Female Sports Science newsletter – September 16, 2018

athletes

Less than a year ago, Tobin Heath lamented that being injured was the “worst thing in the whole entire world.”

Now healthy, the midfielder for the Portland Thorns and the U.S. national team looks like she’s having the time of her life.

“I feel like it’s been nice for me to be out on the field for a while now,” she said. “I always try to get better and better and improve my game. I never feel like I’ve reached it. I’m also in a great place to find my best form here in Portland. I’m supported by amazing people, so I get the freedom to be able to grow and improve as a player because of the people around me.”

… “Cande,” as she is known by friends and family, is the only girl playing in a children’s soccer league in the southern party of Santa Fe province, birthplace of stars including Lionel Messi, Gabriel Batistuta and Jorge Valdano. Former Argentine coaches Marcelo Bielsa, Gerardo Martino and Jorge Sampaoli were also born there.

But a regional regulation that prohibits mixed-gender teams in children’s categories threatens to take her off the field — a ruling that has helped dramatize the inequality in opportunities for men and women in this soccer-crazed county.

“I had to sit down with her and tell her that there are some people who have to make rules in soccer and that these rules do not agree with what she wants,” said Rosana Noriega, Candelaria’s mother. “And, well, we both cried, and she said: ‘The people who make the laws are bad people.’”

A champion distance runner in high school and currently one of the nation’s top collegiate runners, Allie Ostrander has enjoyed phenomenal success at a young age. Now 21, the Boise State University runner understands that longevity in the sport requires as much patience and restraint as grit and determination.

“This is something that I really struggle with and I am constantly trying to improve,” says Ostrander, who grew up in Kenai, Alaska. “Trying to push to run more and harder is not always what will lead to optimal performance. Sometimes your body needs rest to rebuild and become stronger.”

It’s a lesson Ostrander acknowledges she has learned the hard way. Stress fractures forced her to miss one cross-country and two track seasons in her freshman and sophomore years. Earlier this year, she had to take brief breaks from training after suffering a stress reaction in her lower leg. Still, she won the NCAA Division I 3,000m steeplechase in June, earning back-to-back national titles in the event.

… Bird spoke at the GeekWire Sports Tech Summit last year in Seattle and revealed that she’s a big fan of her Whoop wearable band that tracks everything from stress to her workout to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, Bird said it’s now a big emphasis for the Storm and gave credit to Susan King Borchadt, the team’s sports performance consultant, for axing morning shoot-arounds on game days in favor of letting the players get extra rest.

The 11-time All Star said she also spent time at P3, a well-known sports performance center that uses an array of sensors and motion analysis to show athletes how they can improve. For Bird, she learned that she tends to hunch forward too much when moving laterally and doesn’t point her toes down far enough when landing.

Knowing a vicious circle of ingestion and exertion would never produce her best, Emmanuel sought a more professional approach to her craft

… (2) The worst part of a broken nose, as a professional athlete, isn’t the pain — it’s the wait. Our team doctor, Adam Pourcho, did an amazing job of resetting the bone right away. And so just in terms of how I felt, I mean, I could’ve gone right back out there. But then there is the whole “can’t play if you’re bleeding” part, because of the nasty little medical stuff that you don’t even think about: For example, if you’re not careful, I think you can start to, like, leak fluid….. from your brain?? (Sorry, I’m not a doctor — just someone who breaks her nose a lot). Anyway, because of those and other risks, there’s a rule where you’re not allowed back into the game while you’re bleeding.

training

In the past decade studies have illuminated a more nuanced pattern in sex differences in navigating an environment and the bias to use one or another memory system to solve a navigational task. This review focuses on two types of memory in rodents; place/spatial memory and response/habitual memory. These two types of memory are affected by levels of gonadal hormones such as testosterone, estrogens, and progesterone. Studies on similar types of memory in humans also show sex differences, albeit the influence of hormones in women do not match female rats. Hormone levels are rarely measured when testing sex differences in humans. Thus, we need more research that measures hormones while also measuring sex differences in these memory systems important for navigation.

Buddy Teevens, the Robert L. Blackman Head Football Coach at Dartmouth College, today announced the hiring of Callie Brownson to be the offensive quality control coach for the Big Green. With the hiring, Brownson becomes the first known full-time female football coach at the Division I level.

“Callie is as good as anyone I’ve ever had in terms of her skill set, preparedness, attention to detail and passion,” Teevens said. “Players came up to me after a few days of preseason wondering if I would consider hiring her. She is a forward-thinking individual, very broad-minded. We had an opening, the preseason was kind of like a tryout and she excelled — on and off the field — every day.”

