Athlete Monitoring in Schools - Considerations for Stakeholders

Athlete monitoring in schools is a big and confusing topic and one that can quickly become overwhelming (and that's just for sport scientists and coaches). When you consider the range of stakeholders that need to be engaged in effective monitoring systems, it's fair to say the vast majority are not aware of what role monitoring might, or might not play in their context.

Before we even start, we might argue that even the term 'athlete monitoring' is inappropriate. It's easy to forget, but even if you were to manage to successfully negotiate the ever-narrowing path toward becoming a professional athlete (and even when you are) you are still a person first. In schools, the priority is not and should not be athletic development. It's probably important for many, but it's not the priority. So perhaps we should drop the ‘athlete’ from the term?

Before we go too far down the philosophical rabbit-hole, does that mean athlete monitoring, or whatever you want to call it isn't useful or can't help? Of course not! But it's about knowing how, when and why to use monitoring to answer, or even just start asking the right questions. This blog in particular is designed to stimulate some thoughts on the topic of athlete monitoring in a school setting that might help you create a clearer picture of what a monitoring system can do for you.

Questions

It's normal to have questions. Questions are good.

What do you monitor?

When?

Who monitors it?

How?

Why are we monitoring again?

What is done with the information?

Then what?

So what?

Every school is different and will require an individual approach to monitoring that suits it best. In almost every setup, school or otherwise, we are resource-constrained and to a greater or lesser degree, time-poor. So let's save some time. Let go of the idea that there will be some 'plug and play' solution that can provide you with a singular composite metric that can tell you what to do!

If you're getting excited by terminology like 'machine-learning' and 'AI', take a moment. These terms and areas concern themselves with algorithms and systems that have predictive value. While we do want to be able to predict performance and injury risk, that’s the dream, and we're not there yet. Research certainly gives us some clues, but dose-response relationships are unclear between training and performance. We are working with rapidly developing youth athletes, not professionals, in a highly chaotic environment . There is a hell of a lot of noise, and we don’t yet understand the relationship between many moving parts. We can't just hope to record 'a bunch of stuff', pour it into a computer, turn the handle and voila!

With challenging problems, it can be helpful to look outside our field for ideas, which is where Lewis Carroll comes to the rescue. Consider this exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

This is not what we want athlete monitoring to be. Sport technology companies lick their lips at the school equivalent of Alice. If you've got the cash and wander around the shop floor asking about athlete monitoring at a sport science conference, you'll leave with 15 GPS units, 30 heart rate monitors, 10 VBT devices with integrated iPads, force plates and a speed gun.

What might look like athlete monitoring in some schools ends up actually just being pseudo-random deployment of technology. Of course, all of the above technology solutions have utility, but technology for technology's sake should not be the driver when deciding what you might want to measure. If it is, your interventions will falter.

With athlete monitoring, start with a very specific problem you have. If there is something you can sustainably measure over time that is valid, reliable and relevant to the problem, that's a good start. Even if it's not perfect cutting edge data, something is better than nothing - especially when it’s done consistently with a clear understanding of the limitations of the data you collect. It's a messy environment, so you're going to get messy data!

(Athlete) monitoring is just longitudinal data collection to inform decision making. But you do need to know what sort of decisions you are looking to make in the first instance. This requires thought and appreciation of context. In schools, that context is the safe and effective development of healthy and happy pupils no matter how good at sport they may be. If you don't lose sight of that, your athlete monitoring system stands a much better chance of being effective and impactful.