Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 30, 2020

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

 

Minnesota gymnasts Lee and McCallum back in training for Tokyo

Minneapolis Star Tribune, Rachel Blount from

The date was once engraved on their memories. For nearly a year, Suni Lee and Grace McCallum knew exactly where they would be on June 5, 2020: opening the two-day women’s competition at the U.S. gymnastics championships, with a chance to take a major step toward the Tokyo Olympics.

When the day finally arrived, the world had changed so much they didn’t even notice. McCallum, of Isanti, said she “honestly kind of forgot” the dates for a meet that was canceled weeks ago. Lee, of St. Paul, still had an Olympics countdown set up on her phone, but the significance of June 5 didn’t immediately register with her.

“I was at practice, and my coach was telling me,” Lee said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so crazy.’ I would have been training for Olympic trials [in mid-June]. It’s a little sad.”


Arjen Robben: Michael Jordan documentary inspired Groningen comeback

BBC Sport from

Arjen Robben was inspired to launch a comeback with Groningen after they showed him a montage of basketball great Michael Jordan’s career.

Groningen officials met with Robben just days after he retired in May 2019.

While that initial approach failed to convince 36-year-old Robben, talks were revived last month.

The Dutch club used clips from the Last Dance documentary about Jordan, interspersed with images from Robben’s own career, in their successful pitch.


Lilly King: The outspoken and unapologetic Olympic champion

Olympic Channel, Andrew Binner from

… King’s forthright persona likely stems from her parents, Mark and Ginny, who encouraged their daughter to speak her mind from a young age.

Her early mentor in the sport was four-time Olympic champion Janet Evans, who instilled in King the mantra that the hardest working swimmer will always beat the most talented.

“That has stuck with me since I was eight years old,” the Indiana native told Digital Journal. “Stay true to yourself and put the time in the pool. Talk to your coaches, trust the process and stick to your guns.”


Inside the MLS bubble: What players, teams can expect in Orlando

ESPN FC, Jeff Carlisle from

Over the next six weeks, the MLS Is Back Tournament will see shouts of “Goal!” grace the environs of Walt Disney World. It also might witness roars of “You sank my battleship!”

MLS players received a 61-page player handbook last Monday that attempted to address a variety of player concerns, from the scheduling of various activities between matches to more basic matters such as food prep and security. And yes, the handbook included myriad suggestions for how the players can occupy the copious amounts of free time they’ll have in Orlando for seven hot summer weeks, including games of oversized Battleship.


While MLB is returning, minor-league dreams are still on hold

Tampa Bay Times, John Romano from

… Major League Baseball’s plan to start the 2020 season with 60-player pools for each franchise is probably the best anyone could hope for, and even that may end up being too ambitious.

So where does that plan leave the bulk of minor leaguers?

Working the night shift at Walmart.


English grassroots re-seeded with £9m of support for 10,000 pitches and 4,000 clubs

Inside World Football from

While English focus has been on the restart of the Premier League and Championship, grassroots football has received a boost with the FA and the Government, through Sport England, making £2.19 million available via the Football Foundation to help clubs return to football.

The new Club Preparation Fund will makes grants of £500 available to clubs and community organisations to prepare their buildings to reopen in line with Government guidance around hygiene and social distancing. More than 4,000 grassroots clubs and organisations across the country will be able to benefit.


Is Attention Produced Rationally?

National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 27443 from

A large and growing literature shows that attention-increasing interventions, such as reminders and planning prompts, can promote important behaviors. This paper develops a method to investigate whether people value attention-increasing tools rationally. We characterize how the demand for attention improvements must vary with the pecuniary incentive to be attentive and develop quantitative tests of rational inattention that we deploy in two experiments. The first is an experiment with an online education platform run in the field (n=1,373), in which we randomize incentives to complete course modules and incentives to make plans to complete the modules. The second is an online survey-completion experiment (n=944), in which we randomize incentives to complete a survey three weeks later and the price of reminders to complete the survey. In both experiments, as incentives to complete a task increase, demand for attention-improving technologies also increases. However, our tests suggest that the increase in demand for attention improvements is too small relative to the null of full rationality, indicating that people underuse attention-increasing tools. In our second experiment, we estimate that individuals undervalue the benefits of reminders by 59%.


