Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 7, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 7, 2021

 

In a League that Lives by the Three, DeMar DeRozan Chooses to Play His Game

Bleacher Nation, Elias Schuster from

Not shooting 3’s in today’s NBA is the equivalent of using a flip phone. It’s an out-of-date decision that – typically – suggests a certain level of stubbornness. Why do I need that new-fangled apple thing if I can text on this!? Well, perhaps because there’s a more efficient way to type the letter “O” than pressing No. 6 three times!


Is this the year Chip Kelly awakens UCLA? We may find out Saturday

Yahoo Sports, Dan Wetzel from

… even when the fanfare of his hire was fresh, Kelly was preaching patience.

It’s just few took Kelly seriously when he spoke about not chasing recruiting rankings, but finding players who would fit inside the system and on campus. Or they rolled their eyes when he talked about being “process-driven” and not results-obsessed.

They figured the victories would come. They just haven’t.


U.S. Salvadorans fuel soccer team’s rise to World Cup

Los Angeles Times, Kevin Baxter from

Like many children of immigrants, Sam Chinchilla has long felt trapped between two countries, never “American enough” in the U.S. or Salvadoran enough for those from his parents’ homeland.

“We never felt like we were from here or there,” said Chinchilla, a 30-year-old Los Angeles native who spoke with The Times from Southern California and has lived his life in the empty space between Salvadoran American.

But now he’s noticed a change in the people who “make fun of us” because of the American-accented Spanish.

“Now that they’re embracing that American Salvadoran, it does make us feel more accepted,” he said. “Why not embrace us? We’re part of the culture.”


Paschall Spearheading Duke’s Dive into Sports Science

Duke University Athletics, Field Hockey from

It is nine o’clock on a steamy morning and the Duke field hockey team is wrapping up a busy preseason and preparing for its action-packed weekend of games. The Blue Devils, always a high-energy bunch, chatter their way through the warm-up and stretching in preparation of getting down to business.

Meanwhile, the team’s sports science specialist Karlie Paschall is on the sideline in a low squat peering intently at her laptop resting on a blue folding chair under a tent to make sure she sees every step each player is taking.

With each player wearing a Catapult tracking device, Paschall is able to see how far and how fast each player runs as well as the amount of times the athletes must decelerate and accelerate. Using this Catapult system, which has been at the forefront of sports science since 2006, Paschall’s focus is utilizing science and formulas to assure each player’s weekly activity level or load have them primed for peak performance for the weekend’s games.

A four-year member of the Duke women’s soccer team, Paschall is keenly aware of the important balance of building and maintaining fitness, while making sure not to overtrain.


How Wolves have restructured their performance-medical department

Wolverhampton Wanderers FC from

With the 2021/22 Premier League season now underway for Wolves, work has been going on behind the scenes during the off-season to make sure Bruno Lage and his players have the best support possible ahead of the new campaign.

This has seen an evolution in the club’s performance and medical department, with former England national team doctor and chief medical officer of UK Athletics, Dr Rob Chakraverty, leading the group as head of performance and medicine.

Chakraverty said: “When we were looking at how we felt the structure could be improved, we felt that the identity of the performance and medical department at Wolves had been very dependent on the incumbent coach.


Really nice work (and visuals) showing large variations in resting physiology (heart rate, HRV) during the lockdown

Twitter, Marco Altini from


Check out this extremely cool paper – in addition to interesting results about group decision-making, the way they systematically explore the task space is a model for how we should all be doing our science!

Twitter, David G. Rand, Abdullah Almaatouq from

Task Complexity Moderates Group Synergy https://pnas.org/content/118/36/e2101062118

Are two heads better than one, or do too many cooks spoil the broth?

We found that the answer is: (of course) it depends!


Guardian Caps – Are the soft-shelled football helmet covers effective at limiting head injuries?

ESPN NFL, David Newton from

Carolina Panthers center Matt Paradis was among about 100 NFL players who arrived for the first padded practice of training camp wearing a large, soft-shelled cover over his helmet that gave him the appearance of a “Star Wars” stormtrooper.

“Squishy helmet,” Paradis said with a laugh.

The Guardian Cap, officially.

Paradis, 31, was offered the opportunity last season to wear the shell, which is designed to reduce the energy of impact and limit head injuries. He didn’t, but as he thought about it during the offseason, he came to this simple conclusion: “The science says it helps, so it’s not really a debate at that point.”


Basketball Stats Software Gains New Investment

Inside INdiana Business, Wes Mills from

Bloomington-based Flywheel Fund, a capital fund run by business incubator The Mill, says it has invested $50,000 in Bloomington startup Blueprint Stats. The young company uses game film to evaluate and develop skills of basketball players.

The platform was founded in September 2020 by Indiana University grad Hunter Hawley. He started building the company while still a student.

Hawley says his program allows users to upload footage and then the technology generates statistics to help players improve their performance.


Sports Tech Company, Orreco and Scarlet Health team up to provide a new solution for Athletes to optimize performance

PR Newswire, Orreco, Scarlet Health from

Specialist sports performance and biomarker company Orreco have joined forces with Scarlet Health, an on-demand diagnostic service by BioReference Laboratories Inc., an OPKO Health company (NASDAQ: OPK), providing a superior, fully integrated digital solution that addresses modern testing needs, to provide a new solution for pre-season athlete physicals and in-season testing for professional and collegiate athletes.

