals in the first half,” he said. “The chance creation created 25 shots. But if you only put half of them on target you’re only scoring 12 percent. Then you’ve got to create 25 shots every single game in order to get three goals — you need to be more efficient.”

Even though Whitefish dominated that game, the play wasn’t as efficient as Benedict would have liked.

“We need to turn ball possessions into being a threat,” Benedict said. “Otherwise it’s useless. There’s a balance.”

Another aspect of tracking ball possession is pass accuracy, which also relates to possession. Whitefish averages about 370 passes per game. In the game against Polson, Whitefish completed 431 passes to Polson’s 128. That adds up to completing a pass 75 percent of the time when Whitefish had the ball, which it had 77 percent to Polson’s 23 percent possession.

And to go even further, Whitefish created a chance on target 26 percent of the time they had the ball.

“We had 28 crosses and from those crosses, 18 percent of them were shots,” Benedict said.

The analysis of advanced metrics also helps coaches with player assessment outside of what is visible to the naked eye and to overcome biases.

“I might really like a player on our team,” Benedict said. “I like what she brings, but then I look at her stats and she’s not performing. She’s giving the ball away this amount of times in possession, she has the least amount of clearances out of our backline or interceptions or pass percentage is low.”

While all this is important, Benedict is careful to not let players focus too much on stats. Every player has a ceiling and there’s not much they can do to change the outcome of what their metrics might be.

“As a coach, you need to recognize and go, you know, this player is kind of at her max as a sophomore right now, or she’s not even scratching the surface,” Benedict said. “I think outside of the stats, good coaches put players in positions to succeed.”

Some of the deeper player assessment is still a while away, however. While the tech is there, MHSA rules won’t allow players to wear the GPS trackers needed to track each player individually. It would be like wearing a watch, and that isn’t permitted.

“It’s either a positive or a constructive feedback loop,” Benedict said. “I think it’s fun for them to hear it and see it on the bus afterwards, the next day you talk about it and then it’s not really talked about again.”

Benedict’s approach is working. The Bulldogs are 9-0 overall and 5-0 in Northwest A. They’ve allowed just four goals and have scored 61.

After losing to Laurel in the state final last year, Whitefish is on a fast track to get back to the championship and win it this time.

The Bulldogs play a home game against conference rival Columbia Falls at noon today at Smith Fields. Whitefish won the last meeting 4-0.

The Whitefish vs. Columbia Falls boys game is at 10 a.m.

Sports editor Katie Brown can be reached at 758-4426 or kbrown@dailyinterlake.com