Summer is when D1 S&C programs do their most controlled, most documentable work. The season is over. The roster is settled. The training environment is structured, the protocols are consistent, and the data comes in clean. It is the one window in the calendar year where an S&C staff can actually track meaningful athlete development arcs from start to finish — and produce the kind of before-and-after evidence that tells a coherent story.

Yet at most programs, that data never leaves the weight room. It lives in Catapult dashboards, Teambuildr logs, GymAware exports, and coaching staff spreadsheets. By the time fall camp opens, it's already been superseded by in-season metrics. The summer arc — the most complete story of athlete development the program could tell — disappears without ever reaching the people who needed to hear it.

Understanding why this happens requires looking at exactly what S&C coaches track in the summer, then examining the structural barriers that prevent it from being used anywhere else.

What D1 S&C Coaches Actually Track in Summer

The data picture during summer conditioning is richer than at any other point in the year. Without game weeks, travel, and recovery management from competition, coaches can run complete testing blocks and sustained monitoring cycles. The categories break down into four primary streams.

Load Monitoring
GPS & Wearables
Session distance, top speed, high-speed running volume, player load, heart rate zone distribution. Tracked daily via Catapult, STATSports, or equivalent platforms. Summer baselines establish the conditioning floor programs build on through fall.
Strength Output
VBT & Max Testing
Mean concentric velocity, bar speed at defined loads, 1RM or estimated 1RM progression in primary lifts. GymAware and Vitruve data captures force-velocity development over the full summer block.
Power & Jump
Force Plate Data
Vertical jump height, RSI, peak force, landing mechanics. ForceDecks and Hawkin data provides objective measurement of explosive performance that correlates directly with on-field production.
Body Composition
Summer Testing Blocks
DEXA or InBody measurements at entry, mid-summer, and exit. Weight room weight gains alongside body fat changes. The quantifiable output of every nutrition conversation a program has with its athletes.

The data density here is significant. A 90-player D1 football program running a full summer program will generate tens of thousands of individual data points across these categories over a 10-12 week block. That's not background noise — it's the most concrete evidence of athletic development that exists anywhere in the program's operations.

It is also, for most programs, completely invisible to anyone outside the S&C staff.

Why This Data Never Reaches Donors, ADs, or Recruiters

The utilization gap isn't a technology problem. Most D1 programs have invested significantly in the platforms that collect this data. The problem is structural — a series of barriers between data generation and data consumption that no S&C platform was designed to solve.

The Translation Barrier S&C data is collected in the language of sport science: session RPE, ACWR, mean bar velocity at 80% of 1RM, RSI-modified. That language is precise and meaningful to a strength coach. It means nothing to a major gift donor or a recruit's parents. Before any of this data can be used externally, it needs to be translated into narrative — and that translation requires effort that most staffs don't have time to invest during the active summer program.
The Access Barrier S&C data platforms are not designed for external consumption. Catapult doesn't produce donor-ready infographics. Teambuildr doesn't generate a recruiting visit leave-behind. Getting data out of S&C software and into a format anyone outside the weight room can use requires manual export, manual formatting, and manual narrative construction — a workflow that gets deprioritized the moment training volume increases.
The Staffing Barrier Most D1 S&C departments are running lean. The head strength coach and a small staff are managing training programs, monitoring loads, running testing blocks, and coordinating sport nutrition — all simultaneously. Producing development reports for the development office is not in anyone's job description, and even if it were, the capacity isn't there.
The Awareness Barrier Development offices don't know what they're missing. If the donor reports they've always produced haven't included S&C data, they've calibrated donor expectations accordingly. The development office has no template for an athlete performance donor report because no one has ever handed them one. The demand doesn't exist yet — not because donors wouldn't value it, but because they've never seen it.

"The summer conditioning block produces the most documentable athlete development evidence in the entire program calendar. It disappears every year without ever being used."

The result is a structural waste of institutional value. Programs are spending real money to track athlete development — platforms, personnel, testing equipment. That investment produces data that could directly support donor retention, recruiting differentiation, and NIL accountability. Instead, it sits in software dashboards that the development office and recruiting staff never log into.

What Programs That Bridge the Gap Look Like

A small number of D1 programs have started to solve this. What they have in common is not a larger S&C staff or a more sophisticated data platform — it's a workflow that turns summer data into institutional assets without requiring the S&C staff to become content creators.

01 End-of-Summer Athlete Development Reports

The most direct use of summer data is a structured athlete development report — a document that captures where each athlete entered summer training, the protocol they ran, and the measurable outputs at the end of the block. Not a raw data export. A narrative report with key metrics, a progress arc, and a headline number or two.

These reports serve three simultaneous purposes. For the development office, they're donor engagement assets: proof that program investment produces measurable athletic development. For recruiting, they're evidence packets: concrete documentation of what the program does for its athletes. For compliance, they're accountability records: timestamped documentation of summer program outcomes for institutional and conference reporting.

The programs that execute this well have standardized the report format — so the S&C staff inputs data once, and a usable output comes out the other side without requiring a design sprint or a content team. That output feeds directly into the donor engagement and NIL reporting workflows that drive development revenue.

02 Position-Group Recruiting Story Cards

Summer is when strength development is most visible. An offensive lineman who came in at 270 and left summer at 285 with documented force plate and velocity improvements has a story worth telling on a recruiting visit. A wide receiver whose top speed increased by a measurable margin and whose change-of-direction metrics improved has evidence that the program's development system works.

Programs that use this well don't wait until September to turn it into recruiting content. They build position-group story cards during summer — visual, shareable documents that a position coach can put in front of a recruit's family during an August unofficial or early September visit. The data exists. The question is whether there's a workflow to turn it into something a coach can use.

This is where the gap between what ADs need and what most platforms provide becomes most visible. A self-service workflow that produces a shareable story card without an IT ticket is what recruiting staff actually use. A dashboard that requires a data export to produce the same output doesn't get touched before a 7pm visit.

03 Donor-Facing Summer Program Recaps

Major gift donors and NIL collective contributors are increasingly asking questions that donor reports have historically had no good answer for: What did the program actually produce this summer? Where are the athletes we're investing in, relative to where they were in January?

A summer program recap — a designed, narrative-forward document that goes to the development office by the end of August — gives those donors an answer. Not a game recap. Not a roster photo with names and majors. A performance story with before-and-after data, highlight metrics by position group, and a headline number that captures the summer's development arc.

The programs that produce this don't do it because their S&C staff had extra time in August. They do it because they've built a process that makes the translation lightweight enough that it actually gets done — and because the development office has learned to ask for it. Once donors see what GPS load data and velocity tracking actually tell them about athlete development, the question becomes why they weren't receiving it before.

Starting Without Overhauling Everything

The programs that have made the most progress on this didn't start with a platform migration or a department-wide initiative. They started with one document, produced at the end of one summer, that showed a development officer what was possible.

That document — a single athlete development story card or a one-page summer recap for one position group — generates the pull that creates the workflow. When a development officer sees it and asks for ten more, the S&C staff now has a reason to build the process. When a head coach hands it to a recruit's family and watches their reaction, the recruiting staff starts asking how to make it a consistent part of visit preparation.

The data is already there. Every D1 S&C program running a summer block has the raw material for compelling athlete development stories. The only question is whether there's a workflow in place to turn it into something the institution can actually use — before the season starts and the summer data becomes history.