New Stat -- Short Time Scoring

Short Time Scoring a new stat report in Takedown Scoring and Stats Release 1.1. This is the first of many advanced stats we intend to implement.

Short Time Scoring is More Important than First Takedown

One of the reasons we created Takedown was to uncover the coaching insights that are hidden inside paper scorebooks.

Coaches are always wondering "how does my wrestler do in short time?" The reason is simple: points scored in short time are difficult to make up because a time-out will occur soon as the clock expires. Short time scoring is similar to edge scoring in this sense (though the time out is less certain in edge scoring and, in fact, can be avoided entirely if action migrates away from edge).

Many coaches feel that scoring the first takedown as being the most reliable indicator of match outcome (win or loss). However, after reviewing thousands of match outcomes we believe that short-time scoring is a better predictor of match outcome. This isn’t a feeling — it’s data driven.

Implementation in Takedown Scoring and Stats

This new report can be found in the Reports section of the app.

Recognizing that ‘short time’ means different things to different coaches, Takedown allows you to set a short time value of 5, 10, 15 or 20 seconds. The report displays for each wrestler the number of points scored and conceded within this short time ‘bucket’. As with all reports, narrow or expand the scope over which short time scoring is calculated by using report filters.

The report also provides a ratio - Average Point Differential (APD) - that allows you to quickly evaluate a wrestler's short time performance.

APD is simply the difference of points scored and conceded divided by the total number of periods.

If the APD value is positive, then your wrestler is scoring more points than conceded. A positive APD can be an unassailable competitive advantage.

If the APD is negative then the opposite would be true. This wrestler will be far less likely, on average, to win matches.

As a coach that's what you want to know.

Here's a real-world example of the Short Time Scoring report:

The accuracy of the Short Time Report depends on your having scored the match live because the stat requires an accurate match clock.. If the match has been marked as “transcribed” then the match will be excluded from the Short Time scoring stats.

Check out the Short Time Scoring report in the current release, available on the App Store

We Can Do Better

Wrestling Needs Better Stats

We don’t keep very good statistics in scholastic wrestling.  Our primary scoring repository -- handwritten scorebooks -- isn't good for retrieving and analyzing data.  Also, the statistics getting the most attention -- individual match and team results -- don’t get us to the next level. To be sure, these stats are fundamentally important, but coaches, athletes and fans deserve a richer and more interesting statistical view of our sport.  We can and should do better.

Save a Tree and Some Time

Recently, I took a peek inside a high school coach’s desk drawer and found this.

View fullsize

Wrestling Coach Drawer

Look familiar?  Thought so.

Some coaches or team managers, bless their hearts, will painstakingly comb through pages of manually scored matches and tally up takedowns, pins and so forth.  This process is time-consuming, inflexible and error-prone.  Also, a coach undertaking manual tallying wastes precious coaching time on a task easily avoided.

To date, alternatives for electronically recording live match results have been few and not very user friendly.  Legacy approaches include DOS-, Windows- and browser-based programs, none of which take full advantage of today’s more user friendly technology.  However, tablet computers, like the Apple iPad, and native, user-friendly apps, like Takedown Scoring and Stats, make the transition to electronic scoring both easy and compelling.

More Than Runs and Hits

What if professional baseball recorded only runs and hits?  These essential stats determine game winner and individual performance, respectively, and are really all that’s needed for figuring out the best team and batter.  

But, professional baseball teams and players are measured with a seemingly endless array of stats.  Why?

Because coaches and players find the statistics helpful for assessing team and individual performance and taking corrective action.  

And, from a fan’s perspective, rich stats make for objective discussion and engaging debate.

For the most part, wrestling is concerned mostly with runs and hits.  We know which team won an event and which wrestler beat another wrestler and this data is fundamentally important.  

But, from a statistical perspective, do we really understand our sport?  Maybe, but I haven’t seen anything published in the US since Gurby’s “Scoring Patterns in High School Wrestling” in 2005.

Certainly some teams maintain a comprehensive statistical understanding of team performance.  But, the practice isn't common for good reason: the task is too hard.  Most often, the data doesn’t exist in a usable format or might not exist at all.

Further, better stats is part of building a larger, more engaged wrestling fan base.  Fans love stats! Statistics offer a deeper understanding of competitor and team performance, and provide an objective departure point for lively discussion and debate.  Having a larger group of engaged fans would surely be great for our sport!

Enter Takedown Scoring and Stats

Our scoring and stats app, Takedown Scoring and Stats, helps teams save time by digitizing all of their wrestling information: scoring, stats, video, schedules, rosters and contacts. It’s free to use for a trial period during which you can explore all the capabilities and understand how easy it is to move your team into the 21st century.

If you’re interested in developing comprehensive stats for your team and saving time as well, give it a try.

Monterey Clinic of Champions 2012

Takedown at the Monterey Clinic of Champions for Coaches

Early on Saturday morning, we loaded our gear into the back of the truck and drove down to the 2012 Monterey Clinic of Champions for Coaches, the 35th annual meeting of this fabulous clinic that is held on the California coast. 

