In golf, the use of technology is essential for almost every stroke. Whether it is calculating wind speed or getting the distance of the green, without the use of technology, golfers would have to rely on their feel, increasing the chance of error in a game where the smallest mistake can have major consequences.

“By using a rangefinder, I can get an accurate representation of the factors that will affect my shot, which makes a huge difference in a game where every stroke matters,” Rosas said.

Golf is one of the sports that has evolved the most with the improvement of technology over time. The most substantial change over the past few years is the improvement of the professional viewing experience on TV with the addition of ball tracer technology. 

Prior to the mid-2010s, a golf broadcast would generally show the player hitting the ball and cutting to a shot of the ball landing. The audience would be unable to see the shape or trajectory of the shot. 

Now, with developments in companies like Trackman, using military grade radar technology, the PGA and other professional golf tours are now able to show the exact launch, height and speed of the ball for almost every shot. Not only professionals use it to help them train as anybody can buy the technology.

For senior Paly golfer Dylan Liao, the Trackman has greatly changed the way he practices. 

“My Trackman gives me feedback on my ball speed, distance, and spin rate,” Liao said.

Knowing this important information during range sessions allows players to understand their club distances better, which allows them to perform better on the course. 

The balls do not have chips in them, the tracer is purely determined by club face contact and speed and initial launch. For the professional tours, getting pinpoint accuracy requires them to set up behind every tee shot, a camera and a Trackman. Whenever you are watching the PGA, they always have some tall covered pole behind the tee box, that’s the Trackman tower. They also have various radar towers set up around the course to confirm the landing spot of many shots. These towers are often disguised as trees, so you don’t actually know they are there. 

Even with tracer technology, it can still be difficult to cover every shot and everything that is happening on large 7000 yard golf courses during a professional tournament. What is unique about golf is that there are alternative ways to effectively follow what is going on in a tournament without actually watching the TV broadcast. The PGA is unable to show every shot on TV, but they record every single shot. They use radar technology to predict the location of every single shot, and they have a designated employee who follows every group and confirms the location and immediately sends it to the PGA website in real time. This way, when looking at the website, fans can view the location of every single shot that is happening on the course all at once. Apple, with its new Vision Pro, also developed a feature where you can view these shots on the course from a three-dimensional perspective.  

Transitioning to the more casual golfer, there are free apps like Smoothswing that allow you to get a tracer on your shots with just a phone camera. These are a lot less accurate than the professional tracers, but they still provide a cool visual. In addition to this, anybody can purchase a Trackman tracer that can tell you the distance, launch angle and speed of the ball after every shot. Although expensive, usually around 500-1000 dollars, it is still available for anybody to purchase.  

Getting accurate distances is also essential to being successful at golf. Professionals are actually not allowed to use any technology to assist them with distances during a pro event. Instead, they have to use paper yardage books and discuss with their caddies to determine the distance of the shot they have to hit. On the other hand, the casual golfer has many tech options to find their distance. You can purchase rangefinders for around 200 dollars that use radar to give you the distance to any object in the distance. However, if you can’t afford a rangefinder, there are many free apps on the App Store, like 19 Holes and 18 Birdies, that allow you to use GPS to find distance on any golf course. The apps are less accurate, but they are more accessible. 

Sports apps have become very popular amongst athletes and are not only used in golf, but are also very helpful for other sports like running.

A sports app that has one of the highest usage rates among Paly students is Strava. The app helps athletes track and analyze their workouts, like running, cycling, rowing and more. Strava uses GPS to track and record metrics, including speed, pace, distance and time. Similar to apps like Instagram and Snapchat, it acts as a social network connecting athletes from all backgrounds, allowing users to share activities and connect with others. It also has competitive elements that are built into the app, allowing users to compete with others but also themselves. Users can do this by sharing runs with others and you can make comparisons between your own runs and other athletes’ runs. It can also collect data by allowing users to either import data into the app or use GPS tracking, allowing flexibility for everyone.

Strava isn’t just for casual runners; many competitive runners use the app to analyze and improve their performance both during races and practice. Junior Paul Wang is a cross-country athlete who consistently uses the app.“It offers me important insight into different facets of my training,”  Wang said.

Like many other fitness apps, it provides different plans, including a free and subscription-based program. For students, the subscription costs $3.33 per month and unlocks many advanced features, including advanced data analysis and route creation. While the pro version isn’t for everyone, for many, the advanced version provides many benefits. For less serious runners, the free version serves as enough because they don’t need the extensive data that comes with the paid version.

“I personally use the paid plan because it unlocks a lot of premium features, including insights, but I think it’s really not that necessary for everyone,” Wang said.

While the pro version has many advantages, the added features can make the user interface more cumbersome and difficult to navigate.

Not every athlete at Paly enjoys the incorporation of technology into their respective sports. For seniorDaniel Rainey, the track and field captain at Paly, the incorporation of Strava into training has started to become problematic instead of being beneficial.

“I think Strava is a cool idea, but people care too much about it, and it has gone a little bit too far,” Rainey said. “I think it distracts some people from what they should really be focusing on, which is just actually running. People shouldn’t run just so that other people can see them run.”

