Special Olympics Michigan’s Post

At GCF we know that the skills learned and utilized in playing sports are transferable to many areas of life, including in the classroom and the office. Sports are what we do, the skills we utilize and take beyond the field or court make up parts of who we are. #GameChangers https://bit.ly/42ACuxc

It would be interesting to do a series of articles that frame the impacts of key decisions impacting US Women’s Basketball over the years. Examples Title ix, creation of college conferences, tv revenues, other media revenue, formation of WNBA, transfer portal, new TV deals, NIL and lastly the destruction of the PAC 12 conference (impact on small universities and athletes and coaches).

Wembley is Calling! 📊⚽ A few months ago, Praful Upadhyay, one of our dedicated students, visited my office seeking guidance and support for an analytical project. With the combined expertise of my academic supervision and profound knowledge in football-specific analysis, we collaboratively crafted an exceptional paper in a remarkably short span of time. This paper quickly gained well-deserved recognition, igniting numerous in-depth discussions and meticulous analyses aimed at extracting fresh insights from our extensive dataset. We take immense pride in announcing that our findings, titled "Key Players & Playing Styles of 10 English Premier League Teams During Offensive Sequences," will be presented at the prestigious Stats Bomb Conference held at London's iconic Wembley Stadium, the heartland of football. As the title implies, our research revolves around identifying key players who make a significant difference for their team. This is achieved through a combination of various centrality measures such as Closeness and Betweenness, along with the well-established On-Ball Value (OBV) model. What distinguishes our approach is the inclusion of team success in individual possession sequences, quantifying aspects like goal scored, shot attempts, or, at the very least, "retaining possession", or "ball loss” indicating an unsuccessful attempt. We contextualize individual player actions within the team's playing philosophy, allowing for a more detailed determination of a player's actual contribution to the team's success than what conventional metrics like goals, assists, associated xG/xA/xP values, or packing metrics can currently provide. But we won't reveal everything just yet! Stay tuned for October 10th, as we are confident that our results will provide fascinating insights to enhance quantitative game analysis and data-driven scouting. At Janik Backhaus Academy, our mission is all about sharing knowledge and empowering individuals to reach their peak performance. 📈⚽ #JanikBackhausAcademy #Wembley #StatsBombConference #FootballAnalytics

The Impact of Travel on Sports Performance Big changes in college sports! Big Ten now includes USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington. Oklahoma, Texas join SEC. Challenges arise with longer travel distances. USC, UCLA face over 15,000 miles for away games. Travel impacts on teams performances, affecting chances of winning. How does distance affect athletes? Read the full article from Adrian Lamb, ApolloV2 Sports Scientist here: https://hubs.li/Q02lsw7B0 #Apollov2 #InjuryImpact #TeamPerformance #sportstechnology #sportsperformance #collegefootball #Injurymanagement #Sportsdata #InjuryPrevention #SportsTravelImpact

Sleep disturbances, dehydration, altered eating schedule, and fatigue are very real factors athletes face when traveling for competition. Check this article out if you want to learn more about how to mitigate the effects of long distance travel on your performance!

In the US, governing bodies and leagues pressure coaches to direct players explicitly for larger formatted soccer games instead of allowing for a more organic learning process. However, this system needs to change. For 8- and 9-year-olds, 3v3 up to 5v5 games are best. These smaller formats allow for more touches and decisions, creating a positive experience and keeping all players engaged. Consider this: a typical 7v7 pitch can accommodate 3 cross fields. The math is simple: instead of 14 kids playing with one ball, we could have 18-30 kids playing with 3 balls. Just saying! The same principle applies to basketball. Youth are better off playing 3v3 from a young age. Perhaps the Olympics' inclusion of this format will trickle down to younger ages. It makes more sense to tailor the game to the needs of our kids, rather than following adult models and tweaking rules.

If core values are the fuel of a tribe, a noble cause is the direction where it's headed. A noble cause captures the tribe's ultimate aspirations. Core values are what we stand in and a "noble cause" is what we "shoot for." There are two ways to set a noble cause. 1st technique: Keep asking, "in service of what?" 2nd technique: Ask these four questions: 1️⃣ What's working? 2️⃣ What's not working? 3️⃣ What can we do to make things not working, work? 4️⃣ Is there anything else? These questions capture a group's assessment of its situation and its aspirations about what should change and why. 🏆 John King I am so personally invested in curating a high performance mind and heart ethos beyond my time on this earth. We may look like this is all happening overnight, but I can promise you, we listened to the community, asked the above 4 questions for 1.5 years and here we are, globally launching the biggest tribe of high performance humans committed to next level impact. #grateful #anotherone #basketball #youcan #bemorethanjust

A recent poster outlining the program of research I plan to conduct, in collaboration with my supervisors, over the coming months. The initial aim is to determine the effect of a coaching approach which emphasises learning through games (GBAs) on components of fitness via a pilot study at the start of next year. Whilst there is substantial evidence from physical education and sports coaching literature demonstrating the effectiveness of GBAs in improving technical-tactical components of team-based invasion games, the effects of this coaching model on physical and physiological adaptations is unknown. Having addressed this research question, the emphasis will shift more towards coach education and how to accelerate the uptake of GBA principles among club-level coaches and the wider Gaelic Games community.

Take a look at the short video on our homepage to see what we offer and watch the games in action