SMG Technologies Brings Professional Analytics to Grassroots and School Sport with launch of Baseline
SMG Technologies Ltd (SMG) has today launched Baseline; the first product worldwide to offer grassroots through to semi-elite and school-based clubs and teams of all sporting codes the opportunity to tap into the technology engine used by elite professionals.
Using its heritage in high performance analytics with SportsMed Elite, SMG Technologies has designed Baseline to help maximise visibility around patterns of athlete performance, with the ultimate goal of keeping them performing at their optimum. It also allows coaches and athletes to tackle the demands of team management, whilst providing a predictive model to protect athletes from potential injury.
Recognising that grassroots teams have the same ambition and challenges as elite professionals, Baseline is the only product on the market that provides relevant and effective performance metrics, at an accessible price point.
“The market has been crying out for performance measurement product that is all-inclusive; that can be used across multiple codes and by teams of any size. That’s exactly what we have with Baseline. We are seeing strong interest from both established clubs and school teams who understand that improved measurement will have a knock-on effect for performance and ultimately budget. With increased pressure on teams to deliver results, that’s a very compelling case,” said Zane Hall, CEO at SMG Technologies.
Baseline is backed by a centralised cloud-based platform that can consolidate and gain insight into key athlete metrics. It ensures player welfare is at the heart of the system, monitoring facets including mental, physical and technical performance, injury management and team logistics. This supports coaching staff in getting the most out of their athletes, whilst encouraging athletes to strive for continuous improvement.
Unlike basic spreadsheets, Baseline is able to consolidate information from disparate data sources — for example wearable technology, calendars and spreadsheets — and provide reports that offer visibility into trends and patterns. Performance, mental and injury alerts can be automated and sent directly to staff, improving the insight they have into an athlete’s performance and wellness, even without logging into the Baseline platform.
Baseline allows for communication between coaches and multiple athletes across multiple codes, highlighting injuries or patterns, whilst coordinating, player identification. With greater clarity and a more holistic picture, clubs and coaches are able to make more educated decisions, ultimately resulting in more positive sporting results and better-managed budgets.
The Baseline mobile product allows athletes to easily capture any data metric before, during or after training sessions. For athletes, this is made easy by the capacity to integrate over 200 wearable devices into the Baseline product, providing coaching staff with insights into not only training demands, but an athletes demands of daily life.
Baseline is equipped with Xela, an in-built predictive analytics engine. The platform enables data to be uploaded from different sources, including Microsoft Excel, CSV files, GPS data, third-party source or via direct entry. Xela then allows users to perform analysis on current and historical data sets in a few easy steps and thereby gain insight into present statistical values and predictions for future events.
“We know from local government reports that levels of participation — and importantly engagement — in sport are low; and that’s an issue. The beauty of Baseline is that it allows for open communication between coaches and athletes when it comes to really obtaining an understanding of their data points and wellness metrics like sleep quality, stress, fatigue, general soreness, motivation, appetite and mood levels. There’s complete collaboration and we are seeing this have a very positive effect on athlete retention and growth, as well as how they view sport and the enjoyment they get from it,” said Hall.
Duel International and SMG Technologies ambassador Ellyse Perry believes that grassroots and semi-elite teams will see reduced risk of injury from the use of Baseline.
“Grassroots through to semi-elite teams work towards the same outcomes and scenarios as professional teams, but they also have added complications because of the need to balance their own performance with families, full time jobs and other sporting commitments.
“I’ve seen it first-hand. Because concentration is so divided, there is more chance of injury because training and the demands of daily life are not monitored properly. Baseline helps protect against injury because you can store all performance and medical records for players over years.”
This provides particular peace of mind when it comes to duty of care for coaches and staff in school environments, where the IP of an athlete stays with the team and club and is not lost with a change in personnel. It can also be shared with parents for further support around wellness away from the sporting arena.
Baseline is the only affordable product on the market worldwide to offer the kind of performance tools and analytics that sporting teams at a grassroots and semi-elite level need in order to perform and run at their optimum.
