Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 27, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 27, 2020

 

Patrick Mahomes didn’t stick to one sport, making him a prime example for multisport youths

Yahoo Sports, Dan Wetzel from

Last Sunday, like most Sundays, Adam Cook made sure to get in front of a television so he could watch Patrick Mahomes drop magic on the NFL.

The sidearm throws. The no-look passes. The weaving scrambles. The never-blink comeback victories. This time it was Mahomes delivering 294 yards passing, 53 yards rushing and four touchdowns altogether to lead Kansas City to its first Super Bowl in half a century. The Chiefs will play San Francisco on Feb. 2.

When Cook watches Mahomes though, he doesn’t necessarily see what everyone else does, namely a 24-year-old quarterback who might be the best football player on the planet. Instead he sees an athlete who stubbornly refused to settle on any single sport, let alone position on the field.

 

The new player-coach partnerships on show at AO2020

Australian Open, Gillian Tan from

Wim and Naomi. Dani and Karolina. Conchita and Garbine. Darren and Simona. Marcos and Elina. Brad and Tommy. They’re just a handful of the new or revived player-coach partnerships on show at the Australian Open 2020.

Defending champion Naomi Osaka is linked up with Wim Fissette, a Belgian with one of the most recognizable faces in women’s tennis, who worked with Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka and Angelique Kerber, just to name a few.

“I feel like I’m learning from everything that he says and I try to apply it,” said this year’s third seed.

 

Lauri Markkanen to miss 4-6 weeks with a pelvic stress reaction

Fansided, The Step Back blog, Lucas Seehafer from

Chicago Bulls’ forward Lauri Markkanen will miss the next 4-6 weeks with a pelvic stress reaction. Sitting out will hopefully prevent the injury from progressing.

The findings of the MRI exam were surprising. Two days after scoring 21 points and grabbing six rebounds in a 117-110 win against the Minnesota Timberwolves, it was announced that Chicago Bulls’ forward Lauri Markkanen would miss the next 4-6 weeks with a stress reaction in his pelvis.

The news was just the latest health-related disappointment for Markkanen, who had battled through an ankle sprain and oblique strain earlier in the season.

 

Gold-medalist Allison Schmitt seeks 4th Olympic swim berth

Associated Press, Steve Megargee from

Going back to school and training with Arizona State’s swimmers occasionally reminds four-time Olympic gold medalist Allison Schmitt of her relatively advanced age by her sport’s standards.

“I almost feel like a mom sometimes,” the 29-year-old Schmitt said during a recent TYR Pro Swim Series event at Knoxville, Tennessee. “I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’ They have to tell me what things mean, the new slang words.”

Schmitt is a graduate student at Arizona State and had an internship last year counseling students. She’s taking a break from her studies while attempting to qualify for a fourth Olympics appearance, which would put her in select company.

 

Column: Chicharito’s move to MLS represents something — but it’s not retirement

Los Angeles Times, Dylan Hernandez from

The behind-the-scenes footage was treated like a smoking gun by Major League Soccer’s detractors, evidence that Javier “Chicharito” Hernández’s move to the Galaxy wasn’t what the Mexican striker previously claimed it was.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, a tearful Hernández was shown calling his father from Spain last week as his transfer from Sevilla was on the verge of completion.

“It’s the beginning of me starting to retire, you know?” Hernández said in Spanish.

 

Ex-UNM softball player makes history with the Yankees

Albuquerque Journal, Ken Sickenger from

Sometimes statistics are meaningless. Rachel Balkovec is a classic case in point.

Balkovec, who broke barriers when the New York Yankees hired her as a minor league hitting coach in November, credits her time as member of the University of New Mexico softball team as a springboard to her professional baseball career.

The 32-year-old ex-Lobo is currently making a roundabout drive from her Seattle home to Tampa, Florida, where she’ll report for duty on Feb. 1. Balkovec will be a full-time hitting coach for the rookie league Gulf Coast Yankees, the first woman hired by a major league organization to fill such a role.

 

Coach Ed Orgeron: Football Players Who Run Track ‘The Ones I Really Want’

STACK, Brandon Hall from

… According to Tracking Football, 57% of the players on LSU’s championship roster ran track in high school, while 81% played multiple sports.

Going out for the track team might not turn a slowpoke into a speedster, but taking several months out of the year to focus primarily on speed development is something many young athletes can benefit from.

 

How can technology improve healthcare?

World Economic Forum, Zara Ingilizian from

A world where an individual can continuously monitor his or her blood-glucose to gain personalized health advice every 60 seconds and “hack” their food intake based on personal chemistry is already a reality. For example, GenoVive uses an individuals’ unique DNA to develop customized meal and exercise programs to empower consumers to make lasting healthy lifestyle choices. New miniature sensors developed at Tufts University can be mounted directly on the surface of a tooth to directly monitor the effects of food intake on the bodies of human being in real time relaying data on glucose, salt, and alcohol consumption.

The continuous measurement of human biodata is at the core of precision consumption – it can empower consumers to make better decisions about their own health and well-being. “Within ten years, we will have unlocked enough secrets of the microbiome to accurately personalize nutrition as the first line of defense against any type of diseases: whether you have eye problems, heart problems, or you’re at risk of stroke,” explains Robin Farmanfarmaian, CEO and Co-founder of ArO.

