Teams face a statistician shortage
The Green Bay Southwest football team has a job opening.
If you possess some basic math skills and want to enjoy a sideline view of its games, you’re encouraged to apply.
“The job is yours if you want it,” Southwest co-head coach Pat Wallace said.
Statisticians are a vital part of high school football in my opinion.
Unfortunately, more and more teams seem to be having a tough time finding individuals to help fill the role.
Virtually all of the teams in the Green Bay area are outfitted with Hudl, the online video scouting tool. Its most advanced packages give teams the ability to upload video through a Wi-Fi connection during games almost instantly for review.
Meanwhile, documenting how many yards a running back has can often still be a struggle.
I’ve seen far too often where a single penalty messes up the entire process for those giving their best effort to keep up entering game statistics on a digital tablet.
That’s why I miss the days of keeping track with a simple pencil and notepad. Those tools never failed.
During my time as a newspaper reporter I kept my own statistics at every single football game I covered. I used a clipboard, taping a sheet of paper outfitted with vertical columns on the back to keep track of individual statistics for both teams while using a notepad on the other side to track the progress of each play in a drive.
It didn’t look pretty, but it got the job done to turn around a game story on deadline.
I also kept the phone numbers of every statistician in the area on hand to try to track down games we hadn’t received back at the sports desk. Putting out a quality roundup was important to me, and it couldn’t have been done well without the efforts of statisticians relaying in the results.
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Much like what happens on the field, keeping statistics is often a team effort, especially when tracking tackles.
However, losing the lead statistician can be devastating to the process.
Some of the areas best statisticians have stepped down for various reasons in recent years, including Joe Verdegan at Southwest.
Verdegan will still come out of retirement late in the year when the auto racing season is complete, but he is certainly missed when he’s not there because he does a great job – and he does it with a simple pencil and notepad.
Don’t get me wrong. The digital tools that are available are great when they work because it’s awesome to see a complete game summary show up in my inbox shortly after a game goes final.
However, it’s always nice to have a backup plan when technical difficulties occur.
Regardless of what method a team uses, it can’t do either without some help.
Please consider approaching your team’s head coach and volunteering to assist with taking statistics.
Even if they already have a couple people handling it, I’m sure the head coach would appreciate building some depth.