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Fakulteta za šport, Ljubljana (FSPLJ)
  • Monitoring of the time the players stay on the T position and comparison between the winners and losers of individual games in terms of this indicator
    Vučković, Goran, 1969- ...
    Successful playing of squash depends strongly on the appropriate positioning of the player on the basic position (T). In squash the basic position is the area in the centre of the court, located ... slightly towards the Back Wall. This position optimises the players' chances of making the right move, position properly and then strike the ball. Therefore, both in theory and practice one often comes across the saying: "The player in control of the T position wins it all". In their research McGarry, Khan and Franks, 1998, Science and Racket Sports II, London 221-226, examined the radial distance between the players and T as well as the absolute distance between the players. They established that during a rally the players alternately take the T position in an anti-phase relation. This means that in a given moment one of the players is at T and the other at a certain distance from T, and vice versa. Our research focused on establishing the time during which the players stay on the basic position during a match. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to measure the time during which the players stay at T in a rally and to identify statistically significant differences in the time during which the players i.e. the winners and the losers of individual games, stay on the basic position. Data were gathered from six matches which were recorded by a fixed SVHS video camera (Ultrak CCD Color KC 7501 CP) with the frequency of capturing input pictures of 25 Hy and covering the entire surface of the court. The video camera was fixed to the ceiling in the centre of the squash court and did not interfere with the play. The video-recordings were digitized using the miroVideo DC30+ (Germany) video digitizer hardware with the resolution of 384x576 at 2 MB/sec data rate, while the processing was carried out at a resolution of 384x288 pixels. The results showing the time the players stayed on the basic position during individual games were obtained from the SAGIT/SQUASH tracking system (Vučković, 2002, Master's Thesis, Faculty of Sport, Ljubljana). The testing of statistically significant differences between the winning and the losing sides in a game in terms of covered distance was based on the t-test for independent samples. The results show high variability in the percentage denoting the time the players stayed on the basic position in the games during one or several matches. On average, in a rally the players stayed at T for 40.2[plus minus] 6.6% of the time, bearing in mind that the percentage was slightly higher for the winners (40.4, 26.4 - 51.6%) than for the losers (40.0, 23.5 - 51.0%). The data on the period of time reveal that the losers stayed longer at T (168.6 [plus minus] 73.9 s) than the winners (166.5 [plus minus] 63.7 s). However, these differences are not statistically significant. The above results are quite surprising, as we expected that the winners of individual games would stay longer on the T position and thus better control the play. One of the reasons for such a short time lied in the fact that all sampled players were equal in ranking. Moreover, it is also possible that the player stays at T when (s)he is attempting to return the ball, since this may also require fast movement through the basic position. Therefore, a future research, apart from establishing the time the players stay on the basic position, could also observe the players' speed at that period of time. Last but not least, it would be reasonable to establish these indicators during a match played by squash players with very different skills.
    Vir: Programme and abstracts : les entretiens de l'INSEP (Str. 96)
    Vrsta gradiva - prispevek na konferenci ; neleposlovje za odrasle
    Leto - 2003
    Jezik - angleški
    COBISS.SI-ID - 1770161

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