 

NSRR whole-dataset visualizations – Luna

Luna: software for the analysis of sleep signal data from

To paraphrase the adage, a picture is worth a thousand numbers. In order to investigate some basic properties of NSRR datasets, here we generate a number of whole-dataset visualizations. To make sense of these images, we’ll employ a remarkably complex computational pattern recognition and dimension reduction framework, a.k.a. the human visual system. We’ll illustrate how visualization can highlight temporal, ultradian patterns in sleep across many individuals; more generally, we’ll also see how it can point to oddity and artifact in datasets, as well as acting as an hypothesis-generating tool, especially for complex, multi-modal datasets.

Sleep stage timing

For a single individual, the hypnogram is a common way of representing sleep dynamics defined in terms of wake and sleep stages. Below is a hypnogram for one individual, randomly selected from the CHAT study

 

NFL Pro Bowlers cite safety issues as deterrent to 17th regular-season game

ESPN NFL, Michael DiRocco and Jenna Laine from

If the players participating in the Pro Bowl are a true representation of the rest of the league, NFL owners are going to have a fight on their hands during negotiations to potentially add a 17th regular-season game to a new collective bargaining agreement.

Only a few of the players polled at Pro Bowl practices at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports this week were receptive to the idea of a 17th game, with most against the idea because of safety concerns.

 

USOPC agrees to fund council of athlete advisors

The Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO), Stephanie Earls from

In the wake of a series of sex abuse revelations, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has agreed to provide an annual budget to help support its council of volunteers who serve as the main advocates for athletes’ rights and concerns.

Under the deal announced last week, the Colorado Springs-based USOPC will allocate $525,000 this year, with a 2% annual increase through 2024, to pay for “professional, independent operational support” for the Athletes’ Advisory Council of elected representatives, many of whom work full time, or are actively training and competing, and receive no pay for their work on the council.

 

Liverpool are using incredible data science during matches, and effects are extraordinary

Liverpool.com, Josh Williams from

… Fenway Sports Group, the owners of Liverpool FC, have a history of embracing data. John Henry ventured into baseball before exploring the world of football, and he’s renowned for offering Billy Beane, the man behind the concept of Moneyball, a $12.5m deal to become general manager of the Boston Red Sox in 2002. The leading figures on Merseyside have been assembled by FSG over time and are now making a difference to the team’s success behind the scenes.

Ian Graham is the director of Liverpool’s research division. The Welshman has a doctorate in theoretical physics and believes in evaluating players and wider trends in the sport by crunching sophisticated numbers beneath the surface. Breakthroughs can be made once analysing detail to such a granular level, with the Reds making specific strides in regard to gaining an understanding of what is labelled as pitch control.

Tim Waskett, an astrophysicist, and Will Spearman, who has a doctorate in philosophy, are two members of Liverpool’s data science team. Both have spoken publicly about the concept of pitch control, with an example of the type of graphic used to capture the notion pictured below.

 

MLB: Creating a new kind of major leaguer through college classes

USA Today Sports, Tom Hindle from

… Pomona [College], a Division III school located in Claremont, California, is known much more for its picturesque mountain views and rigorous academic environment than its athletics teams. However, using its intellectual base of students, Pomona has been training and curating a new wave of major league talent of a different kind.

The school is at the cutting edge of a nationwide movement among colleges and universities. Since 2004, schools of higher learning have brought baseball analytics in the classroom. However, the transfer from Bill James and “Moneyball” sabermetrics to newer, more technological methods has sped up in recent years.

 

How the Houston Astros Paved the Way for Baseball’s Demise

GQ, Ryan O'Hanlon from

When Jeff Luhnow took over as general manager of the Houston Astros in December of 2011, he ripped the franchise down to its studs and rebuilt it into the most data-devoted, norm-questioning club in the history of American professional sports. The guy even hired a literal rocket scientist—Sig Mejdal, who led the analytical team—to join his staff. While the Astros lost more than 100 games in each of Luhnow’s first two seasons with the team, they eventually won their first-ever World Series in 2017. In the two seasons that followed, they won more than 100 games. And in a sport where the draft process is designed to redistribute young talent to the worst teams in the league, Houston’s minor-league clubs won more games than anyone else’s in 2019.

It sure seemed like the Astros had solved the sport. Well, not quite.

 

Premier League winter break branded pointless after FA Cup replays scheduled during window of rest

The Telegraph (UK), Jeremy Wilson from

The Premier League’s inaugural winter break has been described as pointless after players discovered that FA Cup fourth-round replays will be played during their supposed window of rest.

Whereas the Bundesliga’s winter break in Germany lasts from Dec 22 until Jan 17 – a gap of almost four weeks – the Premier League’s planned two-week effort has been further reduced to as little as nine and 10 days between some first-team fixtures.

Tottenham’s replay against Southampton will take place on Wednesday, February 5 and they are respectively then back in Premier League action on Feb 15 and 16.

Southampton have already had to reschedule their flights for a prepared break for the players and their centre-back Jack Stephens questioned the point of introducing a break that can then be so easily interrupted with another fixture.

 

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