Apr 6, 2015Wake Forest Hoops Going High-Tech
At Wake Forest University, the men’s basketball program has embraced advanced technology as a tool for keeping players off the injury list and performing at their best on the court.
As detailed in an article in EdTech magazine, the school uses multiple tools to stay on top of player health, conditioning, and performance:
- A sports-tracking device from GPSports that measures players’ heart rate, distance traveled, speed, and accelerations and decelerations during practices.
- Omegawave, which calculates individual players’ stress, fatigue, and readiness levels for exercises before the squad’s daily workouts.
- SportVU technology, which uses video cameras to track the movement of the ball, and each player.
In using the SportVU technology, which is being installed in the team’s arena and practice facility this spring, the Demon Deacons are just the fifth college basketball team to utilize it. SportVU records both player and ball movement 25 times per second, which will allow the team to track how far and how fast each player runs during games, which will give the team a look in to how their strength and conditioning work is paying off.
“It will help me tremendously,” says Ryan Horn, the team’s Director of Athletic Performance. “Not only are we getting basketball-specific analytics, but it lets us see the speed at which we play. Are we really making the players faster on the court? It gives me valuable information on whether what we are doing is transferring to games.”