… In its latest “Mic’d Up” video, featuring Hudy, you can get a pretty decent glimpse at how Hudy uses technology to aid her training.

There’s not an exercise or movement the Jayhawks do in the weight room or during training sessions that is without a reason behind it. And all of their efforts and output is tracked by technology, both in real time and over time, so the players can see, in black and white numbers, where they need to put their efforts and track the improvement they have made.

Using the latest training technology is something Hudy has made a staple of her program for years now. And it has always been important to her to stay in tune with the best equipment and software for training college athletes. [video, 2:17]

… Paul Riley: Panera and pancakes.

We’re convinced that since we started doing this — we haven’t lost a game away from home so, we get pancakes from IHOP and bring them to Panera and eat in Panera. That’s our pregame, every away game, and we haven’t lost a game.

Diane Scavuzzo: I’m not so sure all the latest sports science nutrition data is going to agree with all that, but I think it’s wonderful. I love it.

Paul Riley: It might not, but what the hell, sometimes you got to do what you go to do.

We trust they make the right nutritional choices their body requires for peak performance.

The reason we went to this was we felt at home games we didn’t control the players’ menu, and after collaborating with the players, we felt the pre-game meal should be individualized — and, in all fairness, it has worked really well for our group.

… I think the development of the No. 10 is a huge factor in the next cycle – for the Lavelles and Horans to become major pieces for us – and develop the younger 10s in the younger age groups, whether it be U-15s or U-17s, U-20s.

The tactical game is changing. It’s getting better and I think we’re still stuck in this athletic 4-3-3, individuality, bomb it forward type of mentality.

The skating acceleration to maximal speed transition (sprint) is an essential skill that involves substantial lower body strength and effective propulsion technique. Coaches and athletes strive to understand this optimal combination to improve performance and reduce injury risk. Hence, the purpose of this study was to compare body centre of mass and lower body kinematic profiles from static start to maximal speed of high calibre male and female ice hockey players on the ice surface. Overall, male and female skaters showed similar centre of mass trajectories, though magnitudes differed. The key performance difference was the male’s greater peak forward skating speed (8.96 ± 0.44 m/s vs the females’ 8.02 ± 0.36 m/s, p < 0.001), which was strongly correlated to peak leg strength (R2 = 0.81). Males generated greater forward acceleration during the initial accelerative steps, but thereafter, both sexes had similar stride-by-stride accelerations up to maximal speed. In terms of technique, males demonstrated greater hip abduction (p = 0.006) and knee flexion (p = 0.026) from ice contact to push off throughout the trials. For coaches and athletes, these findings underscore the importance of leg strength and widely planted running steps during the initial skating technique to achieve maximal skating speed over a 30 m distance.

technology

I’m not a super fit person. I am considered a healthy weight, and I exercise simply because I enjoy eating and drinking whatever I want. For my type A personality, fitness and health tracking has been an incredible motivator. Being able to close all the rings on my Apple Watch is enough to get me on the treadmill desk or spin bike instead of just sitting with my laptop in front of the television.

But since becoming pregnant with my first kid, all that’s changed. I was determined to have a healthy pregnancy; while I’m not too particular about what I eat, I wanted to exercise regularly and gain a reasonable amount of weight. I figured my fitness-tracking apps would be a real help in monitoring my goals and progress.

I was laughably wrong. Seven months in, I’ve stopped all fitness and weight tracking because these apps don’t take my pregnancy into account.

This fall, five bold women will compete against their own past performance while running for four days in the desert in Israel. Donna Moderna Negev Adventure, a programme designed to help women challenge their own limits, began in Italy in late June, says event organiser Donna Moderna, the women’s magazine title by leading publisher Mondadori Group.

The event, developed in collaboration with the Israeli National Tourist Office, is for every woman, from the beginning jogger to the experienced racer seeking a bigger challenge. The programme will culminate with an 80-km race in the Negev Desert in Israel from 29 October to 1 November between five finalists wearing garments by French activewear brand BV Sport made with Sensil Innergy Nylon 6.6 performance fabric.

Executives at tech companies say gender diversity matters. They opine that there aren’t enough women in tech, and express outrage and frustration that just 11 percent of senior tech leaders are women. But in reality they spend very little of their philanthropic dollars attempting to close this gender and race gap, according to new research released today by Melinda Gates in partnership with McKinsey & Company.

