Team Sport and Athlete Tracking

Team sport involves working in a group and is a great way to socialise with friends whilst exercising in a friendly environment. Playing team sports will also help to improve your mental health as you will learn how to deal with disappointment and loss as well as exercise your problem-solving skills. In addition, participating in team sports will build your confidence as you become more confident with the support of your group mates.

Athlete tracking systems have become increasingly common in team sports. Their use has been associated with a range of benefits, including the ability to describe and plan training process and quantify competition characteristics in a valid and reliable manner. However, the increasing proliferation of these technologies and their subsequent data may not always be optimally utilised. A pragmatic and systematic approach is required, involving critical thinking about how these metrics are selected and analysed, as well as how the results are visualised and understood.

For example, selecting a single high-speed running metric (e.g. total, relative or time in speed zones) to represent basketball is likely influenced by pre-existing research on other team sports, but may not be relevant for the sport given its playing dimensions and player density. Similarly, a simple method of aggregating movement characteristics may be unable to capture the complexity and context of high-intensity actions such as turnovers or cuts, particularly in smaller sports such as basketball where these movements are more frequent.