North America’s long wait for the return of professional women’s hockey is almost over. The NWHL has announced a two-week season will take place in Lake Placid, New York, using the bubble format most North American sports leagues have implemented this year.
From January 23 to February 5, all NWHL teams will play five regular-season games before entering a playoff round to determine the top four seeds that will advance to single-elimination game semifinals.
The bubble was created in partnership with the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), with full details on accommodation, broadcasting, testing regiment, and schedule to come.
As the New Orleans Pelicans prepare for the upcoming season, all eyes will continue to be on last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Zion Williamson. The superstar prospect was last seen sitting out three of the final four games in the bubble while his averages dipped in limited playing time.
With a new season on the horizon, the Pelicans are hoping to get a much different-looking Williamson when play starts.
“Once he gets to the point where he’s healthy enough to play his game, play with the ball more, play more as a slasher and less as a post-up presence, I think you’re going to see the real Zion come to the floor,” Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin told reporters Monday.
… Over the last 2 years, we have seen the Russian rise up in the rankings and he is currently the World No. 4. How did he get there? Like any other player, he got there by working on his weaknesses. His fitness coach Eric Fernandez discussed how he is able to move fluidly with this size in a recent interview. He said,
“When he arrived in Cannes, Daniil already had this natural ability to move well but muscularly, it really was not good. With he, we have insisted a lot on the work of the lower body. It is essential in tennis to resist the constraints of movement and find a fluidity at the level of the supports. It is particularly so for Daniil with his style of play.”
Colleen Fotsch and Kelsey Kiel are former collegiate athletes who figured their careers in competitive sports had ended. Both had moved on to other ventures before finding their way into competitive workouts with CrossFit. Next, through the power of social media, they were given the chance to train as U.S. Olympic bobsled hopefuls at the Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York.
And for Fotsch, her Olympic dream came one step closer on Nov. 21 as she was named to the 10-athlete USA Bobsled women’s national team. She is one of two first-time national teamers along with Emily Renna. Mixed in are Olympic veterans like Kaillie Humphries. In fact, was Humphries who helped pave the way for Fotsch to launch her Olympic dream.
… “If you look at the players that are in the United States and compete in the NWSL, 2020 is Kristie Mewis’ year,” said U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski. “And I’m just glad that she capped it off with a nice goal.”
The goal on Friday was important in a lot of ways for Kristie, who broke into the national team in 2013 but then fell out of favor. Making her first appearance for the team in six years, she set a national team record with 2,722 days between goals.
“I did have a couple of years there as a spectator, and it’s always so fun to watch them play. But always in the back of my mind, I did want to get back here, and I did want to play for this team again,” she said
Your body is full of signals that are trying to tell you something — whether you’re training too hard, not eating enough, needing more sleep. The problem is you don’t always recognize the signals your body is giving you. These signals don’t come in words; they come in the form of organic molecules and complex interplays between them. Some of those interplays give off odd sensations and experiences when things go askew in training, and it’s those sensations that you should listen to.
Here are some common body signals you should pay attention to:
1. Ammonia Smell
Smelling ammonia usually happens toward the end of a long or challenging workout and is a strong indicator that you have been burning protein as fuel. The reason you smell ammonia is because the protein breakdown product urea is being produced faster than it can be excreted by your kidneys, and is subsequently leached into your sweat as ammonia.
PLOS One; Peter R. Browne, Carl T. Woods, Alice J. Sweeting, Sam Robertson from
Representative learning design proposes that a training task should represent informational constraints present within a competitive environment. To assess the level of representativeness of a training task, the frequency and interaction of constraints should be measured. This study compared constraint interactions and their frequencies in training (match simulations and small sided games) with competition environments in elite Australian football. The extent to which constraints influenced kick and handball effectiveness between competition matches, match simulations and small sided games was determined. The constraints of pressure and time in possession were assessed, alongside disposal effectiveness, through an association rule algorithm. These rules were then expanded to determine whether a disposal was influenced by the preceding disposal. Disposal type differed between training and competition environments, with match simulations yielding greater representativeness compared to small sided games. The subsequent disposal was generally more effective in small sided games compared to the match simulations and competition matches. These findings offer insight into the measurement of representative learning designs through the non-linear modelling of constraint interactions. The analytical techniques utilised may assist other practitioners with the design and monitoring of training tasks intended to facilitate skill transfer from preparation to competition. [full text]
Governing bodies are leading the way when it comes to technology in sports, according to a new study, with Formula 1 and The Tour de France cited as the two most innovative organizations in the industry.