Consistent motivation is one of the most important parts of exercise. Many people find taking the first step the hardest part of running. For athletes and non-athletes alike, Strava can serve as a source of motivation that keeps students active and completing their workouts. The app can compare how athletes run similar routes, showing improvements and new records, letting athletes understand the rate of their improvement.

“It can tell me if my fitness is increasing at the rate I want it to be, how much at each heart rate zone I’m training at over different time intervals, and it can automatically compare data from similarly structured runs and workouts. It also helps me identify my weaknesses by giving individualized feedback on my runs,” Wang said. 

At Paly, athletes wear different watches and health trackers to track fitness and workouts, which they can later upload to apps like Strava. The most popular options include Apple Watches, Garmin’s and Whoop’s. For cross-country and track athletes, the Garmin smartwatches have emerged as a favorite. Garmin has many different models that different athletes use depending on their needs. Cross-country sophomore Jacob Guhr uses his Garmin during his workouts and attributes it to his personal success as an athlete. 

“By having a Garmin, I can track my training so I know how fast I am running my workouts and how many miles I am running per week, which lets me know how fast to go next week to steadily improve,” Guhr said.

By using smartwatches, athletes are able to track important data that they are unable to track through other alternatives. This data helps athletes adjust their pace, workouts and get real-time feedback.

“Apple watches are very convenient and they give me a lot of data,” Shen said. “My Apple Watch helps me track heart rate, calories burned, how long my workouts are, workout intensity and exercise goal completion.”

After striking a drive on the middle of the fairway, sophomore Matteo Rosas needs to know how far away the pin is to get the right club for his next stroke. Using his rangefinder allows him to know the exact distance he is from the pin, so he can pick the club that he feels most comfortable hitting from that far out. 

For those who don’t enjoy wearing smartwatches, the WHOOP has become a popular alternative. Sophomore Gavin Ng wears his WHOOP nearly every day and has seen many benefits.

“I enjoy wearing a Whoop because it’s light and minimalist while giving me all the data I feel like I need,” Ng said. 

The Whoop is a wearable device that tracks sleep, recovery and physical strain. The Whoop is different from traditional smartwatches in the sense that it focuses only on recovery and that it doesn’t have a screen. For many, the Whoop is seen as more futuristic and a vision of what the future may be like. The Whoop focuses more on biometrics that focus on how the body is functioning instead of what the body is doing. The Whoop sits at an intersection of sports science, data analytics and artificial intelligence. 

For high school teams, Hudl is one of the most popular apps that gives teams everything they need to improve and collaborate. From game film and playbooks to messaging, stats and recruiting tools, Hudl helps streamline every part of the game.

One of the most difficult parts of playing football at a high level is understanding the playbook and plays that are called in games. Players have to remember multiple formations, snap counts, motions, protections and routes throughout a football game. Mastering a football playbook can be very difficult to do in the limited amount of practice time that teams get. Many football teams use Hudl to post their playbook online to allow players to study it outside of practice. This allows players to focus more on the physical aspect of football and perform better in games. 

Senior varsity football player Malcolm Phillips uses Hudl to gain valuable insight before games.

“Our defensive coordinator puts up an AER on Thursday, the night before the game, which gives the opponents’ most common formations and our coverages against those formations,” Phillips said.

Hudl also serves as a platform for coaches and players to communicate online. Hudl allows coaches to give real-time announcements to players in case there has been a change in scheduling. Unlike other messaging apps, Hudl provides a team-specific chat that ensures every player receives important announcements, while also allowing coaches to see who has viewed them. 

Senior varisty football player Jake Wang uses Hudl as a platform for progress and sees many benefits in its numerous features.

“When our coach sends out new plays or I’m looking over film and I have questions, Hudl makes it easy for me to reach out to my coaches and get a quick response,” Wang said.

The most notable feature to come out of Hudl is film. Watching films is essential for all sports that play at a high level. The quality of a team’s film-watching sessions can often be the difference between winning and losing. Hudl acts as a platform where teams can save a category of game films. In addition to this, it allows teams to share their film with others. In many cases, all teams agree to post their film to the public so that all teams in a league can fairly scout each other. There are two types of film watching, review film and scout film. 

Review film is when a team looks back at their own game that they have already played. For teams, watching film is a great way to look back at  mistakes and see how improvement can be made in future games. During review film sessions, the coach often celebrates good plays and shares how players could have acted differently when bad plays happened. This often motivates players to play better in their games because they know their good plays will be replayed and glorified, and their bad plays will be replayed and criticized. 

“Watching film allows you to see how the person you’re matched up against plays and makes it so you know what play they are about to run if you see the rightformation and motion,” Phillips said.

Scout film, on the other hand, is when teams study footage of their upcoming opponents. During these sessions, coaches often point out player tendencies as well as the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Hudl is a platform where a lot of sports scouting happens. Players can create a portfolio with their highlights that can catch the eye of scouts and eventually lead to a recruitment. 

“I created a highlight tape and I posted it on my Twitter and emailed it to coaches, which is why I got offers and am now committed to Bowdoin College,” Wang said. 

