Ronan football team tries out new technology

The Ronan football team is trying out some new technology in practice this year. Coach Jim Benn said the Chiefs are one of around 30 teams in the nation wearing electronic armbands during practice.

Go Rout, a company based out of Minnesota, might be on the brink of bringing electronics to the football field.

In the old days, players would have an armband around their wrist that had a list of plays. The Go Rout takes that armband and adds a cell phone and some extra padding.

When Benn wants to call a play, he just presses a button on a tablet. The tablet sends the chosen play to his players on the field. The cell phone, which can take a hit from a 45 pound weight, then vibrates to let the player know they have a new play.

While this kind of technology is not legal in games, Benn said he thinks that in the future, it might be.

“It’s going to be a great tool,” Benn said. He wasn’t worried about it not being legal in games. “It’s great for practice. We can put in an opponent’s scheme, then it isolates what each individual has to do.” That means for practice, the players don’t have to sit and learn the other team’s plays so they can scrimmage with them. It saves time and uses technology that kids are used to these days. “They don’t even have to huddle, they can just see it on their wrist and go,” Benn said.

While the idea of this is great, there have been a few issues with the program. However, those issues haven’t lasted long. “There is going to be a few hiccups with it because it’s new, but the guy doing it is brilliant,” Benn said, “I asked him to make the field bigger so the kids could see where to line up better, and they fixed it right away.”

To use the equipment, coaches upload their plays to a program that puts it on the tablet. The tablet sends the plays to the cellular devices. It uses its own server, with a wand that sits in the stands.

While its unclear how effective the new equipment will actually be, Benn was happy to be able to try it out, and only time will tell if this technology will make its way into games.