We are always on a mission to spread awareness about how our performance analysis solutions are used by our clients across different sports and their differing workflows. After the well-received article on football in Millfield School, we now look at Millfield School’s Tennis Performance Analysis Research!
If you missed the football article, it’s always here for another day
We know Millfield School are a world-renowned school, especially when it comes to sport! We are proud to be a small part of their success.
Millfield School is one of the leading co-educational tennis schools in the country. They compete in various tournaments (LTA, ITF and ETA) and fixtures against other academies, counties, clubs and universities. There are over 150 pupils involved in the tennis programme, with several students competing at national level!
Facilities include seven hard courts (four with floodlights), one indoor bubble, nine astroturf courts for use during the summer months and the top squads access the three Senior School indoor courts for their training.
And of course, they use some great performance analysis tools provided by us at AnalysisPro!!!
Millfield School are happy to share their practices of the current research being undertaken within Millfield Tennis, along with information on the key software being used to achieve this work.
Three months ago, Jack Like (Millfield Performance Analyst) and Matt James (Millfield Tennis Coach) embarked on a joint mission to create a system of analysing key areas of tennis performance at Millfield School – since then they have analysed several KPI’s within the sport and discovered some interesting data surrounding youth athlete tennis performance.
Let us hear from Jack;
I don’t think me or Matt were 100% clear on where we wanted to go with tennis analysis at the start, but once I was able to show him how we could fully utilise the software AnalysisPro provide us with; all I needed to do was let Matt lead the way and my job was to work around his incredible knowledge of the sport.
This is a great example of analyst and coach working together. The coach will have a great idea on what they are looking to find out about the players to help with them with their coaching decisions. When we speak to our clients, it’s clear to see the advantage that analysis brings to the coaches, after all, analysis was born to improve the coaching process!
The tennis department have been extremely proactive in working closely with me to ensure that we can build a sustainable and effective performance analysis structure. Coaches and athletes are becoming very good at utilising the Nacsport Tag&go iPad app and online sharing platforms which means that they can continue to analyse matches and tournaments without me being present. This really shows the easy usability of the software AnalysisPro provide us with.
Like the game itself – they started with the serve! Tennis serves are arguably the most important shot in tennis, and this is where things began for Millfield Tennis performance analysis. Jack and Matt built a three-step analysis template within Tag&Go which looked at 1st/2nd Serve Success, court map and finally the server’s reaction off the serve.
Why did you choose to start with Nacsport Tag&go?
The panel flow feature within Tag&go is fantastic in making things easier for coaches and athletes to use a checkbox system, so that all required data is included into the timelines post-match.
Jack raises a good point – it’s often overlooked that the powerful functionality of Tag&go whilst tagging against the clock can go straight into the timeline. The statistical data post-match is automatically produced through Nacsport Dashboards, which not only saves valuable time for who is analysing; but it also means statistical data is fed back to the coaches and athletes almost instantly post game. This is a very efficient way of working as messages are being given when it’s most relevant.
So, let us hear now from one of the Tennis coaches, Dan Manlow–
Performance Analysis within Millfield Tennis has become a vital tool used over the last 5 years; it allows us to have the ability to look closer into things that can’t be seen without technology. The introduction of using the Nacsport video dashboards this year has made it easy to jump from clip to clip and it really makes you engage in the statistical data that is created when reviewing performance.
This point from Dan is one of my favourite things about Nacsport. With a dashboard open, you can simply click on any chart or graph and it shows you that bit of the game. We are always saying how analysis is more than just statistics – this allows you to physically see the context behind the number.
We also heard from the Director of Tennis, Sarah Thomas (M.Ed) a former international, Level 5 Master Performance Coach and LTA Tutor –
The fact that students have been specifically training to analyse their own performance post-match; along with Jack adding key analysis of specific areas of the game like the serves, makes performance analysis a powerful tool used to support our athletes to better understand the game.
The final stages of analysis are done post-match when the coach, analyst, and athlete sit down to break down video using our KlipDraw software.
Millfield Tennis seems to have a very smooth process using a combination of products from Tag&go, Nacsport, and then finishing off with the powerful telestration tool KlipDraw.
So Jack, how did you get the footage to actually start this process!?
Capturing footage of match play is extremely easy thanks to the use of the AP Capture solution. We also use a Lexicon sound system to include sound into the videos too.
Gerard Norman from Future CCTV and Jon Moore (MD of AnalysisPro), have both done an outstanding job installing IP 4K cameras around the school for us over the past 5 years, I can always rely on them to do a top quality job for us.
That’s a great testimonial to Gerard and Jon, anyone else Jack?
Josh Bryan and Daniel Moore have worked incredibly hard behind the scenes communicating with me almost daily during my time at Millfield. Their expertise adds incredible value to what we want to achieve here at Millfield School in performance analysis.
Well done Josh and Daniel! What about the man who writes the blog articles Jack? ……..
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Okay, moving on…..
So, what have the main findings been so far since analysing tennis at Millfield?
1st serves completion over the last three matches has been 54%.
2nd serves completion over the last three matches has been 92%.
Hitting the Net has been by far the most common mistake made during 1st serves within the last 3 matches; racking up a total of 25 net shots
Wide right been most the common mistake made during 2nd serves within the last 3 matches; racking up a total of 3 wide right shots
So there we have it!
An interesting insight into the processes of Millfield Tennis. It sounds like a well-oiled machine where analysis tools and the people using them work in unison to deliver the right information, to improve feedback and coaching to enhance the player – and that is what performance analysis was born to do!
Thank you for the comments of those at Millfield School, it’s a great way to share practice with those using or considering the use of performance analysis and the benefits it can bring to sport and the development of the people who play it.
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