NBA Veteran Jamal Crawford Looks To Grow Basketball With Shoot 360

Front Office Sports, Pat Evans from

Jamal Crawford saw his son light up during his workout at a Shoot 360 gym and wanted to get involved.

A growing company, Shoot 360 has a global opportunity to teach the universal language of basketball, Crawford said.


Yale and NBA partner to study efficacy of new COVID-19 test

Yale University, YaleNews from

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health have partnered with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) to study the efficacy of a saliva-based method that quickly determines if someone is infected with the novel coronavirus.

A research team led by Yale’s Nathan Grubaugh and Anne Wyllie will begin testing select players, coaches, and staff from the NBA teams that have opted into the study, using a testing method they developed, known as SalivaDirect.

The results of the study are expected by the end of July and will be shared publicly.


As Courage head to Utah, ‘Dr. Fauci of U.S. Soccer’ will be watching closely

WRAL SportsFan from

Our N.C. Courage took off to Utah on Wednesday to begin their 2020 season. WRAL’s Mary Dunleavy spoke with the doctor who is helping keep them save from COVID-19. [video, pre-roll + 1:56]


Parents of UCLA and USC athletes have coronavirus concerns – Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times, Thuc Nhi Nguyen from

The guidelines state that workouts are “voluntary.” The Thompson-Robinson family, whose son Dorian is trying to steer UCLA from the depths of irrelevance, knows what that word really means.

“Look, Mom,” the quarterback tells his mother, “I have to go.”

Melva Thompson-Robinson understands, but it doesn’t ease all the mother’s worries.

As UCLA and USC outline their plans to have student-athletes return to campus for workouts amid a pandemic, parents watch, trusting that the promises coaches made during recruiting to protect players still apply during a public health crisis.


A musculoskeletal modelling approach of the assessment of the risk of hamstring injuries in professional soccer players: a pilot study

Science and Medicine in Football journal from

Purpose

Evaluating and minimising the risk of hamstring injury remains complex as it lacks reliable field-testing. Kinematic analysis provides global external insights but fails to apprehend musculoskeletal loading. This study aimed to evaluate the association between hamstring function and prior injury using a novel functional test combined with a musculoskeletal approach.
Methods

Twelve professional footballers, distributed in two groups (control or previously injured), performed a reactive functional test to one of four targets from a standing start and performed a knee and plantar extension on target. Joint kinematics served as input data of a musculoskeletal model, and joint angles and hamstring muscle lengths were calculated.
Results

Biceps femoris long head (BFlh) was stretched to 150 ± 2% of initial length during the two conditions. Maximal BFlh length and time to stretch were significantly higher in the control group.
Discussion

Kinematics and musculoskeletal parameters revealed that participants of the control group had higher maximal hip flexion, pelvis anterior tilt, and hip internal rotation than previously injured players. The combined approach of a hamstring functional test and musculoskeletal modelling gives new preliminary insights on the effect of previous history of hamstring injury on lower limb kinematics and BFlh muscle length.


Why Draymond Green believes ‘the entire system is broken’ for college athletes

ESPN NBA, Zach Lowe from

… “Everyone wants to speak out on the issue, but no one wants to be part of the solution,” Green told ESPN. “What has really stuck out to me about Senator Murphy is that it wasn’t just lip service. It was, ‘OK, this is bad, what can we do to change it?'”


A machine at the peak of its power – how Liverpool became champions

The Guardian, Barney Ronay from

This was an annihilation. From late summer into spring Klopp’s team seemed to be operating to a different set of physical laws to everyone else


Dan Altman: Who’s who in a football data department?

Training Ground Guru, Dan Altman from

These are the six roles I’ve seen most often in data departments during my work with teams around the world.

Clubs that have invested heavily in data, like Liverpool, could probably name two or three people in almost all of these roles.

At smaller clubs in the lower tiers, a single analyst may try to be a technical scout, data analyst, and data scientist all rolled into one – and more than likely serve as a video analyst and opposition scout as well.

We’ve aimed smarterscout at clubs on both ends of the spectrum: as a handy and inexpensive tool for clubs with scarce resources, but also a new data source that multi-club groups can incorporate into decision algorithms for their player portfolios.

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