Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 30, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 30, 2020

 

Ja Morant Is the Grizzlies’ Star, but Two Sleepers Are Fueling the Reboot

The Ringer, Jonathan Tjarks from

… The key for the Grizzlies was focusing on what the two could do well and not on what they couldn’t. They plugged Melton and Clarke into an up-tempo system that gave them the freedom to make decisions on offense and required them to hold their own against bigger players on defense. Memphis used advanced metrics to identify the two young players whose skills were undervalued by the rest of the league. It was essentially the NBA’s version of Moneyball, almost 20 years since the baseball phenomenon.

The Grizz began winning almost as soon as Melton entered the rotation in early December. His modest per-game averages—7.9 points on 45.4 percent shooting, 3.9 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.3 steals in 17.6 minutes—don’t tell the whole story of his impact. Melton doesn’t play much, but he takes over games when he does. He’s a plus-minus machine, with a bigger impact on his team’s performance than some of the biggest stars in the league.

 

Chiefs, 49ers fill the need for speed in Super Bowl LIV

ESPN NFL, Nick Wagoner from

Ask San Francisco 49ers running back Raheem Mostert, himself a former Big Ten sprint champion at Purdue, which teammates he’d choose to form a 4×100 relay team and he pauses for just a moment before rattling off four names.

“Me, Matt Breida, Tevin Coleman, and I’ll take Jeff Wilson,” Mostert said.

Notice a pattern? Yes, Mostert named all four of the team’s running backs (with apologies to Kyle Juszczyk, who would undoubtedly be in the discussion for the league’s fastest fullback).

 

Super Bowl features speed worthy of Olympic relay team

Associated Press, Josh Dubow from

Tyreek Hill has plans for the speedy Kansas City receiving group after the Super Bowl.

“If I’m healthy and my mind is in the right place, I’d go try out for the Olympics, put together a relay,” Hill said. “We’d show these track guys, ‘Hey, we football players can do that, too.’”

Hill might only have been half-kidding but he’d sure have a speedy crew. Hill said he’d race with fellow receivers Mecole Hardman and Sammy Watkins, and cornerback Charvarius Ward in a relay team.

 

Two sports, no problems for No. 2 basketball prospect Olivia Miles

ESPN Women's College Basketball, Josh Weinfuss from

Olivia Miles is rare.

But it’s not because the Blair Academy junior is a 5-foot-10 point guard with Sue Bird-like vision, Steve Nash-like smoothness and a Diana Taurasi-like ability to bully fellow guards with her size. It’s also not because she’s still undecided on a college.

It’s because she plays two sports — and plays them well.

Despite being the second-ranked player in the Class of 2021, Miles spends her falls on the soccer pitch, purposefully putting basketball away for a few months, with the exception of a couple of hours every Thursday, when she goes to open gym with college coaches usually watching.

 

MONITORING TECHNOLOGIES FOR SPORTS ANALYSIS

Barca Innovation Hub from

The use of technology in the analysis of sports performance has become a usual and necessary practice among professional teams. Monitoring the athlete’s physical activity allows clubs to know their current physical condition and their playing style, as well as also know the players’ fatigue or the load they are subject to during training sessions. or matches. Thanks to all kind of sensors and cameras we have real-time information of our players position, speed and heart rate data that can also be processed to analyze trends or possible improvements in the game. Two key questions arise at the moment of implanting this kind of innovative solutions: on the one hand, what kind of technology allows best monitoring our players in terms of efficiency; on the other hand, how to process all this data in a useful manner and being efficient with the resources at hand.

 

Magnetic Microbots Deliver Stem Cells to Heal Knee Cartilage

Medgadget from

As has been widely hyped for many years now, mesenchymal stem cells have the capacity to heal all sorts of damage in our bodies. The reality has been more complicated, since it is actually very difficult to get these cells to perform their magic just where we want them to.

Damaged cartilage, for example, doesn’t heal well on its own and so would be a prime beneficiary of well targeted stem cell therapies. Current injection methods are not very effective, but researchers from South Korea’s Chonnam National University and Korea Institute of Medical Microrobotics are reporting in journal Science Robotics on specially designed “microrobots” that can carry and deliver mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) precisely to sites of damage within knee cartilage.

 

Profusa’s wireless, injectable oxygen biosensor nabs CE mark

FierceBiotech, Amirah Al Idrus from

Three years after Profusa’s biosensor earned the CE mark to measure tissue oxygen levels, its follow-up has followed suit. The latest EU clearance is for a wireless version of the device, which provides doctors a “broader data picture” and offers patients a more convenient way to check oxygen levels in their limbs.

The Lumee Oxygen Platform is designed to monitor tissue at risk of low oxygen levels in patients with conditions like peripheral artery disease (PAD) and chronic limb ischemia.

 

Shoe Cushioning Influences the Running Injury Risk According to Body Mass: A Randomized Controlled Trial Involving 848 Recreational Runners

Sports Medicine Research, Alexandra F DeJong from

Runners who wore harder shoes had a 52% greater occurrence of running-related injury compared to runners wearing soft-cushioned shoes. The most protective effect of soft-cushioned shoes was among lighter weight runners.

