Sports science brings data to youth volleyball development

Sports technology is giving coaches new ways to measure athlete development beyond what can be judged through observation, with Trailblazers Elite Foundation set to assess its young volleyball players using VALD technology on August 14.

VALD is a sports-performance technology platform that provides tools for measuring physical performance and movement, allowing coaches and performance teams to collect objective data and track changes over time.

Trailblazers Elite Foundation founder and CEO Leshan Julius says the assessment is aimed at establishing individual baselines for the young athletes.

“For a long time, or traditionally, we have been teaching these kids how to play volleyball. We really want to understand each individual athlete, how they move, how they produce their force, their strength and the areas that need development,” Julius said.

Rather than relying only on group-based assessments, the athletes will be assessed individually, with the findings expected to inform their training programmes.

He added that the technology will complement coaches’ observations by providing measurable information that can be compared over time.

“We need something that is measurable, that we have a baseline to say, as we are training, this is where we started from and this is where we are now.”

Trailblazers has previously used catapult, an athlete-monitoring technology that collects data to help coaches understand training and workload. Julius said VALD has also been used with the foundation’s senior team and is now being introduced into the youth assessment programme.

The results are expected to be used to build individual athlete profiles and identify areas requiring attention, rather than simply collecting data without applying it to training and also remain a support tool for coaches.

“The data that you are getting from this assessment becomes part of our development programme, then, we build a profile for this player…Technology will not replace the coaching. Instead, it will give a coach better information to make better decisions,”

The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) consensus statement on youth athlete development supports appropriate physiological monitoring and sport-specific performance testing, including to evaluate training programmes and monitor health and performance.

However, it stresses that youth athletes develop at different rates and that growth and biological maturation should be considered when assessing and developing them.

The IOC also notes that testing should be properly interpreted and communicated by relevant members of an athlete's support team, rather than treated as an isolated measure of performance.

Furthermore, Julius said Trailblazers plans to repeat its assessments, potentially after three months, to determine how the athletes have progressed from their initial measurements.

The shift towards data-driven athlete development is growing, but its value in youth sport will ultimately depend on how accurately the information is interpreted and applied to training.

For young athletes, the technology can provide useful measurements but those figures still need to be understood within the context of individual growth and development.