Since launching their first Virtual Event event a little over a year ago, GMTM has seen a huge boost in the amount of female athletes creating a profile and submitting videos.
That's because GMTM revolutionized way for athletes to send videos directly to real coaching staffs promising awesome opportunities in a number of sports.
From Olympic teams hosting digital tryouts to college programs hosting virtual campus visits, GMTM has connected thousands of female athletes to real opportunities in sports.
With their free profiles and events, GMTM has helped females from every corner of North America and beyond continue to be found by recruiters and brands during one of the most trying times for athletes.
From Digital Combine To An Olympic Team
When a global pandemic sidelined every single athlete, GMTM was quick to leverage their brand new technology to host Virtual Events for Olympic organizations and college teams.
The first to see the worth in GMTM's video uploading platform that allowed athletes to submit tryout videos and control their own recruiting platform was USA Bobsled & Skeleton.
Team USA was desperate to continue their talent identification process despite social distancing. So, when they sent out the link to their free Digital Combine on gmtm.com, they weren't surprised to see a huge number of football and male track athletes submit tryout videos.
What did surprise them, though, was that out of the hundreds of athletes who submitted videos, a huge number of them were from really talented and motivated female athletes.
In the duration of the USA Bobsled & Skeleton Digital Combine, coaches received over 40 submissions from female athletes hoping to be chosen for the Olympic squad. And from that group, four were invited to an in-person training camp in Lake Placid to try the sport.
One of those was Lauren Brzozowzki, a former Track & Field athlete at Elon University.
After her first run, Brzozowzki found a new passion for the sport and it showed. The coaches at the camp invited her to join the USA Bobsled team officially. Now, the former track athlete is staring down a gold medal in a different sport.
Another female who was selected for the national team, based on her digital combine submission came from a very different background.
Riley Compton, a Marine Aviation Logisitics Officer, submitted her tryout videos for Team USA last fall. A few months later, she was able to add a new title to decorated resume - pilot of a bobsleigh on the National Developmental Team.
Compton still serves as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Marines at Fort Pendleton in California - thousands of miles from either of the country's two bobsleigh tracks. Fortunately for her though, Bobsled is a combination of weightlifting and sprinting, two activities she is able to perform on the base while away from the ice.
Improving Access To National Team Opportunities
While Bobsled isn't usually the focus for many young women, GMTM has also helped other international Olympic teams discover athletes that will soon represent their countries in more popular women's sports.
One of those is Volleyball Canada, the country's national governing body for women's volleyball, who launched a series of junior-level events in early 2021.
The virtual events, which ranged from the U15 to the U21 level, were Team Canada's official first step in trying out for national teams and state-sponsored development programs. Each event took place during a period of social distancing in the country, so athletes submitted personal drills from gyms at every corner of the country.
In the five different women's tryouts Volleyball Canada hosted, almost ___ athletes submitted videos.
The virtual event also costed under $50.00, a fraction of what it costed in past year's for athletes to attend an in-person tryout in their province's larger cities.
For the girls that weren't chosen for Canada's national team, the effort was not in vain. Their tryout videos now live on their GMTM profiles, where college coaches from across Canada and the United States can watch and discover athletes from under-recruited areas.
In fact, GMTM even hosts Virtual Visits for a number of college volleyball teams in the U.S., as well as teams from other sports. Currently, there are 7 Virtual Visits athletes can participate in for FREE ranging from basketball to field hockey to rowing.
Introducing Female Athletes To Emerging Sports
While most athletes find GMTM through opportunities their coaches share with them, there are still plenty of unique organizations that are looking for the right athlete to change sports.
GMTM profiles allow the best athletes to display every type of skill they have, making it very easy for coaches in other sports to find top talent that might not be looking for them.
For instance, USA Team Handball launched a Virtual Combine on GMTM in order to find interested female basketball and volleyball athletes and expose them to their sport. Historically, a majority of Team USA's handball athletes have started in the sport after excelling in others.
Another example is the American Flag Football League, which has a rapidly growing Women's Division, with teams and athletes from across the nation. They will soon launch an AFFL Virtual Showcase to help women interested in playing football find a place to compete professionally.
