Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 28, 2019

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for February 28, 2019

 

A Soccer Pro at 13? Olivia Moultrie Will Give It a Try

The New York Times, Andrew Keh from

Two years ago — in a move that delighted some in women’s sports and shocked others — Olivia Moultrie announced that she had accepted a scholarship offer to play college soccer at the University of North Carolina. She was 11 years old.

On Monday, Moultrie, the youngest girls’ soccer player to publicly accept an academic scholarship offer, became the youngest girls’ soccer player to then officially forgo her college athletic eligibility. Now 13, Moultrie announced that she had signed, in short order, a representation deal with the Wasserman Media Group, a sports agency, and a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike. In taking those two actions, Moultrie formally began her professional career.

 

Erick Fedde added 20 pounds hoping to be more durable — and the Nationals’ fifth starter

The Washington Post, Jesse Dougherty from

… “He’s fighting for the fifth starter’s spot. That’s what he’s doing right now,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “And he gets it. I told him, ‘We’ve got to keep you healthy.’ The big thing with him is his health. Other than pitching, he’s got to have a routine. He’s got to continue to work on his strengthening, his flexibility. That’s the way we keep him on the field.”

Before this winter, Fedde filled his offseason regimen mostly with stretching and rotational work. But he has often run into injury trouble — he missed most of last summer with right shoulder inflammation — and the Nationals suggested he put on weight between last season and the coming one. He added 20 pounds to his 6-foot-4 frame after going on a diet that he described as “see it, eat it” and “until the plate is empty,” entering camp at 203.

 

Why Yankees’ Adam Ottavino loves analytics and how it lifted his game

NJ.com, Randy Miller from

… A 6-foot-5 Brooklyn-born righty, Ottavino came home to pitch for the Yankees in January on a three-year deal after becoming a bit of a self-made star pitching out of the Colorado Rockies bullpen.

Ottavino, 33, is convinced that his year-around analytical study of every pitch that he’s thrown since around 2010, offseasons included, has as much to do with his maturation as talent.

“A hundred percent, because you have to adapt in baseball, especially now.”

 

Tyler Adams’ versatility should have USMNT fans salivating

Yahoo Sports, Joey Gulino from

… Since arriving from New York Red Bulls in January, the United States international has been influential in ways that will benefit his club and his country for years to come. While goals are the signature highlight of soccer, the most direct impact a player can have on a game, that doesn’t mean other areas of the pitch aren’t incredibly important.

Adams patrols those areas with awareness and IQ beyond his 20 years, and pinpointing his work against Hoffenheim is hardly making a mountain out of a molehill to demonstrate it.

 

Fryer: JSerra’s Isabella D’Aquila, a rising star for U.S. soccer, made high school sports a priority

Orange County Register, Steve Fryer from

If she did not do it, that would be understandable.

Isabella D’Aquila did play for the JSerra girls soccer team this season, her senior year. She scored 34 goals and led the team to a third straight CIF-Southern Section Division 1 championship. D’Aquila scored that 34th goal Saturday in the Lions’ 3-0 win over Los Alamitos in the Division 1 final.

She was the national high school player of the year last season. D’Aquila, at JSerra since her freshman year, has been selected to play for national teams. She now is in Spain training with the U.S. Under-20 Women’s National Team.

 

After two ACL tears, Randi Thompson is defying medical odds as Frisco Liberty’s playoff hero

Dallas Morning News, SportsDay blog, Callie Caplan from

Randi Thompson has been to the UIL girls’ basketball state tournament before. Frisco Liberty qualified in 2016 when the guard was a freshman. She knows what to expect.

But Thompson’s path back to the Class 5A final four hasn’t unfolded as she would’ve predicted.

She’s twice torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, and the injuries robbed her of most of her sophomore and junior seasons. Her current prowess as a senior, according to medical statistics, is unlikely.

 

Inside John Battle’s NFL combine training routine: ‘Chase the Light,’ the ‘SHREDmill,’ more

The Advocate, Brooks Kubena from

John Battle had to beat the light.

It flickered down the sprinting straightaway inside the Florida-based training facility, taunting him like a mechanical hare on a dog track.

“Chase the Light” is a speed drill, a part of the NFL combine training program at XPE Sports in Boca Raton, meant to boost Battle’s mid-level 40-yard dash times that partly have media analysts pegging the former LSU safety on the fringe of being selected in the NFL draft.

Athletic trainers, like Bill Welle, adjust the light’s speed from 16, 18, even 20 mph, and the athletes have to beat the light before it reaches the cone at the track’s end.

 

How 49ers will restructure athletic training and conditioning programs

NBC Sports Bay Area, Matt Maiocco from

Coach Kyle Shanahan said the 49ers were forced to make difficult to decisions to fire the team’s head athletic trainer and their strength and conditioning coach.

But, he said, the moves were part of an overall reshaping of the organization’s medical and conditioning staffs.

Shanahan, speaking Tuesday to Bay Area reporters at the Senior Bowl, said there is a bigger picture than the number of injuries the 49ers have experienced the past two seasons. Head trainer Jeff Ferguson and strength and conditioning coach Ray Wright were fired as part of an overall restructuring.

