How to Capture Every Play When You Can't Be Behind the Camera

Do you focus more on recording your children’s sports than being in the present to fully support them? It’s the age-old dilemma that coaches and parents face. However, it does not have to be this way. In this article, we provide practical solutions to solve this dilemma, once and for all.

You can record all the action and still be your children’s primary cheerleader. You can make missing the moment your child fires in the buzzer-beater that wins their basketball match, because you momentarily turned away from the camera, a thing of the past.

The Dilemma All Sports Parents Face

As a parent, you want to capture all your child’s sporting activities. However, you also want to cheer them on in the moment. It can feel like an impossible dilemma. They both warrant your full attention, yet it always feels that one needs to give way to the other.

It’s the same for coaches who want to record games to help develop their players’ skills. Traditional camera setups require manual control and constant attention. Most parents and coaches are not experienced camera operators. The result is often inconsistent coverage.

Fast-paced sports like soccer, basketball, football, and lacrosse are difficult to record. Vital action can be missed when using static cameras due to the speed of the game and sudden changes in player direction on the pitch or court.

While a popular choice, handheld cameras emphasize the dilemma faced by parents. Keeping the action in frame demands your constant attention. This is the attention you would rather give to supporting your children. It can be disheartening to hear the other parents cheer away, while your focus remains entirely on the camera.

For a coach, it is just as tricky. You want to be fully in the moment to absorb the game and provide real-time instructions to help the team win the game. Being constantly trapped behind a camera reduces your influence on the sidelines.

However much time you devote to the camera at your children’s matches, it is still no guarantee that you won’t miss crucial moments. It is easy to become distracted. Your own technical limitations can also see you fiddling with the zoom or lighting at the wrong moment.

The feeling when you miss the moment your child scores the winning goal in their soccer match is not worth contemplating. Neither is sitting down to watch their MVP basketball performance, only to find that your camera work could not keep up with the pace of the game.

Shaky footage is another dirge of handheld cameras. Not only does it make the footage difficult to watch, but the resulting poor quality can devalue the recording of your child’s crucial moments.

Traditional camera set-ups also tend to miss other important moments. For example, the look of joy on the face of your child when they land a three-pointer at basketball. The jubilation on the sidelines when the final whistle blows and the team is victorious.

Another practical consideration that can be overlooked is who records the away games. You may capture all your child’s home games, but if you can not attend away games through work commitments, there may be no record of these matches. If your child is the match winner in one of these games, it can be devastating not to have any keepsake footage of their performance.

Traditional camera setups are labor-intensive. Parents and coaches may be viewed by others as part-time camera operators, but in reality, for the games they shoot, they are full-time videographers.

Missed moments and attention diverted away from supporting your children is a high price to pay to record youth sports.

However, there are practical solutions to this dilemma at hand.

How to Capture Youth Sports and Remain a Supportive Parent

One way to ensure you don’t miss any vital moments is to set up static cameras to cover multiple angles. Cameras placed strategically around a pitch or court help eliminate blind spots. Coaches will love it too, as different angles provide new perspectives when reviewing the game.

Once set up, there is minimal operator requirement. However, the flip side is all the additional editing required to piece the action together. This can be quite time-consuming for already busy parents.

There is also the additional cost element to consider for the extra cameras, which may not be insignificant. A multi-angle static camera setup also won’t deliver a single player focus like an automated camera such as the XbotGo Chameleon.

Whole games can go unrecorded when the camera duties fall onto one parent who can’t make every match. Organizing a rotation system between parents helps solve this issue. This can save money on hiring someone to record games when the usual volunteer parent can not attend.

Sharing recording duties can also develop a further community-style bond between parents. However, not everyone is as adept with a camera. An inconsistent style and quality of footage could be the unintended result of a volunteer rotation system trying to capture fast-paced sports like soccer and basketball.

Which is why the best approach could be an AI-powered auto-tracking camera like the XbotGo Chameleon. Game-changers in recording sports like soccer, basketball, and lacrosse, the AI tech does not require a camera operator. Parents remain in the moment, supporting their children while still receiving professional-quality 4k video footage of their children’s matches.

The XbotGo Chameleon automatically tracks the action. Its jersey recognition feature allows you to lock on to your child so you never miss any of their crucial sporting moments. The Chameleon supports over 20 sports, and with free livestreaming, any family members who can’t attend in person can still watch the game.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when a parent needed to choose between being a videographer or an in-the-moment supporter of their child. Multi-angle static camera setups and sharing camera duties with other parents can reduce the time you spend behind the camera. This allows you to be more present to cheer on your children in their sporting pursuits.

As helpful as these are, automated cameras such as the XbotGo Chameleon remain the most practical solution. The Chameleon seamlessly records over 20 sports. It leads the way in hands-free recording of fast-paced sports like soccer and basketball. With a simple setup connecting to your smartphone, it is an affordable solution as well as a practical one.