.png)
Being a Sitting Volleyball Statistician at the Paralympics 2012 Reflected Part 2
I had the great opportunity to work on the final day of the sitting volleyball. It was to be a fantastic day of matches. The 5th/6th match was a 5 setter. The bronze medal match was a 5 setter. The gold medal match was only a 4 setter but it was a huge upset! I learnt a lot during the tournament but this last day gave me the unique insight to learn one more thing:
* – I know that both court ends will record all ball touches on their side and the codes go centrally to the Omega operator. The final day was the first time I was able to see what Omega operator actually do. The Omega operator monitors the codes coming in to ensure the the rallies are in a logical sequence. Where there is an illogical sequence, the Omega operator will modify it. This will normally occur in the quicker rallies where it is almost impossible to see what happened, let alone recording it. Any missed ball touches may cause irregularities in the sequence and thus the Omega operator will modify it by either reorganising, changing or deleting codes.
If codes are changed or deleted, it means the official statistics will not be 100% accurate. Big shock but it is hardly surprising. There will always be some sort of error when humans operators are involved and especially if it done in real time (experienced performance analysts can testify when points do not add up!) In addition, official statistics is mainly used by the media and accuracy is not of the utmost importance compared to the performance analyst and their team (e.g. see link).
When the medal ceremony was over and the stadium started to emptied out, I did feel saddened it was all over. In terms of life experiences, it is certainly up there in the top 3.
Comments