Team sport refers to any activity in which participants on a team work together towards a shared objective. Often these objectives are based on scoring more points than the opposing team in order to win. This can include sports such as hockey, football, association football, rugby league, Australian rules football and basketball among others. These activities foster a sense of community between teammates and coaches which can carry on into the lives of those involved. It can also help children and adults keep active, which has been shown to improve their academic performance.
In a sport science context, tracking systems can provide useful information for the description and manipulation of training load in team sports. However, the selection of metrics requires a critical process owing to the complex and dynamic nature of each team sport. The nuances of the game structure, playing dimensions, position characteristics and time-structure of each sport must be considered when selecting tracking system features.
For example, analysing the performance of an athlete by examining a rolling average of high-speed running (HSR) may be less meaningful for linemen than full backs due to the unique dynamics of their sport. This is where a more precise method such as time-series analysis becomes helpful. This can enable the analysis of peak match intensity without relying on predefined time windows. For instance, the distribution of features extracted from raw velocity traces can be examined in order to determine when players obtain match intensity, such as during an interception run in a soccer match.