 

Florida House OKs bill to protect student athletes from heat

Associated Press, Bobby Caina Calvan from

Public schools in Florida would be required to have immediate access to emergency cooling tubs and other life-saving equipment to save student athletes from deadly heat strokes, under legislation approved Wednesday in the state House.

Lawmakers voted unanimously to advance the legislation, which now awaits action by the Florida Senate.

More than 460 student athletes in Florida were treated for exertional heat stroke during the 2017-18 school year, according to state officials.

 

Challenges Faced by Collegiate Athletic Trainers, Part I: Organizational Conflict and Clinical Decision Making

Journal of Athletic Training from

Context Organizational conflict, particularly between coaches and medical professionals, has been reported in collegiate athletics. Different values create room for conflict between coaches and athletic trainers (ATs); however, ATs’ experiences when making medical decisions are not fully understood.

Objective To investigate the presence of organizational conflict regarding medical decision making and determine if differences exist across athletic affiliations.

Design Cross-sectional study.

Setting Collegiate athletics (National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics [NAIA], National Junior College Athletic Association [NJCAA]).

Patients or Other Participants A total of 434 ATs responded (age = 27.7 ± 3.2 years, years certified = 5.2 ± 2.7), representing the NCAA Division I (DI; n = 199), Division II (DII; n = 67), Division III (DIII; n = 108); NAIA (n = 37); and NJCAA (n = 23) settings.

Main Outcome Measure(s) The survey instrument contained quantitative measures and open-ended questions, with affiliation as our primary independent variable. Responses to Likert-scale questions (1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree) regarding organizational pressures within athletics served as the dependent variables. Kruskal-Wallis analysis-of-variance and Mann-Whitney U post hoc tests assessed differences in organizational conflict across affiliations. Open-ended questions were analyzed inductively.

Results We obtained a 14.47% (434 of 3000) response rate. National Collegiate Athletic Association DI ATs disagreed less than NCAA DII and DIII and NJCAA ATs that they would worry about job security if turnover in the head coaching position occurred (P < .05). Regarding the influence of coaches on job performance, differences were found between NCAA DI and DIII and between DI and NJCAA ATs (P < .01). Visibility of the injury and situational factors influenced the level of perceived pressure. Conclusions Athletic trainers perceived pressure from coaches regarding medical decision making. Division I ATs placed greater emphasis on the role that coaches played in their job performance and job security. Athletic departments should consider transitioning to patient-centered models of care to better align values and reduce the external pressures placed on ATs.

 

NCAA D1 soccer to vote on expanded season

NBC Sports, Pro Soccer Talk, Kyle Bonn from

A report by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tannenwald has revealed that NCAA Division 1 men’s soccer is close to heading towards a full-season schedule, expanding the current fall schedule that sees the College Cup finish up around mid-December.

Tannenwald’s report, which cites Maryland head coach Sasho Cirovski who has led the charge for a full calendar season, states that the new proposal would drop the regular season schedule from 25 to 23 total games, but would expand the campaign across the entire school year. The first half would consist of 13 games and end around Thanksgiving, before picking back up in the spring with nine official games. Three exhibitions would be spread around the season, as opposed to the current setup of five meaningless exhibition games all set in the spring offseason.

 

Two sources in the past two days point toward a demographic shift in those who participate in youth football. Or, more accurately, a discrepancy between those who participate and those who don’t.

Twitter, Christine Baugh from

Yesterday I listened to @el_belson
, tell a story of a small town youth football team. One thing that caught my attention in the broader story was that the team was comprised predominantly of black children despite the town being mostly white.

 

The best way to steal signs in baseball

Popular Science, Jacob Feldman from

… “I think baseball is super boring,” says former NASA engineer Mark Rober. Still, he found a way to turn it into an AI test dummy and eventually, an app. With Steal Predictor, anyone can enter signs and outcomes into a machine-learning program. The algorithm then quickly identifies common patterns to decode the messages between catchers and pitchers.

While Rober says it’s “patently false” that MLB teams have used his app, he has heard of Little League teams banning the use of phones after its spread. He’s also spent more time thinking about the sport and discussing the Astros’ scheme with fans.

“Audio [signals are] a terrible choice,” he says. “There are a billion ways to do this way more covertly.”

 

‘Dreadful neglect’ of British athletics has squandered 2012 legacy, top coach says

The Guardian, Sean Ingle from

British athletics is in its worst state for 60 years having largely squandered the golden legacy of London 2012, one of the sport’s most decorated coaches has warned.

Malcolm Arnold, a former head coach and the first performance director of UK Athletics (UKA) who has guided multiple athletes to Olympic and world titles, said he was reluctantly speaking out because people needed to “wake up” to the scale of the problem.

“This is undoubtedly the most worried I have been in all my years in the sport,” he told the Guardian. “I keep thinking to myself, what the hell is going to happen at the Tokyo Olympics [this year] and who is concerned about it?”

 

Football chiefs urged to reconsider fixture calendar to help protect players

FourFourTwo from

An expert in injury prevention has called on football administrators to look again at the fixture calendar, saying players at all levels need to be treated as “people before athletes, and athletes before commercial enterprises”.

Jamie Salter, a lecturer in coaching sciences at York St John University who advises athletes on reducing injury risk, believes something has to give, and has called for the sport’s bosses to consider alternatives to FA Cup replays, two-leg Carabao Cup semi-finals and the new-look Club World Cup.

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.