I have been thinking about this one for a while. Is there any real value to ultimate stats?
The first stats I ever saw published were about a year ago when Ulti-Village came into existance and created the first fantasy score system for the elite club open division. The purpose was to generate traffic to their website and enthusiaism for the game (that is my assumption), but since their inaugural debute of a stat sheet, there has not been anything since (at least that I have seen)... Now in my third year of coaching, I have been asked more and more often by students how they can individually improve their game. I usually have been able to give a few pointers, but these were the moments that I wished I had something concrete to go back to and say, "hey, you're dropping 2 discs per game or you're throwing away 5 passes a tournament or you have a 95% catching percentage"...
So, sometime last year, with the help of my captains, the CHS team developed a statistic system that records 21 individual stats and gives a fantasy score for each player. Our system is divided into 12 positive & 9 negative categories. Each of the positive and negative sides have offensive and defensive stats. They are:
POSTIVE/OFFENSIVE:
-Assists
-Goals
-Layout Goals
-Completed Hucks (over 35 yards)
-Callihans
-Touches
-Layout Touches
POSTIVE/DEFENSIVE:
-Handblocks
-Footblocks
-Stalls
-D's
-Layout D's
NEGATIVE/OFFENSIVE:
-Throwaways
-Dropped Disc
-Footblocks
-Handblocks
-Stalls
-D's
NEGATIVE/DEFENSIVE:
-Callihans
-Touches (given up on the live side)
-Breaks (while on the mark)
If you had stats of your games, would it be helpful? For a look at how well our players are doing, you can see the recently completed stats from all of the Churchill HS games at this last weekends Slopfest V tournament by going here:
A Team Saturday Pool Play Games:
01 (CHSA vs Bitney Springs) - [13-01]
02 (CHSA vs De La Salle) - [W-L] (no video taken as it was a forfeit game, so no stats)
03 (CHSA vs Terra Nova) - [13-01]
Quarter Finals: (CHSA vs GBK Prep Hercules) - [13-06]
SemiFinals: (CHSA vs Castro Valley) - [13-09]
Finals: (CHSA vs Alameda) - [15-11]
Monday, March 06, 2006
Stats - is there value in ultimate?
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11 comments:
So, who RECORDS the stats?
We do them from video tape afterwards (especially since many of the calls are difficult to determine... eg. was that a Dropped Disc or was the player D'd from behind? was that a throwaway or a dropped disc? etc...
I think that keeping stats is a great idea and something that more teams should do. I see two problems with the way that you are keeping stats (constructive criticism).
1. Stats can be used for three purposes. One is for after game assessment of how everybody played, which you get here. Another is a guide of what to work on in the future, which you also get here. By transcribing them off of a videotape, however, you don't get the value of the third purpose, instant evaluation. It is nice to be able to play a game, or in the middle of a game, and look at the stat sheet and notice "i haven't played enough points" or "I need to touch the disc more" or whatever it is. Therefore, I would suggest
2. Keeping simpler of stats. The best stat sheet I have ever seen contains 1. Points Played 2. Catch-passes 3. Goals 4. Assists 5. D's 6. Turnover Throw 7. Turnover Catch 8. Turnover Break
1. How many points you played. This could also be broken down into D points O points w/o too much difficulty
2. You get one every time you catch the disc or throw the disc, but not twice in one possession. So if you pick the disc up off of a turn and throw it successfully, you get one. If you catch a goal, you get one. If you catch a swing pass and then dump it you get on, etc. 3. How many goals you caught 4. How many goals you threw 5. How many times you D'd your opponent 6. How many throwing errors you had 7. How many catching errors you had 8. How many cutting errors you had (you took a bad angle to the disc etc.)
I think tracking hucks/how far your passes go is a valuable stat, but until Ultimate gets more personel or a better way to quantify what a huck means it is a meaningless statistic. I also think goals/assists aren't all they are cracked up to be, as the guy that hucked it 65 yards should get more credit than the guy that caught the 5 yard goal, but they are still valuable statistics. Still the most valuable statistics I find are points played and catch-passes. This really helps you determine who is touching the disc a lot and how much they play, which are good in the middle of a game, and with turnovers it lets you create a percentage of turnovers that were there fault. Around here we shoot for every player to get 90%.
if stats were kept on the like the college level/club level, i doubt they'd mean much. beau kittredge gets like half the points colorado makes, but its arguable that he's not a great ultimate player because of that.
just like with NBA, you see the leading scorer, and it must mean that, "hey, that guys good". with ultimate, i don't think it works that way.
don't think we're really talking about that aspect, though.
i think in the high school level its very effective, especially with working on mimizing drops.
Are you serious? The player that scores the most goals doesn't really matter?
I'm looking at my team's stats from the last tournament that we played at. There are 3 players on my team that almost anybody would say are clearly the best on the team. 2 of these three are also main handlers. These people were 1st, 2nd, and tied for third in most goals scored.
I know you didn't talk about assists, but these people were first, second and third in most assists by a wide margin.
They were also first, second, and third in most touches by a wide margin.
What's my point? Getting a lot of goals is usually indicitive of getting a lot of touches, which means you are one of the better players on the team. Getting open in the end zone isn't the easiest thing in the world, which is why you don't see plays called for inexperienced players when you take that TO near the end zone.
Also, I think your assertion that stats are meaningless at the club/college level don't mean much is crazy. I would actually argue that they are MORE important. In High School you generally have multiple kids that have never been to a tournament before, or kids that are clearly above the rest of the pack and you don't need stats to define them or figure out what they need to work on. In club the margin of error is much smaller and the games are much closer, and any little bit of statistical evidence or help can push you over the hump.
Daniel Force needs to get more footblocks and stop turning it over so much.
Is there really any positive stat that you can use to improve a player's game? As far as I can tell, the only stats that can be used to make someone better are negative ones.
You can say "you got D'ed because you didn't charge the disc." You can't say "keep scoring goals." You can tell someone to be chilly with the disc. You can't tell someone to get more layout D's.
Positive stats can be used to evaluate players, but I think watching their play will give you a better sense of who the important players are. And more importantly, positive stats have no instructional purpose.
On the plus side, they make the fantasy draft much easier.
"Daniel Force needs to get more footblocks and stop turning it over so much."
I am guessing that is a sarcastic comment.
It's the sort of thing these stats can tell you about your players.
PS footblocks are great.
My team has been taking stats at tournaments the entire time I've been playing (4 years) and it helps us to look at individually how we played and what needs to be improved. Since our stats are on a palm pilot we instantly know how many points each person has played and how long they've been out or in currently. This helps our coach with subs. I do admit because it's difficult to judge if it's a drop or throw away a lot of times the stats aren't that great, but it's nice to have data to back up our coach & captains when they have constructive criticism for the team or individual players.
If a receiver gets their hands/fingers on it, it's a drop. If a receiver could have gotten their hands/fingers on it, it's a drop.
Exceptions: layout bids that just miss, good D's.
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