Words & Photos from Jonathan Nguyen
As our second expedition day began, our cohort started by meeting an old teacher at SMUS last year- Mr. Takel. He is currently working for Rugby Canada as a performance analyst and he was here today to share his special experiences as a sports analyst in a professional working environment. We were all excited to hear his story to see how it would relate to each of us and our sports.
We first did a little activity called THINK PAIR SHARE which we were split into groups of two people to discuss what skills would a performance analyst needs and how important sports analytic is to the success of an organization. After the discussion, we came up with a lot of ideas and also questions for Mr. Takel. After that, he told us a brief story about his passion for sports, his journey to becoming involved in rugby and the opportunities he was given along the way. One of the valuable information he shared with us was that good sport analytics programs normally belong to universities in the UK. As this is still developing as a young industry, there would be a lot of opportunities to find great occupations in sports organizations if you completed a degree at those schools. Then, Mr. Takel presented to us some statistics sheets that he had done after each rugby game. He would spend about 6 to 8 hours to complete one stats sheet and the analysis on it to present it to the coach in the next meeting. It is a difficult and time-consuming job as he said, but also extremely interesting at the same time. He has an advanced system of tracking statistics of the team in general and each player individually. As a result of that, he can effectively analyze and reflect the team's performance based on the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that he sets for the team before each practice. Before the lunch break, we were split up into groups of two to determine our KPIs for a specific skill in our chosen sports.
After the lunch break, we went to the gymnasium to demonstrate our chosen skills. We each filmed our partner as they demonstrated their skills and vice versa. Based on our KPIs, we then judged our skills and came up with ideas of how we could improve our mechanics to meet the KPIs. The purpose of this activity is not to improve the efficiency of our techniques but to see how being a coach and a sports analyst is like. We had to look for different points of that person's mechanics to give them the most realistic feedback.
This was a very special day for all of us and we all eagerly look forward to the next Expedition Day!