The inaugural Sports Technology Annual Report – a joint-effort by the Sports Technology Awards Group (STA Group) and the English Institute of Sport – examined the technological trends and the major drivers behind the market over the past year.
As ever, innovations could be divided into two categories – commercial and performance. The former includes areas such as venues, operations, fan engagement, broadcast, eSports and betting, while the latter covers fields such as data analytics, bioscience, health and coaching.
Looking back at October, it felt like the month just flew past really quickly or we could basically say the same for the whole of 2020 so far. There has been some positives (amidst the cancelled sporting events) where for example here in Australia, the Aussie Rules Football (AFL) managed to finish the 2020 season with the Grand Final that took place in Brisbane. The possibility of that happening was due to some tough decisions that were made by the league and various clubs to move from Victoria to Queensland. The alternative of not moving could have led to a non-season altogether. Similarly, Formula 1 had lots of changes since the beginning of the year and introduced many new and one-off race venues (3 of them happened in October) so that enough races could be completed for the season. In running, the London Marathon took place which was rescheduled from April and they limited the event to elite participants to keep the numbers small. Lots of measures were taken to ensure that the event was safe including using the wearable ‘Bump’ device which gives out an audio warning when people wearing the device are too close to each other. These are just some examples of some innovative thinking to keep sports events moving forward. It will be interesting to see how these will evolve into the future. In the meantime, here is our Top 5 sports tech news:
Breath acetone (BrAce) is a validated biomarker of lipid oxidation and has been extensively studied for many applications, such as monitoring ketoacidosis in diabetes, guiding ketogenic diet, and measuring fat burning during exercise. Although many sensors have been reported for BrAce measurement, most of the contributions tested only synthetic or spiked breath samples, because of the complex components of human breath. Here, we show that online accurate detection of BrAce can be achieved using a colorimetric sensor. The high selectivity is enabled by the specific reaction between acetone and hydroxylamine sulfate, and the sensor has a high agreement with a reference instrument in ketosis monitoring. We anticipate that the colorimetric acetone sensor can be applied to various health-related applications.
Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Jonas Shaffer and Daniel Oyefusi from
… Amid a pandemic, football was a haven. As infections in the United States mounted and the country’s death toll rose, the Ravens were safe. No positive tests. No symptoms. It was a season that required face masks, virtual meetings and plexiglass partitions, but it was a season just the same.
Now, with 13 reported positive COVID-19 tests over the past nine days creating one of the biggest outbreaks in sports, the Ravens’ schedule is in flux. Amid a wave of infections in Baltimore, including star quarterback Lamar Jackson, the team’s Thanksgiving Day matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers was postponed to Sunday afternoon, and then to Tuesday night.
Trials of additional permanent substitutes for concussion injuries in the Premier League could begin early in the new year, the Guardian understands. The news comes after Wolves confirmed their striker Raúl Jiménez had surgery on a fractured skull after a clash of heads with Arsenal’s David Luiz on Sunday.
Wolves said the Mexico striker was comfortable after the operation. “He has since seen his partner Daniela and is now resting. He will remain under observation for a few days while he begins his recovery.”
The incident has led to renewed calls for extra substitutes to be introduced for head injuries and Lukas Brud, the chief executive of the law-making International Football Association Board, told the Guardian it would be the lead item on the agenda when Ifab met on 16 December. Brud also said he hoped that if the protocols were approved, they “would be trialled as soon as possible”.
… Mason was forced to retire at just 26 after fracturing his skull in a clash of heads with Gary Cahill during a match between Hull and Chelsea in January 2017.
Now working as a coach at Tottenham, Mason told Sky Sports News: “The brain is so complex. A lot of the stuff that goes on you can’t see.
“We live in a world with men wanting to be brave. Not many will stand up and say ‘I don’t feel right here’. That’s the industry football is and we’re probably still a little bit guilty of that if I’m being perfectly honest. I was very close to losing my life on a football pitch to an incident that was very similar.
On November 14, 2020, the Collegiate Soccer Society, a national student organization for soccer fans and founded at the University of Michigan, held its first-ever soccer conference, THE FUTURE OF U.S. SOCCER. This portion of the conference includes a keynote from Dr. Stefan Szymanski [video, 48:01]