Usually we attend as coaches with our notepads and recording devices. This time we came as presenters manning a booth to show the Takedown app to fellow high-school coaches and to gather their feedback. We felt very lucky for all the comments and advice we received and it was great to put faces to names. There were at least 180 coaches in attendance at the Clinic, and we were pleased to have 50 of them stop by our booth.

The coaches told us that what they liked was the simplicity, security, and reporting capabilities of the iPad-based app. What we also heard was that we shouldn't lose that focus and that coaches need something that is as easy to use ten hours into a tournament as it is during the first match of the day. We really understand that ! 

We also showed how Takedown on the iPad can drive an ordinary external display using an inexpensive connector or using the Apple TV device. We had set up both of these on the table.

Coaches were particularly interested how Takedown reports can be used to help their kids get recruited by colleges. We'll write more in future blog entries about the use of external displays and using Takedown to help in recruiting.

Takedown by LevelChanger. Available on the App Store

Why Can't I Just Wing It?

On a state wrestling forum, one observer writes about Takedown:

You have to set up your roster in the program before you even start, there is no quick score function.

It is true, the user must set up a roster before any scoring takes place.

One might reasonably ask why we took this approach.

First and foremost, our goal is to generate a credible and consistent database from which a coach can generate credible and helpful wrestling stats.  Accomplishing this goal requires structuring the app so that fundamental data -- schedule and roster info -- is available prior to scoring.  

There's some up-front work to do, but the benefit is cleaner, more helpful data so that "Joseph Smith, Union High School" is one instance of a wrestler, not multiple and confusing derivative forms like:

J. Smith, Union HS
Joe Smith, Union HS
Jospeh Smth, UHS

And, as you'll see by using the app, Takedown stores all of this textual information so that event and wrestler names are entered only once. When next season arrives, shortcuts ease the burden of entering a new schedule and opponents.

Another goal we have is to make scoring as simple as possible.

One ease-of-use example is second period choice and first weight class to be wrestled.  For dual meets, these two pieces of data must be entered prior to scoring the event.  

The benefit is the scorer doesn't need to think at all about second period choice -- Takedown informs the scorer which team has choice in each match.

So, if you want to wing it, Takedown isn't well-suited to that task.

But, if your goal is making the scoring process as simple as possible and, at the same time, generating a consistent, credible database of scoring data, then try Takedown Scoring and Stats.  It does this very well.

Who Are Those Guys?

Good question, thanks for asking.

A few of us are local coaches with high school and collegiate wrestling experience.

Another, a wrestling parent, is bound to the sport by virtue of a wrestling-crazed son.

We hale from all points of the globe, one from southern California, one from Pennsylvania and the other, our international rules expert, has seen life up close in Africa and Southeast Asia but has lived stateside most of his adult life. Right now, we all live in Palo Alto, California, just across the street from Stanford.

All are comfortable with technology, some more than others. We have programming skills and database expertise. We have a Stanford-degreed mathematician and an MBA. It's an over-educated group, to be sure.

But, primarily, we are wrestling enthusiasts working for the betterment of our sport.

A few years back one of us tried to create an statistical understanding of our high school team's performance. Nothing fancy, just tallying up who scored against whom, how they scored or were scored against, etc.

As many of you know, this is a labor intensive task. And, it occurred to us that, unlike other sports -- baseball, football and basketball, for example -- our sport is very poorly understood from a statistical perspective. Why is that?

Because most of the data is inaccessible, hand-written in traditional score books and typically squirreled away in a coaches desk drawer or file cabinet.

At that time, technology wasn't quite up to the task of scoring a wrestling match in real-time from the mat's edge. State-of-the-art laptops were bulky, battery limited and often difficult to use at a wrestling event. Some software existed, but it wasn't as user friendly as we envisioned and often didn't work well without an Internet connection.

Then, in 2010, Apple successfully created the "tablet" computing category with their breakthrough product, the iPad. One of us purchased an early unit and shortly thereafter realized its potential for simple, real-time, mat-side match scoring.

The iPad was easy to carry around and had a battery life of forever. Unlike the smaller iPhone, the iPad screen was large enough to support all the functionality we'd considered. And the touch interface, already omnipresent in the mobile world via the iPhone, was beautiful, highly responsive and available to developers.

Finally, we thought, a platform that made sense for the wrestling scoring environment! We could create an application that made it simple to score a wrestling match. And, from there, we could use the data, tucked away in the iPad, to generate all types of informative reports including one in the traditional score book format.

So, in May 2011 we formed our company and set to work. We focused on match scoring and, later, statistical reporting. Both of these are difficult to do well.

Season, schedule and roster management were also added. A grind, but ultimately very satisfying (sort of like wrestling). Forty eight builds later, gathering advice and field test results along the way, we introduced Takedown to the wrestling community on September 7th, 2012.

And, that's who we are.

For an updated information, see our About page.

Takedown Scoring and Stats Release 1.0

Great to finally be out of the gate and up and running. Takedown is available on the App Store and we are happier campers.  What a grind, the App Store.  Worse than OT.

Lots of downloads from the expected states:  New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma and California.  Many more web site visits from other states.  Thank you.

Press release went out today.  Maybe we'll get some mentions in the wrestling journals, blogs, websites.

The season's almost here.  Get ready for some fun.