A team sport involves multiple people working together to achieve a common goal. Typically, these goals involve competing against opposing teams in a contest to score points. Team sports require a significant level of commitment, training, and preparation. They also teach children that they must work hard to succeed and that there are few shortcuts in life. In addition, participating in a team sport teaches them the importance of accepting loss as a part of competition and not dwelling on failure but instead using it as an opportunity to improve.
Whether listening to locker room pep talk or reading nonverbal cues from teammates, team athletes must be able to communicate effectively. As a result, they learn to listen, ask for feedback, and value their teammates’ input. In the classroom, these communication skills can help kids develop a greater sense of empathy and collaboration and improve their academic performance.
Team athletes also learn to appreciate the value of time and the need to be efficient in their work, especially when practicing at high speeds. Bobsledders, for example, race down ice tracks at 90+mph and must be able to respond to changes in the track surface with lightning speed. Fortunately, tracking systems now allow practitioners to identify and monitor a wide range of training-related parameters relevant to the practice of team sports. However, the choice of metrics needs careful consideration to ensure they are appropriate for a specific sport context. Categorising these metrics according to their similarities may be adequate but a more refined feature selection is required in order to optimise the performance of tracking systems for team sports.