Penn Makes First Tracs

Two Penn athletics teams have become harbingers in the field of college sports psychoanalysis. In early February, Dave Wohl, vice president of SportsTrac, Inc., addressed the Penn gymnastics team in a basement classroom at Hutch. "The mind is one of the few relative unknowns left in athletics," Wohl said to the Ivy-champion gymnasts. SportsTrac, a computer hand-eye coordination and concentration test for athletes, has achieved success working with several major league baseball, NBA and NHL teams and is seeking to expand beyond the professional athletic market. The company has no data on female athletes, Wohl told the gymnasts, and saw the Quakers gymnastics squad as an opportunity to test a group of competitive, goal-oriented individuals. As vice president of SportsTrac, Dave Wohl, a 1971 University graduate, returns to his alma mater. Wohl lit up the Palestra as a member of the Quaker's 1971 NCAA Elite Eight basketball team. A three-year starter, the Big Five Hall of Famer averaged a career 15.1 points per game. A two-time All-Ivy first teamer, Wohl moved on from Penn to average 6.2 points per game in a five-team NBA career. He first discovered SportsTrac while working as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers. While a Lakers coach, Wohl often had conversations with Lakers team physician and SportsTrac co-founder Michael Melman. In November of 1996, Wohl left his position as executive vice president of basketball operations for the Miami Heat to join SportsTrac, Inc. He felt Penn would be a natural choice for SportsTrac to venture into the college market. "I think Penn represents the difficult extreme of combining great academics with very high quality athletic teams," Wohl said. "I knew that any of the teams we would be able to track here were going to have very highly competitive athletes, very intelligent athletes and athletes who were used to really structuring their time and being able to remain competitive." Wohl approached Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky last year about bringing SportsTrac to Penn on an experimental basis. As teammates and college roommates, Bilsky and Wohl often discussed the mental aspects of the game of basketball. "I don't want to make it sound like this is a generational thing, but I think that the mental aspect of the game and the fundamentals, or the strategy of it, basically got more emphasis, maybe, back when we played then it does today," Bilsky said. "I think now there's a little bit more emphasis on the physical aspects of the game. So, I think you could probably describe us as cerebral players." Wohl decided to test SportsTrac with the Quakers' football and gymnastics teams. SportsTrac uses a video-game like system to track athletes on a daily basis. By controlling a small knob on a paddle, the athlete tries to keep a diamond-shaped marker balanced in the center of the computer screen. The computer causes the marker to drift left and right at speeds which grow increasingly difficult to control. The test ends when the marker touches one of the side boundaries. "The test is comparable to balancing a broomstick. Most of you could do it," Wohl said. "But if I kept making the broomstick shorter and shorter eventually it would get to the point where you couldn't do it anymore." Before tracking, the athlete takes a daily survey which asks questions regarding sleep, caffeine intake, use of medication and other factors. After completing five trials, the athlete is given a numerical score based on hand-eye coordination in the test and concentration, how closely the five test scores were clustered. The athlete then views a graph plotting that day's scores in relation to previous scores. SportsTrac feels that the data obtained from the graphs can be used in several ways. The company, whose main premise is that getting the athlete's body and mind together is the key to unlocking performance potential, believes comparing scores with data on injury, medication and other factors can diagnose which problems are or are not affecting performance. The company also feels that daily tracking helps an athlete to hone mental focusing and concentration techniques. SportsTrac also delivers warnings to athletes, signalling when there is an increased risk of injury. This feature of SportsTrac was discovered during research studies conducted by the company in cooperation with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Falling concentration levels in tracking patterns were discovered among athletes who suffered injuries related to an inability to perceive impending danger. The Colorado and California-based company developed its athlete-testing system from Critical Tracking Task Tests begun by the U.S. military in the 1950s to daily assess the concentration and preparedness of fighter pilots. SportsTrac began five years ago, tracking pitchers on the L.A. Dodgers, and has expanded, working with several professional sports. One of SportsTrac's biggest success stories has been PGA golfer Len Mattiace. When he scored a 4.0 or better in his tracking, Mattiace broke par 46 percent of the time; when he scored above a 4.3 he shot par or better 70 percent of the time. While using SportsTrac, he went from 96th to 75th on the PGA money list and noticed a two-stroke difference in his scoring average. "The greatest correlation between [SportsTrac System] scores and performance is in sports where focus and concentration are preeminent to your performance," Wohl said. Gymnastics certainly fits the criteria. "Gymnastics is very dangerous," junior Molly Sullivan said. "If you don't concentrate and don't pay attention to what you're doing, you can get seriously hurt." As the biggest Quakers sport, the football team was a natural selection for SportsTrac to begin with. Jerome James Jr., director of football operations at Penn, helped to coordinate the team's use of SportsTrac. James felt that the use of the system, like any first-year program, suffered strengths and weaknesses but was relatively successful. "It worked pretty well," James said. "I think the coaches were relatively happy with the way the data was being presented to them. It gave them a better sense of who their players were, and how they are affected by their day-to-day schedules." According to James, SportsTrac fit in perfectly with a new approach the football team was implementing this year -- looking at the player holistically, as a person on and off the field. "We implemented a program with psychological services, where if players are stressing, they have an opportunity to go up and talk to representatives and kind of get some things off their chest," James said. "In that way, SportsTrac would be really good, because now I could [look at a below-average score] and say, 'All right, what's the problem?' They might not want to go in with me to the detail that they might with someone up at psychological services. In that sense, SportsTrac certainly helped." There were, however, some logistical problems. With a consistent test group of 40 players but only one SportsTrac system, time was often a problem. James feels that the team will probably continue to use SportsTrac in the future. The gymnastics team was a logical next step for SportsTrac, presenting an opportunity to track female athletes in a sport where concentration and coordination on an individual basis are key. "SportsTrac provides me with an opportunity to look to see how an athlete tracked that particular day, to see how much sleep they got," Penn gymnastics coach Tom Kovic said. "I can make a decision on whether or not we need to hold back a little bit with that particular athlete as far as practice is concerned." Though he has been pleased with the program so far, Kovic still relies predominantly on talking to his athletes about how they are feeling. Because it is the first year of SportsTrac use, Kovic realizes that his team has only been able to take advantage of some aspects of the program. For the gymnastics team, this year's use of SportsTrac is very much a test of whether the program will be beneficial in the future. Dave Wohl will return in May to talk with the team after the season and help them fully interpret their data. Regardless, Kovic feels that though some take tracking very seriously and others not at all, his team has benefitted somewhat from SportsTrac. "Sometimes they finish their tracking and you hear them say, 'Shoot!' " Kovic said. "That's them being competitive with themselves and that's good. I don't think they forcibly tell themselves that they have to work any harder or any less. If they happen to test poorly that day, they subconsciously focus harder in order to get through." As a coffee drinker, tri-captain Kathleen Gunn liked seeing how factors such as caffeine affect concentration. "The concept's interesting, but one of the problems is that it's not set up for gymnastics," Gunn said. "None of us smoke and there are only 10 questions on there, but one of the questions was 'What was your nicotine intake?' " While SportsTrac is still in the testing process of working with college teams, it has provided some help to players and coaches at Penn. The experimental aspect is what Steve Bilsky is most intrigued by. "It's almost like a research study, an academic approach, which is why Penn fits," Bilsky said. "I think if the coaches think it's good, and the athletes feel it can improve performance, SportsTrac might be something we use for a long time." From here, the next step for SportsTrac is to work with Penn men's track and field and golf in its select study of the use of SportsTrac in a college setting.

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