Last year, according to the report, only 5 percent of companies’ philanthropic giving went to programs that focused explicitly on women and girls in tech. And less than 0.1 percent of their grants went to programming for women of color—a group whose representation in tech is getting worse. Over the past decade, the ratio of black, Latina, and Native American women receiving computing degrees has dropped by a third, from 6 percent to just four percent.

sports medicine

Charlotte Gilman wrote her famous short story in response to her own experience having her pain belittled and misunderstood by a male physician.

Knee ligament injuries can be debilitating, costly, and negatively impact an athlete’s ability to return to the sport he or she loves. Published and anecdotal evidence has identified modifiable risk factors of muscle function and movement patterns that affect knee ligaments. The purpose of a new clinical practice guideline, published in the September 2018 issue of JOSPT, was to develop evidence-informed recommendations regarding exercise-based knee injury prevention programs for athletes. Objectives also included investigating the cost-effectiveness, dosing, and efficacy of these programs, based on sport.

A new Swedish study finds that elite female athletes with a history of sexual or physical abuse face a much greater risk of injury compared to those without a history of abuse.

Earlier in 2018, the Athletics Research Center at Linköping University published a report commissioned by the Swedish Athletics Association that surveyed sexual abuse within Swedish athletics. The new study, however, is the first to investigate the actual consequences of sexual and physical abuse among athletes.

“We wanted not only to repeat our study into the presence of abuse, but also examine what it means for the athlete. How does a traumatic event influence athletic performance?” said Dr. Toomas Timpka, professor in the department of medical and health sciences and head of the study.

“We wanted to investigate whether abuse is connected to the high degree of overuse injuries that we see in competitive athletics.”

analysis

… Point penalties–let alone game penalties–are so rare that it’s impossible to draw concrete conclusions. Still, let’s take a look at what we have. As far as I know, none of the ATP, WTA, ITF, or USTA have released any data on penalties, the players who receive them, or the umpires who levy them. (This would be a great time to do so, but I’m not holding my breath.) As an alternative, we can turn to the increasingly sizable dataset of the Match Charting Project (MCP), which now spans over 3,500 matches from the 2010s alone.

Ever wonder why flat earthers, birthers, climate change and Holocaust deniers stick to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

New findings from researchers at UC Berkeley suggest that feedback, rather than hard evidence, boosts people’s sense of certainty when learning new things or trying to tell right from wrong.

As the WSL kicks off, Bardsley reflects on how far game has come – and how far it still has to go

fairness

The national teams of Puerto Rico and Argentina met in a friendly on Thursday, August 30, 2018. A crowd of 4,622 attended the match in Puerto Rico, the largest ever to attend a women’s soccer match on the island. The visiting Argentinians took the kickoff and then played the ball out of bounds. All of the members of Puerto Rico’s team, reserves included, stood silently in protest with their fingers pointed at their ears to bring attention to Puerto Rico Football Federation’s lack of responsiveness to players’ needs.

The match ended in defeat a 0-3 defeat for Puerto Rico; on Sunday, September 2, the teams met again and the match ended in a 1-1 draw.

The protest is a culmination of events that began with the dismissal of the team’s head coach, Shek Borkowski. Tribal Soccer has more on Borkowski’s release as well as the federation’s response.

atherine Raiche, then assistant general manager of football operations for the Montreal Alouettes, recalls being at a Florida minicamp last year when an employee at the training facility had a question for the team’s head athletic therapist.

With a glance over at Raiche, he asked the therapist: “Or should I talk to your secretary?”

The 29-year-old Raiche, now director of football administration for the Toronto Argonauts, says that kind of antiquated mistaken identity happens “very, very often.”

“It’s funny how you have those preconceived ideas because you’re a woman in this world, that you’ll only have a certain type of position,” she said.

Dis­re­spect­ed is how some play­ers of the T&T Women’s team feel about the treat­ment met­ed out to them on the verge of the Oc­to­ber 4-17 Con­ca­caf Women’s Cham­pi­onship which will be a qual­i­fi­er for the FI­FA Women’s World Cup in France next year.

The team does not have a coach af­ter the con­tract of care-tak­er coach An­ton Corneal ex­pired at the end of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) Qual­i­fiers in Kingston Ja­maica last month. And al­though Shawn Coop­er, who was Corneal’s as­sis­tant at the CFU qual­i­fiers, was giv­en the nod for the coach­ing job, doubt sur­round­ed his se­lec­tion af­ter Kei­th Look Loy, a mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, has vowed to chal­lenge the va­lid­i­ty of the ap­point­ment, say­ing the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) that the TTFA claimed to have se­lect­ed Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee Chair­man Richard Quan Chan on June 30 this year, did not have a quo­rum.