Sydney Leroux isn’t done chasing her soccer dreams.
The veteran forward has signed a three-year max deal with the Orlando Pride, the National Women’s Soccer League team she’s been with since 2018. Announced Wednesday, the contract has an option for an additional year.
“Being a mom of two and a woman, I think we can do it all. And I hope that I’ve proved that to girls and women and moms every single day,” she said. “I think that I still have so much more to give. And I think if you were on the field with me, you would say the same. So, no, I’ve not really thought of retiring. I enjoy having my kids see what their mom can do and see their mom chase her dreams, still.”
Andrew Vigotsky is a biomedical engineering PhD candidate and statistics MS student at Northwestern University, where he develops and applies analytical tools to neuroimaging, psychophysics, and self-report data to better understand acute and chronic pain neurophysiology. Before attending Northwestern, Andrew graduated with a B.S. in Kinesiology from Arizona State University (ASU). It was during his undergraduate studies that he started getting involved in research; in particular, biomechanics research.
Freelap USA: Stiffness is a confusing area, where coaches sometimes talk about estimations of joint stiffness and forget that it’s more than kinematic motion. Can you talk about actual stiffness and perhaps get into elastography so we can understand true stiffness?
Andrew Vigotsky: Sure! Stiffness is an object’s resistance to stretch. Importantly, this stretch must be elastic deformation: the energy used to stretch the object (e.g., tendon) must be stored, not dissipated, so that it can be returned. This also implies that additional energy is not added to the system. Stiffness (elastic deformation of a structure) is a very specific mechanical construct that differs from what many coaches, clinicians, and even researchers describe.
A common practice in sport is to play-up youth athletes who are highly skilled against chronologically older peers. However, the potential effects of playing-up on youth’s athletic and personal development have not been explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate athletes’ perceptions of how playing-up may have influenced their sport-specific skill and psychosocial development. Seventeen athletes from four soccer clubs in Ontario, Canada, participated in semi-structured interviews where they described their playing-up experiences. An inductive thematic analysis was performed to capture athletes’ perceptions of playing-up and the ways in which it may have affected their development. Results showed that athletes perceived playing-up to involve a balance between two high-order themes: (a) challenge and (b) progress. Regarding challenge, athletes struggled most to cope with the intensity of practices and games and to fit in socially with older peers. Regarding progress, athletes felt most rewarded when they received recognition for their talent, experienced success, and had opportunities to develop expertise. Athletes also commented that their teammates and coaches played a pivotal role in facilitating their sport-specific skill and psychosocial development. Practical applications for sport practitioners are proposed and avenues for further research are identified.
… the instruments necessary for reducing chatter and harnessing our inner voice aren’t something we need to go looking for. They are readily available, waiting for us to put them to work. The key to beating chatter isn’t to stop talking to yourself. The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively.
In my book, I review the different tools that exist for helping people resolve the tension between getting caught in negative thought spirals and thinking clearly and constructively. Below are several tools that you might try out to help calm your own chatter and to provide chatter support to others.
With the 2020-21 high school football calendar altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Denver Broncos and the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) have launched the Denver Broncos High School Virtual Combine.
In partnership with GMTM, an athlete exposure platform, the all-virtual combine provides student-athletes with aspirations of playing college football the opportunity to create a player profile, upload highlights and statistics, and display talents while building an online recruiting brand platform. Prospective athletes are able to connect with collegiate recruiters—Division I FBS through Division III—as well as participate in 11 pre-set combine tests to showcase their abilities through athletic, football and character challenges.
… The company has yet to premiere its first AI-powered exercise equipment but plans to do so sometime in February. It isn’t even revealing what the physical product looks like just yet, according to the company.
OxeFit’s forthcoming products are called the XP1 and XS1. They’re advertised as robotic fitness platforms that allow users to work out with data-driven fitness programs and compete virtually with professional athletes and other users through an integrated online ecosystem called OxeLife.
“As a professional athlete currently rehabbing from a significant injury, I see the unbelievable opportunity OxeFit affords athletes and their physicians and trainers to cater activities to their specific needs,” Dak Prescott said in a statement.
… The smart ring is one of dozens of wearable devices being used across professional and amateur sports to measure increasingly specific biometric data, from the proteins in athletes’ sweat to the strength of their grips.
Volleyball legend Karch Kiraly, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and coach of the U.S. women’s national team, says he and his team keep close tabs on players’ performance and skills, including serves, receptions, attacks and blocks. But the primary analytic his staff uses comes from a sensor the size of a thumb drive that players wear in their waistbands. It tracks how many times a player jumps in a match. With that information, the team can mitigate the risk of overtraining and can better help its athletes recover from injuries.
