Timely Information for Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
Use Takedown Scoring and Stats and Get These Things for Free
Most of us love "writing the book." When you "write the book" with Takedown, life is better and you'll do less work. Here's why.
I had the pleasure of scoring Boise v. Purdue dual meet last Friday evening.
This was a last minute assignment, but no matter. From scratch, setup took about ten minutes and most of that time was spent scouring the Internet for suitable team logos (thank you, Amanda).
After the last match, I emailed the scorebook and box score to each team’s Sports Information Directors and posted the relevant reports to social media. Both officials praised the scoreboard layout and functionality.
Below are the benefits of scoring a dual meet (or tournament) with Takedown.
Of course, these reports are much more powerful as more events are scored. Trends and tendencies become obvious, post-event analysis is data driven rather than belief based. Your fan base is happier, it's easier to update your website or compose an email update. All the content you need is automatically generated and immediately available. No logging into websites or copying from paper to a spreadsheet.
Score your events with Takedown, instead of with paper and pencil, and get all of these goodies:
Scorebook
Readable, durable, accurate, complete, shareable and branded.
Box Score
Easy to read, available in multiple formats including the text format preferred by newspapers and media outlets.
Image or PDF format.
Text format for press and media.
Scoring Detail
Wrestler scoring, for-against.
Riding Time
Riding time by wrestler, by period and total, for-against.
Short Time Scoring
By wrestler, for-against, 20/15/20/5 seconds remaining in period. This is the 10 second report.
Shot Success Rate
Shots by wrestler, for-against and success rate (takedowns / shots).
Wrestler Profile
Every metric for a wrestler on one page. What college coaches should ask for when recruiting high school wrestlers.
Leadboard
Ranked wrestlers in 19 categories.
Win/Loss Record
By wrestler, duals and tournaments, total and pins.
Seeding
By wrestler, each match, opponent, outcome, event with sorting options.
Schedule
Updated with results.
Takedown LIVE
Fan-focused, real-time scorebook and video on your Apple or Android mobile phone or tablet Free.
Live Results on Twitter
Auto-posted, end-of-period or end-of-match. Team score included. This is a sample of 50+ auto-posted tweets for this dual meet. These results were posted to our Twitter timeline as a matter of convenience. Teams post their results to their own timelines.
Scoreboard
Professional , wrestling-dedicated, referee and athlete friendly. Wired or wireless. Optionally deploy a mirrored, second screen for your announcer.
Audience Scoreboard
Mirrored secondary scoreboard for announcer
Use Takedown to "do the book" and derive a wide range of benefits for coaches, athletes, managers and fans.
Shot Counter and Success Rate
Want to know how successful you are on your feet? It's easier than you think with this new feature.
With release 2.4.2, Takedown Scoring and Stats introduces a new-to-the-world of wrestling capability: a simple Shot Counter and associated stat called Shot Success Rate. Developed in cooperation with a Top 20 Division I team, this new feature allows coaches, for the first time, to easily assess how aggressive and effective wrestlers are in the neutral position.
Using the Shot Counter is optional and has no impact on scoring. The purpose of the feature and associated statistics is to give coaches a simple way to record shots and understand neutral position performance. The Shot Counter is available in the Scoring interface for your wrestler and the opposing wrestler. The implementation is simple with large '+' buttons to add shots and '-' button to remove shots in the case of an error.
The new Shot Success Rate report presents the total number of takedowns and shots at the match level by period and total. Results are totaled for each wrestler and across all wrestlers for a view of team performance. Like all reports, you can use filters to narrow the scope over which the Shot Success Rate calculation is performed. For more info on reports, see our recent blog post.
Here's a tutorial on using the Shot Counter and generating the Shot Success Rate report:
High School Wrestlers -- Fat % by Minimum Weight Class 2015-16 and 2014-2015
How fat are high school wrestlers? It depends...
We looked at over 190,000 high school wrestlers in the 2015-2016 season and found an average fat percentage at certification of 16.6%. By minimum weight class, the average fat percentage is:
No big surprises here, just a good set of numbers to have handy. We'll take another look next season.
Addendum (4/15/16)
We also went back and looked at 2014-2015. Slightly smaller sample size, but otherwise very similar:
Takedown Scoring and Stats is a mobile app for scoring wrestling matches, generating stats, managing team members and engaging wrestling fans via social media. Download from the App Store.
Fun Facts: NCAA Division I Championship Finals
Next time you play college wrestling trivia with your buddies, use these facts to your advantage.
Congratulations to the NCAA for a wonderful championship in Madison Square Garden! For all you college wrestling trivia fans, here are some fun facts about the Saturday night Division I finals:
- Total number of match points scored: 103
- By winner: 65
- Match points by period:
- 1st: 24
- 2nd: 36
- 3rd: 41
- OT: 2
- Average margin of victory: 2.7 points
- Excluding 149 pound match: 1.8 points
- Percentage of periods with no scoring: 9.7 % (3 of 31)
- Total number of
- Takedowns: 26
- Near falls: 1
- Reverses: 0
- Takedown + escapes, percentage of all match points: 87%
- First takedown winners: 7
- 3rd period comebacks: 1
- Points scored in the last 10 seconds of any period: 11
- # of matches won by red: 8
- Probability of red winning 8 of 10 matches with random color assignment: 4.4%
Stats provided by Takedown Scoring and Stats.
Are Forfeits a Problem for High School Wrestling?
We looked at 116 dual meets, JV and Varsity, from schools across the country and discovered an alarming rate of forfeits -- 18% of all matches! Examining the impact at each weight class, we found the following
We looked at 116 dual meets, JV and Varsity, from schools across the country and discovered an alarming rate of forfeits -- 18% of all matches! Examining the impact at each weight class, we found the following: The problem is clearer when looking at groups of adjacent weight classes:
If this data is representative of high wrestling-at-large, then we seem to have a challenge attracting light and heavy weight wrestlers. Perhaps the NFHS weight classes are misaligned with the underlying student demographic. Other explanations are possible. In any case, the forfeit rate seems undesirable in the context of making wrestling a more fan-friendly sport.
What do you think? Add a comment below.
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.
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.