While a lot of Paly athletes utilize technology, some alumni are creating it. Current NYU senior and Paly basketball alumn Sebastian Chancellor co-founded a startup that utilizes AI as a real-time basketball trainer. Using the app, Trainify, players can turn any smartphone into a real-time AI basketball coach that analyzes every rep and is able to deliver personalized feedback via Bluetooth to transform independent training into an interactive and data-driven experience for the player. 

“Our hope is that every athlete, regardless of resources, is able to gain a complete training ecosystem,” Chancellor said. “From film of the workouts, to analytics of their shot making, they can track progress of their performance and ultimately accelerate their improvement over time.”

With the recent advancements made in AI, technologies like Chancellor’s are going to continue to grow. 

Professional sports have access to the best technology in the country. In the NFL, the use of technology is constantly increasing. One game-changing piece of technology that has recently been introduced to the NFL is the use of VR headsets, which was popularized after star quarterback Jayden Daniels shared how helpful they were for him. They are used by the quarterback and can simulate a variety of things, from going against a defense’s specific playbook and tendencies to stadium-specific details and crowd noise. The best part about these headsets is not just the extra realistic reps, but when a quarterback is coming back from an injury, they can use this to stay away from any unnecessary contact.

Another piece of technology that plays a huge part in the NFL is the use of Microsoft Surface tablets. After each play, images or video clips of the play are sent to the tablets within seconds. This instant feedback allows teams to make quick strategic adjustments throughout the game, where previously they had to wait until halftime to make them.  

Tech in football doesn’t only have to be beneficial to players. There are countless high-tech features that improve the viewing experience on TV broadcasts. In the late 1990s, ESPN introduced augmented reality graphics that showed both the line of scrimmage and the first down line to gain on the TV broadcast. To this day, these lines are shown on every football broadcast and provide useful information that makes watching the game of football easier. Recently, Thursday night football, in collaboration with Prime Video, has created an alternate viewing option for fans. Choosing the Prime Vision broadcast during Thursday Night Football gives fans a unique end zone view enhanced with live stats, showing potential blitzers, player routes, speeds and play percentages as the action unfolds. 

Many professional teams, colleges and now even high schools have implemented the Catapult Vest into their practices and games. The Catapult Vest is a lightweight compression vest that holds a small tracking pod. The pod contains GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers that are used to record data during practices and games. The vest specializes in tracking metrics such as total distance covered, top speed, sprint frequency, acceleration and deceleration rates, power output, intensity and heart rate. 

Coaches and trainers use the data to monitor athletes’ workload, identify areas for improvement, measure performance, track progress and set goals to achieve. The Catapult is great for preventing injuries, improving conditioning and adjusting training loads. Some sports in which the vest is commonly used include soccer, football, basketball, college and high school programs. The increase in usage of the Catapult Vest showcases the transition towards advanced technology-based metric tracking in sports. 

Like high school sports, professional sports are also relying more and more on technology as technology is rapidly advancing and improving. 

In the MLB (Major League Baseball), tech has become widely used not only by teams to help players develop but also to officiate games. The MLB has decided to implement a challenge system that uses the ABS (Automated Ball-Strike System) for the 2026 season. The ABS uses “robot umpires” or a computer system that uses cameras and sensors to track pitches, determining whether a pitch crosses the strike zone or not. In the 2026 season, teams will get two challenges every game and an extra challenge if a game goes to extra innings. Human umpires will still call balls and strikes, but teams will have an opportunity to challenge calls they believe were incorrect. Many critics argue that the ABS will ruin baseball, as there will be a loss of drama and character that umpires bring. Many also argue that the art of framing a pitch will be lost. Some also worry that the ABS takes away from tradition and how America’s Pastime is historically played. The implementation of the ABS shows the start of a transition towards a more tech-based game.

Similar to the MLB, in professional tennis, the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) and WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) have implemented automated calls. Many major tennis tournaments use Hawk-Eye or electronic line calling. Hawk-Eye was first introduced in 2003 and has recently been implemented in more and more tournaments on the tour. The Hawk-Eye system makes line calls and is able to determine if the ball was in or out. The Hawk-Eye system has almost perfect accuracy, far surpassing human line judges who can make errors and mental slip-ups. 

In high school and lower-level tennis, players typically make line calls for balls that land on their side, which can typically lead to cheating, resulting in an unfair advantage. Paly junior and varsity tennis player Thomas Li has encountered many instances in tennis where cheaters benefit unfairly.

“Bad line calls in high school tennis are a huge problem,” Li said. “It just sucks when you hit an amazing shot and aren’t rewarded for it because of a bad call.”

The change towards electronic line calling in tennis has molded the sport into a more seamless experience while also reflecting the game’s ongoing evolution through technology.

From ball tracers on the golf course to automated officiating systems, technology has become a huge part of the way sports are played today. For athletes, technology provides ways to prevent injuries, track progress and improve. For fans, technology improves the viewing experience, getting more fans immersed in the game. While some argue that the implementation of technology has removed the traditional aspect of what makes sports special, technology has revolutionized the way games are played, allowing sports to evolve as a whole. As technology continues to evolve, so will sports and how they are played.