“We don’t want to be drowning in data, or hiring people just to sift through the data, or a team of data analysts to figure out what it means,” Kiraly says. “There’s still a strong human component. The actual work of reviewing, teaching and learning is human to human.”
The Atlanta Hawks join an elite group of 32 sports organizations covering 14 countries and 10 sports who are part of the HYPE Sports Innovations’ Global Virtual Accelerator 2.0 (GVA2.0). This second cycle of the international program, over a three-month period, focuses on enabling the top sports tech startups the chance to secure pilot programs with participating organizations across 7 sports tech verticals – Clubs & Federations, Media & Broadcasting, Esports & Gaming, Sports Betting, Winter Sports, Motor Sports and Performance and Fitness. The Hawks are participating in the Clubs and Federations Vertical, which includes the Philadelphia Phillies, Las Vegas Golden Knights, Inter Miami, French Football Federation, Bundesliga German Football League, and FIBA along with others.
More than 1300-plus applications will be narrowed down through a structured process in which applicants address actual issues presented by the sport verticals. As part of the competition, participating organizations, including the Hawks, will have front row access to the latest technologies and innovation in the sports media industry. There are three major milestones all open to the public. Pitch day scheduled for Mar 1, where 30 startups will be presenting to 32 clubs, federations, and leagues. This is followed by the Selection Show on Mar 11, where the Atlanta Hawks will individually select five startups to move to the next round. The selected startups for the shortlist will spend the next eight weeks in one-on-one sessions directly presenting their relevant technology and ability to scale with the goal of winning a product/service pilot to be announced in May.
A football helmet developed by a Liberty University dean and his team of Ph.D. research fellows and undergraduates is one of four finalists in the NFL’s sixth annual “1st and Future” pitch competition.
Dr. Mark Horstemeyer, Dean of Liberty University’s School of Engineering, oversaw the project for the competition, designed to “spur innovation in athlete health, safety, and performance,” according to Liberty, whose work is associated with Genesis Helmets, Inc.
Using an approach trademarked at Liberty University that he calls “Creationeering,” Horstemeyer incorporated properties found in nature to design a football helmet designed to be twice as effective at preventing concussions as those currently used by the NFL.
Growing up in Turkey, the only football Ilayda Samilgil ’19 knew was the kind played mostly with the feet.
“I used to do gymnastics and ice skate,” she said, “but I wasn’t very familiar with some of the most-followed sports here, such as American football or baseball.”
Samilgil’s lack of familiarity served her well as she developed wearable athletic performance-analysis technology in associate professor Rob Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab.
Shepherd and Samilgil are now co-founders of Organic Robotics Corporation (ORC), which with its stretchable sensing technology, Light Lace, topped a field of four finalists to win the sixth annual NFL 1st & Future competition, sponsored by the National Football League.
A new variant of the virus has the U.K. wondering whether it’s time to pause sports again. And if they’re asking now, we’ll be asking soon. SI polled infectious disease experts for a little coaching on what comes next.
COVID-19 didn’t completely stop the Texas athletic department, but new figures shed light on how the pandemic had an impact on the Longhorns’ bottom line.
UT athletics still turned an eye-popping $22.1 million profit for the 2019-20 athletic year, according to audited figures. However, the total revenue dropped more than $23 million down to $200.8 million for the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31 — approximately a 10% drop from the 2018-19 athletic year.
Yes, Texas makes a lot of money, but the Horns spend a lot, too. The athletic department spent $178.7 million in expenses for things such as scholarships ($11.8 million), head coaches’ salaries and benefits ($20.5 million) and team travel ($7.5 million).
CVC Capital Partners have invested in volleyball with the launch of Volleyball World, in partnership with the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB).
Volleyball World will become the commercial entity for the sport around the world, aiming to drive ‘innovation, growth and investment’.
The news will see FIVB, together with its 222 National Federations, remain the sole, global volleyball regulatory body with responsibility for the sport and its development. As the majority shareholder in Volleyball World, FIVB will oversee the new commercial vision for volleyball while ensuring the interests of all stakeholders are represented.
After professional football in Germany was thrown into a financial crisis by the spread of the coronavirus, the German Football League (DFL) assembled a task force to discuss the future of the game.
The “Zukunft Profifussball” (future of professional football) task force consisted of 37 experts from the fields of sports, science, media, politics, law and economics — including German national team director Oliver Bierhoff, Eintracht Frankfurt sporting director Fredi Bobic, his Borussia Mönchengladbach counterpart Max Eberl, Union Berlin goalkeeper Andreas Luthe, and six fan representatives.
In a nine-page document published on Wednesday, the task force defined seven goals which the DFL, which operates the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, ought to strive for by the year 2030, and 17 recommendations for how to achieve them.