“It’s about where we want to go, how we can make the overall process of it better,” Shanahan said. “Injuries happen, and we’ve looked into that, and we’re going to do everything we can to improve that. We have to, because that has hurt us a lot in the last two years.

 

Be a Scientist and an Artist in Your Sport – Being a scientist has its place, but athletic success comes from being an artist

Psychology today, Jim Taylor Ph.D. from

The tough question that every athlete asks is: How do I perform my best when it matters most? Especially for young athletes who are still developing, it is essential for you to continue your technical and tactical development. At the same time, on game day, I believe that too much thinking about technique and tactics at this time of the season can actually prevent you from performing your best. In fact, in some parts of your practice and definitely on game day, I suggest that you let go of your focus on technique and tactics and zero in on just performing the best you can.

Here’s a distinction I make that will help you better understand where I’m coming from: Be a scientist in practice and an artist in competitions.

 

Video games could help uncover your hidden talents – and make you happier

The Conversation, Craig Weightman from

… While some people see video games as a means of living out fantasy, the truth is who we are in the virtual world largely reflects who we are in the real one. For instance, one piece of research has found that a player’s real values match their in-game decisions, suggesting that their true personality often gets reflected in a game scenario. There is also evidence that our ability to lead is strongly reflected in the way we form relationships in video games.

Some of us are fortunate enough to be aware of these kinds of skills and can take advantage of them in real life as well as in the virtual world. Some players even list their in-game achievements on their CVs. But there are also many people who are capable of much more than they realise. In fact, the above research suggests that the in-game decisions we make and the behaviour we show while playing can tell us about value systems and skills that are, perhaps, unconscious.

 

Zone7 raises $2.5 million seed round to predict injury risk for athletes – TechCrunch

TechCrunch, Jonathan Shieber from

… Teams in the MLB, La Liga, Champions League, MLS, collegiate athletic departments and Olympic teams are all using the company’s technology, according to a statement.

“Getting injured is one of the worst experiences for any athlete,” said Porzingis, in a statement. “The technology behind Zone7 is extremely impressive and has the potential to change the landscape of sports forever.”

Zone7 uses pattern recognition based on an athlete’s past performance and medical history to determine what course of action is best for the player to ensure that they don’t get hurt. So far, the company says it has achieved a 95 percent accuracy rate when it comes to predicting injuries and reduced the potential for injuries by 75 percent, according to a statement.

 

Bluetooth 5.1 Puts Bluetooth In Its Place

Nordic Semiconductor, Get Connected Blog, John Leonard from

… Direction finding is a major feature of Bluetooth 5.1, which brings the possibility of absolute positioning of products and things in three-dimensional space to the world of low-power wireless connectivity.

It is a very important addition to Bluetooth Low Energy’s capability arsenal. We believe it can have a similar impact for indoor situations as GPS did for outdoor positioning. Where GPS has fundamentally changed the world of traveling and tracking on the macro scale for cars, people and objects, Bluetooth direction finding can make a similar impact on the micro scale inside buildings and properties.

 

Relievers Have Broken Baseball. We Have A Plan To Fix It.

FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver from

Earlier this month, Major League Baseball said it was considering a rule change to require pitchers to face at least three batters per appearance — or finish an inning — as part of a series of initiatives to improve the pace of play. I don’t hate this; I’ve always been a fan of relief pitchers working longer outings. But I think the MLB proposal misses the real problem.

The issue isn’t really with relievers who face just one hitter at a time. In fact, LOOGYs — Left-handed One-Out Guys — are already fading in popularity as teams realize that if a pitcher isn’t good enough to face multiple hitters in a row, he may not belong in the bullpen pecking order at all.

Instead, the problem concerns teams that use a parade of relievers who enter the game from the sixth inning onward and throw the hell out of the ball, knowing they’ll probably max out at one inning at a time. (The Yankee bullpen is a prime example.) You might call these pitchers OMGs: One-inning Max-effort Guys. They can be incredibly, game-changingly effective, but they aren’t necessarily all that skilled.

 

How do professional football players perform under immense pressure?

KU Leuven News from

… It’s sometimes said that football isn’t just played between the lines, but also between the ears. Professional football players are generously rewarded for their talent, but are often expected to perform under immense mental pressure. A crucial save from the goalkeeper, scoring the decisive penalty or giving the perfect assist for the winning goal: the right action can sometimes be worth millions.

Football usually focuses on the physical, tactical and technical performances, but the mental aspect often receives insufficient attention. Researchers from KU Leuven and SciSports are now changing this. They analysed nearly 7,000 matches in 7 competitions to see how professional football players perform under pressure.

 

Research: When Small Teams Are Better Than Big Ones

Harvard Business Review, Dashun Wang and James A. Evans from

The “discovery of the 21st century” was awarded the Nobel prize two years after it was made. In 2015, the Laser Interferometre Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project finally detected what it was built to: gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time—caused by the collision of two black holes.

Among many things, the LIGO experiment is a testament to the power of teams in tackling the 21st century’s toughest challenges. Indeed, one of the most universal shifts in the innovation sector in recent years has been the growth of large teams in all areas of research and development, while solitary inventors, researchers, and small teams have all been on the decline.

This fundamental shift is critical for science and innovation policy, as it points to large teams as optimal engines for tomorrow’s largest advances.

 

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