Atlanta United hires David Tenney as "Director of High Performance"

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It’s not one of the signings everyone has been waiting for, but Atlanta United made an influential hire on Monday. David Tenney has joined the club as the “Director of High Performance,” effectively replacing Ryan Alexander as the club’s head of sports science. Alexander occupied the role for the entirety of Atlanta United’s history.

Tenney’s arrival marks the first major hire in an offseason overhaul at the club that will include a new sporting director, a new head coach and, most critically, a new data engineer¹. His hire also coincides with a year of change at Atlanta United. The introduction of Director of Methodology Javier Pérez as head of the club’s academy brought the first major change to the club’s infrastructure. Now, more are following. It’s a sign that the club, slowly but surely, is being re-shaped under Garth Lagerwey.

Unsurprisingly, if you squint, that new shape looks a lot like a Seattle Sounders crest. Tenney’s first job leading a sport performance department came with Seattle. He took over in 2009, leading the department for eight seasons before joining the Orlando Magic. Also unsurprisingly, the use of data played a major role in his success in Seattle.

“The people in the Seattle area, they want you to be innovative. They want you to use tech. They want you use data,” Tenney told Five Stripe Final. “That's something I didn't expect at the time, but as a result, we were the first team in MLS to use GPS tracking in training sessions in 2012. We were one of the first teams to use optical tracking.

“We then had so many data streams early on with the Sounders, I remember going to Adrian Hanauer and saying, like, I've got all this data, but we need to get it in one place. We need to figure out what it all means. And then we ended up hiring Ravi [Ramineni], who was looking to leave Microsoft in the Seattle area on a part-time basis early on and helped us really build this data structure. I think that didn't really exist in the league.”

After leaving the Magic, Tenney took over at Austin FC as their Director of High Performance. He spent four years in Austin, but with Lagerwey in Atlanta and Atlanta United’s considerable infrastructure—their latest additions to their training ground will include an academy-specific gym and medical space and environmental chamber that can be used to mimic running at high altitudes—the time seemed right to head to Georgia.

Tenney and Lagerwey, of course, have a working relationship going back to Lagerwey’s arrival to Seattle in December 2014. Both seem to be aligned on what data matters and how to utilize it.

“I think