Scarlet, combined with Orreco’s AI/ML performance algorithms, provides sport specific interpretation of data while cross referencing it with GPS, heart rate and game statistics, in line with each sports collective Bargaining Agreement.

Profiles can include full bio-analytics, fatigue profiles, nutrition analysis and women’s specific panels, all of which can be accessed via Orreco’ @thlete app. Using Scarlet, athletes can have their specimens collected for profile clinical testing in a team environment or at home, if opting to analyse their own biomarkers with their personal physician and performance staff.


Fully integrated sampler and dilutor in an electrochemical paper-based device for glucose sensing | SpringerLink

Microchimica Acta journal from

An electroanalytical platform capable to take and dilute the sample has been designed in order to fully integrate the different steps of the analytical process in only one device. The concept is based on the addition of glass-fiber pads for sampling and diluting to an electrochemical cell combining a paper-based working electrode with low-cost connector headers as counter and reference electrodes. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of this all-in-one platform for biosensing applications, an enzymatic sensor for glucose determination (requiring a potential as low as −0.1 V vs. gold-plated wire by using ferrocyanide as mediator) was developed. Real food samples, such as cola beverages and orange juice, have been analyzed with the bioelectroanalytical lab-on-paper platform. As a proof-of-concept, and trying to go further in the integration of steps, sucrose was successfully detected by depositing invertase in the sampling strip. This enzyme hydrolyzes sucrose into fructose and glucose, which was determined using the enzymatic biosensor. This approach opens the pathway for the development of devices applying the lab-on-paper concept, saving costs and time, and making possible to perform decentralized analysis with high accuracy. [full text]


How US Open fans feel about lagging vaccination rates in tennis

ESPN Tennis, Aishwarya Kumar from

On Day 1 of the US Open, the first time in two years fans were allowed into the stands at Flushing Meadows, 53,783 people walked through the gates. Some were masked, some were unmasked, but all attending were supposed to have had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as mandated on Aug. 27 by New York state.

But one group didn’t have to go through the same protocols: the players and their teams. Even though the ATP and the WTA have strongly encouraged vaccinations among athletes, there is no vaccine mandate for athletes to compete at the US Open.

That puts tennis far behind other sports. The ATP and WTA both released data revealing that only about 50% of tennis players are vaccinated, the least among all professional sports. The WNBA reported 99% vaccination rates, followed by MLS at about 95%, NFL at about 93% and NBA at around 90%.

Fans are taking notice.


ASICS launches mood uplift experiment in Nottinghamshire town

Sport Industry Group from

Sportswear brand ASICS has teamed up with mental health charity Mind to launch a mental health experiment across a whole town in Nottinghamshire.

Following research into the mood of the nation, the ASICS State-of-Mind Index identified Nottinghamshire as the English county that most wanted a mental uplift, and the town of Retford was reported as one of the most motivated to improve their emotional and mental wellbeing.

As a result, ASICS and Mind will invite Retford residents to take part in a series of movement initiatives in order to measure the collective impact on their mental wellbeing.


Modified carbohydrates: the future?

my sports science blog, Daniel Baur and Mike Ormsbee from

What if we could modify the chemical structure of nutrients to alter their digestion, absorption, and metabolic effects during exercise? Could this enhance performance? These are the questions posed by a recently developed sport supplement containing hydrothermally modified starch.


“If you’re an NFL Head Coach, you should read at least 20 books on decision-making, every off season…”

Twitter, Annie Duke from

@mlombardiNFL
in our discussion for the #TheDecisionEducationPodcast. @nflnetwork
@NFL
@AllDecisionEd
@Patriots


Multiscale fractal dimension applied to tactical analysis in football: A novel approach to evaluate the shapes of team organization on the pitch

PLOS One; Murilo José de Oliveira Bueno, Maisa Silva, Sergio Augusto Cunha, Ricardo da Silva Torres, Felipe Arruda Moura from

The aim of this study was to evaluate different shape descriptors applied to images of polygons that represent the organization of football teams on the pitch. The effectiveness of different shape descriptors (area/perimeter, fractal area, circularity, maximum fractal, rectangularity, multiscale fractal curve—MFC), and the concatenation of all shape descriptors (except MFC), denominated Alldescriptors (AllD)) was evaluated and applied to polygons corresponding to the shapes represented by the convex hull obtained from players’ 2D coordinates. A content-based image retrieval system (CBIR) was applied for 25 users (mean age of 31.9 ± 8.4 years) to evaluate the relevant images. Measures of effectiveness were used to evaluate the shape descriptors (P@n and R@n). The MFD (P@5, 0.46±0.37 and P@10, 0.40±0.31, p < 0.001; R@5, 0.14±0.13 and R@10, 0.24±0.19, p < 0.001) and AllD (P@5 = 0.43±0.36 and P@10 = 0.39±0.32, p < 0.001; R@5 = 0.13±0.11 and R@10 = 0.24±0.20, p < 0.001) descriptors presented higher values of effectiveness. As a practical demonstration, the best evaluated shape descriptor (MFC) was applied for tactical analysis of an official match. K-means clustering technique was applied, and different shapes of organization could be identified throughout the match. The MFC was the most effective shape descriptor in relation to all others, making it possible to apply this descriptor in the analysis of professional football matches. [full text]

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