Meet Josh Nance, the kid that’s helping modernize the York Cougars football program

This was Josh Nance’s first thought when he was offered the chance to pilot York Comprehensive High School’s football program into the future:

“I was thinking, ‘well, I’ll go do something, keep me off my butt,’” he said.

Nance first flew a drone several years ago, one he owned, but it broke. Last year, as he waited for his bus after school one day, a York teacher asked him if he wanted to fly a drone that the football program had purchased to film practice. It was an easy choice for the 10th grader.

“So I came down here and learned how to fly this one,” he said.

When York’s Bobby Carroll first started coaching football in the 1980s, practices and games were shot on 16-meter reel-to-reel film. VHS came along and blew the minds of coaches in the 1990s. DVDs did the same in the 2000s. And it’s happened again.

As Carroll’s Cougars practiced on a steamy August afternoon, you can barely hear the whir of the drone that stands sentinel 30 to 50 feet above the football players below. Drone video has revolutionized practice film in recent years, and York coaches and players are the latest to benefit.

“I love it, love it,” said Jamie Bolton, the Cougars’ 30-year old rookie offensive coordinator. “You get angles you’ve never seen before.”

York’s $1,300 drone outfit -- paid for by the football program’s Touchdown Club -- shoots life-like 4K video.

The drone is just the latest innovation at York, which is lurching into the 21st century.

During Friday night games, the Cougars can film a play, then watch a replay of it three seconds later on an iPad down on the sideline. Hudl digital film storage has made cutting up game film into specific plays as easy as several mouse clicks. And York’s game film is usually posted on Hudl less than an hour after a game. Within minutes of it posting, Cougar players share their favorite plays on Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter.

At York, part of the modernization is driven by younger coaches. Bolton and York’s quarterbacks coach, and Carroll’s son, 23-year old Spencer, are, of firmly members of the Millennial generation.

Spencer was a huge drone advocate. And he played a large role in maybe the biggest sign of modernization in the York football program yet: his dad learning to use Twitter.

“It’s been hard trying to teach him what it is,” Spencer said last week. “What the Twitter feed is, how to set a profile picture. It’s been fun trying to get him caught up to the social media aspect. That’s just something you’ve got to do these days.”

The same could be said for high school football programs innovating. Technology used to be limited to college or pro sports, but as tech has permeated society, the same has happened in prep sports.

York coaches first saw drone practice footage on FootballScoop.com and later talked with a few coaches across the state that use drones during practice, including Dorman coach David Gutshall.

As with any new technology, the drone has downsides. The batteries last for almost 30 minutes, so York uses about five batteries per practice, missing a few plays here and there. The Cougars can’t fly the drone during live games and they don’t fly it over fans in the stands. And the cost could be prohibitive for schools that lack a well-funded booster club.

But the drone, with its crystal clear video and instant mobility, has otherwise been a revelation.

“It’s completely changed the way we watch film,” said Spencer Carroll. “It really shows the view that the offense and defense is seeing. It’s almost from a first-person perspective. You can be a little bit more detailed with the drone film, when you’re talking about leverage and space, than you can with the end zone film, just because of the angle.”

That’s one of the things that struck Boiling Springs wide receivers coach Jay Guest, after viewing drone footage York sent over following the two schools’ Aug. 4 scrimmage.

Guest thinks that the video game-like viewpoint resonates better with today’s teenagers.

“We thought that the end zone camera was a game changer for offensive/defensive line play,” Guest said. “This thing in my opinion is better because you can move it. They filmed extra points from the side a couple times and it circled back around while a play was taking place.”

The tall, gangly cameras that teams began positioning in the end zone for practices and games offered a new view several years ago. But the drone is unmatched when it comes to filming drills that mostly take place between the hash marks. Nance pilots the drone almost directly over the scrum of football players, providing an angle that no other camera can match.

“It’s 10 times more beneficial for coaching,” said Bobby Carroll. “It’s almost like playing Madden.”

Nance can put the drone, a DJI MAVIC Pro, into an autopilot mode where it will follow the football, wherever it goes, and all he has to do is make sure the device remains in the air. That’s useful for offensive or defensive team practice periods, when the ball is marched up and down the field. Wherever the offense goes, the drone faithfully follows.

Nance also hovers the drone over position group periods of practice, widely known as “indy,” or individual periods. Few, if any, South Carolina high school football teams film indy periods. But York coaches were able to turn the drone footage of their indy periods into instructional videos that they gave to York middle school coaches. That creates a vertical teaching progression ensuring ninth graders show up at York Comprehensive already versed in how their position coaches will teach them specific techniques.

Nance films the practice, unloads the memory card and hands it off to Spencer Carroll, who uploads it into Hudl right after the practice ends.

“He just grabbed the bull by the horns,” Bobby Carroll said about Nance. “He’s got it down. He gets a practice schedule, we circle what we want him to film and he knows the angle and what we want, how high we want it. It’s really an amazing deal. I wish we could film games with it.”

It is an amazing deal, especially for Nance. He said he’s not sure what he would be filling his free time with if he wasn’t whizzing the drone around York’s football stadium. He certainly wouldn’t be on the field in pads.

“My mom always wanted me to play football but I was never into it that much,” he said. “She was just happy I was doing something.”

York has only had to send the MAVIC Pro away for repairs once. That led to Nance’s major takeaway from piloting the drone so far.

“Make sure it has at least 15 percent battery before you try to land it,” he said, grinning sheepishly.