CHICAGO — In today’s sports landscape, if you’re not analyzing data gained from practice & competition, you might be falling behind. Performance is no longer assessed as one whole entity; it’s broken down into things like biomechanics, body composition, hydration and tons more.
For the University of Oregon, one of the more successful college athletic departments in the nation, Fusion Sport’s SMARTABASE has made this process easier.
“We need to understand why or why not we’re successful,” said Oregon’s Director of Performance and Sports Science, Andrew Murray. “If we have unexplained winning, or unexplained losing, we’re not really helping anyone.”
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Murray was first introduced to the platform while working for the Sportscotland Institute of Sport back in 2010. It was there that he discovered the true versatility of SMARTABASE.
Now Murray has brought the platform to Oregon where they use it across all sports. “Based on my experience of using it with other organizations it’s a single ticket to integrate all the different data points,” he said.
The ultimate goal is to impact performance, and by using those data points, he may be able to find a 2-4 percent difference in a certain area. For example, Murray explained that Oregon screens athletes twice a week and uses flexibility as a key indicator of both performance and possible injury. Using SMARTABASE, each athlete can be tracked in an organized manner to show trends over time.
Not only does Oregon use the platform to track individual athletes, it also uses it to track overall team wellness. Based on feedback from the athletes, trainers and coaches can see points of fatigue along with being able to track things like sleep quality and muscle soreness.
“It’s (SMARTABASE) pretty much the hub for everything that we have,” explained Murray. “There’s a number of different inputs and integrations which makes it a one-stop shop.”