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I found this very interesting................
7 Reasons Not to Post Your Team Stats
By: Cindy Bristow
Thinking of putting your team stats up on your website? If so, then maybe I can get you to think again by discovering my 7 reasons not to post your team stats online
Think twice before you publicly post your team softball stats
Stats do have a role in softball but they can also backfire and have a negative effect if you're not careful. Make sure you're considering all 7 aspects before putting those stats on your team website.
Coaches love stats as they can help us see things we might have missed, or see things other than the worst thing or the last. But stats can also be bad news if we use them wrong. Females see stats differently than guys do and that's important since a lot of you reading this are men. Seeing female things from a male point of view is usually a recipe for trouble. Not that guys see the world wrong and women see it right, it's not a right vs wrong issue at all but rather a thought process issue. Women have to feel good to play good and guys play good to feel good. That's why stats don't fly with women. As soon as women look at stats we immediately feel horrible about ourselves so game over. where guys just use poor stats to fire them up.
That's why I'm not a proponent of posting your team stats online, unless of course you're a college coach and you've got no choice, but even then you've got a job ahead of you in managing the players (and parents) that will constantly be checking their stats. I know that most of you have team websites and feel that posting your team and individual stats is the thing to do.
Personally, I don't like the idea of posting your individual stats up on your team website at all, and here are my reasons why:
Individual vs Team. Stats are all about individuals and teams are all about the entire group. It's hard to teach your players to play together as a team and then rank order them based on individual stats. Team stats are one thing but individual stats take the team concept and blow it apart.
Stats Have a Purpose. Stats actually have a purpose other than to simply have them because everyone else does. The purpose of stats is to:
See how the pieces contribute to the success of the whole
Help strategize for attacking your opponents
Help see smaller parts within the team whole
Help to see the tendencies, patterns or trends
Unemotionalize performances
Greasing the Path. Parents are too obsessed these days with helping make their child?s path easier, faster and better and posting stats only adds to that.
The Great Divide. Stats put a HUGE wedge between the players on your team with good numbers and those with poor ones. While this might be OK in the world of guys, with women and girls it doesn't cut it. This kills the confidence of the weaker players and can even turn them on you. they'll wonder why you're so mean, putting all of that on the web (true).
Stats Lie. Here it is again, stats lie. And most stats aren't even helpful. "Statistics Always Reminds Me Of The Man Who Drowned In A River Whose Average Depth Was Only Three Feet." Woody Hayes. It doesn't matter that the river averaged just three feet deep and that you shouldn't be able to drown in that little of water, it just matters that the guy drowned. I don't really care what your batting average is, I'd rather know what your hard-hit average is, what your average is with runners in scoring position, what your good play following bad play ratio is and so on. These aren't stats that most scorekeepers keep or that most stat programs figure so I think the common stats are pretty meaningless. This is particularly true in travel ball when you have NO clue how to gauge the quality of your opponent. (hitting .325 might sound good unless it's against teams you should be hitting .525 against).
Who Are They For? Who are the stats being posted for? The media probably isn't watching, the college coaches don't care about stats and the parents already know how good they feel their daughter is. stats won't change their minds.
They're Kids. Even if you're coaching a team of 18 year olds they're still young and need to keep their focus on their effort, their contribution to the team and their enjoyment of the sport. Putting up stats makes players start playing to improve their own numbers and pulls them away from the things they should be focused on.
I think it's hard enough to create a solid functioning team without further splintering it apart by posting individual stats that are practically meaningless and serve no real purpose.
Now, just because I'm not a supporter of posting your individual stats on your team website doesn't mean I don't think you should be keeping them. I think from a coaching point of view stats can be very helpful. Stats can help us see patterns or trends that we might otherwise miss since we're often looking at too many things, or else we're too emotional to notice some things.
But stats are only as good as the person who is keeping them, and they're only as helpful as the opponents are quantifiable. If you're going to keep stats on your individual players then make sure you have the same person or limited group of people always keeping your stats so they score things the same way. Consistency is what makes stats meaningful. Also, in travel ball it's too hard to know anything about the quality of your opponents since you don't really know how good they are, or if they're even using the same roster against you that they used last weekend against other teams. The whole concept of guest players makes individual stats seem really meaningless. The more consistent your opponents roster and quality of opponents are the more meaningful your own individual stats will be.
If you're going to bother keeping individual stats just make sure you're using them to help improve the performance of your team by taking the ones that help you, using them if you bother taking them, making sure they're taking in a consistent manner, and keeping them within your coaching staff. You're all too busy to do extra work!
