Today's Edition
Kuumar Shyam (Abu Dhabi)
The UAE University Games, initiated by the Ministry of Sports, proved not just a much-needed platform for the youth of the country, but showed that the administrators are looking to stay ahead of the curve in the technology game.
Organised by Abu Dhabi Entertainment Company (ADEC), in cooperation with the UAE School and University Sports Federation, the inaugural season drew a total of 1,585 students from 28 universities across the UAE in, competing in seven sporting disciplines.
The top achievers may have gone home with medals and trophies, but the real success was achieved by the organisers, who created a platform where talented athletes can develop and showcase their talents, gain exposure and further their careers.
True to the UAE's innovative way of doing things, multiple agencies and consultants had been enlisted to generate performance-related data for the participants, which will help in analysing the various metrics and even help scouts from around the world assess the talent available.
One of the agencies is PlayerMaker, which issued tracker chips to the participants in the crucial stages of the competition, except in the football, which was handled by another contracted company.
"We have worked in international organisations like FIFA, NBA and even closer here to the UAE with Dubai Sports Council, Al Nasr, etc," said Steve Barratt, Vice President of Sport Performance at PlayerMaker, as he collected the bands with the data chips from the youth players.
One band can cost between Dh2,500 to Dh5,000 dirhams, Barratt told Aletihad.
In addition, there were artificial intelligence-enabled cameras tracking the action, which, supplemented by the movement data, can help coaches and technical analysts assess performance, while providing talent scouts with valuable data, said Barratt.
"We as a company collect data on footwork movement, including speed of acceleration and deceleration, direction changes, foot adjustment in response to game scenarios and utilisation of AI cameras to gather technical and session-based statistics.
"The data collected will help coaches analyse player weaknesses and enhance performance. Thus we cover three very important bases – technical, tactical and physical. Two staff members have specially flown in for this project to help us.
"Additional scouts from the UK and Europe are involved in observing games and providing insights. Plans are to bring in 12 more scouts for talent profiling across various sports in the next stage."
With the combination of physical data collection, video analysis and scout observations completing the process, agencies such as PlayerMaker, says Barratt, will be able to collate the data into reports which the Ministry of Sports can then use.
"So we have a human resource, computer resource, AI resource. And AI is not just limited to cameras; it's in other fields as well, other domains. The insights that we are providing, you can get that on any grassroot-level player but also you can have it on Champions League players, World Cup winners, Ballon d'Or winners. We have it across the spectrum and work with many national governing bodies," he added.
American University of Dubai's basketball coach Issam Termanini was oblivious to the gadgets strapped to his players' shoelaces during the final against University of Sharjah.
"I have no idea what these are supposed to do [the gadgets were used only for the knockout stages]. We barely had time to prepare because the team travelled to Greece to play in a tournament three weeks ago and now got this great platform to play college basketball for their own university," Termanini said.
The UoS team took the lead in the first quarter and Termanini made a strategic switch to get his players to first neutralise the threat of Sharjah's key players before going on to win the title, just as they did in Greece.
In addition to the silverware won, the data compiled during the Games will go a long way to launching the international careers of the young players.
