What is a Team Sport?
A Team sport is a competition in which opposing teams compete in a game by sharing a common objective (usually winning). Team members facilitate the movement of an object or player according to a set of rules, usually by collaboration and communication. The goal is to accomplish the objective as quickly and efficiently as possible, which requires good planning, excellent preparation, mental and physical toughness, and a strong sense of community and collaboration among teammates. Examples include baseball, association football, cricket, hockey, tennis and volleyball.
Team sports help athletes develop interpersonal skills that translate into their everyday lives, such as learning to communicate effectively and work with a variety of personalities. Working with a diverse group of teammates also teaches them to be adaptable and persistent, as they learn how to navigate different scenarios that may arise on the field. The Janssen Sports Leadership Center states that working with teammates teaches athletes to value each other’s strengths and weaknesses and be aware of how their actions impact the entire group.
Team sports are a large part of professional and recreational life around the world. With novel sensor modalities becoming available, the analysis of data collected in team sports has become of increased interest for researchers and coaches. From acquisition and data enrichment to data fusion with context information to in-depth analysis tasks like trajectory analyses, the field of team sport data analytics covers a wide range of research fields.