7 Reasons Not to Post Your Team Stats
By: Cindy Bristow
Thinking of putting your team stats up on your website? If so, then maybe I can get you to think again by discovering my 7 reasons not to post your team stats online
Think twice before you publicly post your team softball stats
Stats do have a role in softball but they can also backfire and have a negative effect if you're not careful. Make sure you're considering all 7 aspects before putting those stats on your team website.
Coaches love stats as they can help us see things we might have missed, or see things other than the worst thing or the last. But stats can also be bad news if we use them wrong. Females see stats differently than guys do and that's important since a lot of you reading this are men. Seeing female things from a male point of view is usually a recipe for trouble. Not that guys see the world wrong and women see it right, it's not a right vs wrong issue at all but rather a thought process issue. Women have to feel good to play good and guys play good to feel good. That's why stats don't fly with women. As soon as women look at stats we immediately feel horrible about ourselves so game over. where guys just use poor stats to fire them up.
That's why I'm not a proponent of posting your team stats online, unless of course you're a college coach and you've got no choice, but even then you've got a job ahead of you in managing the players (and parents) that will constantly be checking their stats. I know that most of you have team websites and feel that posting your team and individual stats is the thing to do.
Personally, I don't like the idea of posting your individual stats up on your team website at all, and here are my reasons why:
Individual vs Team. Stats are all about individuals and teams are all about the entire group. It's hard to teach your players to play together as a team and then rank order them based on individual stats. Team stats are one thing but individual stats take the team concept and blow it apart.
Stats Have a Purpose. Stats actually have a purpose other than to simply have them because everyone else does. The purpose of stats is to:
See how the pieces contribute to the success of the whole
Help strategize for attacking your opponents
Help see smaller parts within the team whole
Help to see the tendencies, patterns or trends
Unemotionalize performances
Greasing the Path. Parents are too obsessed these days with helping make their child?s path easier, faster and better and posting stats only adds to that.
The Great Divide. Stats put a HUGE wedge between the players on your team with good numbers and those with poor ones. While this might be OK in the world of guys, with women and girls it doesn't cut it. This kills the confidence of the weaker players and can even turn them on you. they'll wonder why you're so mean, putting all of that on the web (true).
Stats Lie. Here it is again, stats lie. And most stats aren't even helpful. "Statistics Always Reminds Me Of The Man Who Drowned In A River Whose Average Depth Was Only Three Feet." Woody Hayes. It doesn't matter that the river averaged just three feet deep and that you shouldn't be able to drown in that little of water, it just matters that the guy drowned. I don't really care what your batting average is, I'd rather know what your hard-hit average is, what your average is with runners in scoring position, what your good play following bad play ratio is and so on. These aren't stats that most scorekeepers keep or that most stat programs figure so I think the common stats are pretty meaningless. This is particularly true in travel ball when you have NO clue how to gauge the quality of your opponent. (hitting .325 might sound good unless it's against teams you should be hitting .525 against).
Who Are They For? Who are the stats being posted for? The media probably isn't watching, the college coaches don't care about stats and the parents already know how good they feel their daughter is. stats won't change their minds.
They're Kids. Even if you're coaching a team of 18 year olds they're still young and need to keep their focus on their effort, their contribution to the team and their enjoyment of the sport. Putting up stats makes players start playing to improve their own numbers and pulls them away from the things they should be focused on.
I think it's hard enough to create a solid functioning team without further splintering it apart by posting individual stats that are practically meaningless and serve no real purpose.
Now, just because I'm not a supporter of posting your individual stats on your team website doesn't mean I don't think you should be keeping them. I think from a coaching point of view stats can be very helpful. Stats can help us see patterns or trends that we might otherwise miss since we're often looking at too many things, or else we're too emotional to notice some things.
But stats are only as good as the person who is keeping them, and they're only as helpful as the opponents are quantifiable. If you're going to keep stats on your individual players then make sure you have the same person or limited group of people always keeping your stats so they score things the same way. Consistency is what makes stats meaningful. Also, in travel ball it's too hard to know anything about the quality of your opponents since you don't really know how good they are, or if they're even using the same roster against you that they used last weekend against other teams. The whole concept of guest players makes individual stats seem really meaningless. The more consistent your opponents roster and quality of opponents are the more meaningful your own individual stats will be.
If you're going to bother keeping individual stats just make sure you're using them to help improve the performance of your team by taking the ones that help you, using them if you bother taking them, making sure they're taking in a consistent manner, and keeping them within your coaching staff. You're all too busy to do extra work!
