This week on Inside the Headset, we are featuring St. Charles East High School Assistant Coach, Brad McCaslin. Coach McCaslin takes us on a deep dive into his coaching journey, highlights the importance of prioritizing athletes’ mental health, and shares how he uses technology to better connect with his players.

McCaslin has over 20 years of coaching experience with most of it coming at the collegiate level. Prior to St. Charles East, McCaslin spent two separate stints at the University of Buffalo. In 2019 McCaslin served as the buffalos defensive tackles coach as well as the director of player personnel and in his first stint served a defensive analyst from 2016-2017. The time between both stops at Buffalo, Coach MaCaslin served as the head coach at Benedictine University in 2018. Prior to spending two seasons as the defensive coordinator at Eastern Michigan University (2014-2015), McCaslin spent two years at Drake University where he served as the team's defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach where he helped turn the Bulldogs into one of the top defenses in the Pioneer Football League.

McCaslin came to Drake from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, where he coached for 14 seasons, including the last six as the Mavericks' defensive coordinator (2005-10). He also served as associate head coach his final four seasons before the program was disbanded in 2010. During his time at Nebraska-Omaha, McCaslin helped propel the program to six conference championships and pioneered a defensive unit that consistently rated near the top of the conference in many statistical categories. Coach McCaslin is also the founder of the XA Score app which is a platform for sports teams to holistically manage and analyze essential data. This data fosters genuine connection by helping coaches to be in tune with their student-athletes while also providing clarity to student-athletes on where they truly stand.

• [1:45] Start of Interview
• [2:30] Personal Coaching Journey
• [15:19] Prioritizing athlete’s mental health
• [19:30] Importance of recovery
• [22:13] The power of diversity
• [27:56] Valuing multi-sport athletes
• [34:34] The XA Score app

You can follow Coach McCaslin on Twitter

You can follow XA Score on Twitter