Keeping Athletics on Track with Catapult

Mendoza Students Innovate Indoor Sports Tracking Solutions

Catapult GPS trackers are crucial for monitoring athlete performance outdoors, offering invaluable data on exertion levels during practices and games. However, when field sports like soccer and lacrosse are forced indoors for winter practices, the limitations of these outdoor-only systems become evident. Coaches lose access to essential data on athletes’ exertion levels, creating a significant challenge for training and performance analysis.

A group of five graduate and undergraduate students from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame took on this challenge as part of their capstone project. Their mission: to develop a cost-effective solution for accurately tracking high-speed running indoors without relying on expensive systems.

Using Sports Analytics to Solve Real-World Problems

Jack Arbuckle – Notre Dame MSBA Student | Former Student-Athlete

Jack Arbuckle, a student in the Master of Science in Business Analytics – Sports Analytics program, led the team. Along with Daniel Huang, Mason Marrone, Ian Pezzella, and Kaylin Slattery, they explored various methods to help coaches collect the necessary data during indoor practices.

“High-speed running is a key metric for measuring the intensity of games and practices,” Arbuckle explains. Accurate data is essential for coaches to balance conditioning with rest, impacting both performance and recovery.

Building on this foundation, Kaiyn Slattery, a former goalkeeper for the Notre Dame Women’s soccer team, provided crucial insights for the project. Her hands-on experience with Catapult GPS trackers helped the team refine their prediction models.

“We developed several models that were pretty accurate,” Slattery says. By cleaning the data, the team achieved 85-90% accuracy in measuring high-speed running within 150 meters. Despite this achievement, they noted that this level of precision might not meet the needs of Notre Dame’s athletic programs.

“If coaches rely on these metrics to fine-tune practices, they’ll likely need to invest in more advanced systems for greater accuracy,” Arbuckle adds.

Capstone Project Sparks Insight for Both Students and Coaches

Ian Pezzella – Notre Dame MSBA ‘24 | Navy Veteran

The students presented their findings to Notre Dame’s strength and conditioning staff, who engaged with the insights and asked about the potential benefits of the tracking system. While the project did not focus on injury prevention, the team demonstrated how improved data accuracy could enhance coaching strategies.

For Ian Pezzella, a Navy veteran and triathlete, the project provided a deep dive into sports data. “Catapult is widely used in sports, and it’s part of how sports science is evolving,” Pezzella says. “It was fascinating to explore what Catapult can and can’t track.”

By addressing this real-world issue, the students not only solved a practical problem but also showcased the evolving role of analytics in sports science. Their work highlights how innovative solutions can improve training methods and athlete management, paving the way for future advancements in sports analytics.

@nditaodept