 "Photo: Hillary Cole")
In the past, a team’s statistician has had the grueling job of keeping track of all stats for every member of a team. With technology on the rise, a program emerged which has eliminated the need to count stats by hand and eased the stress of statisticians around the globe. Helping to put that stress at ease is CyberSports, Inc.
Since its inception in the early 90s, CyberSports has only been growing. Both of Clackamas’ basketball teams use the program for every home game.
Using this program helps to eliminate the time it takes to generate accurate stats for coaches to hand out to players as well as schools looking to recruit players.
Ernie Woods, chief designer and adviser to CyberSports, said about the program, “the statistician was once a bankless job and has really turned out to become a big one, and the statistician is a big part of the team now.” He also mentioned that the University of Tennessee recently hired a person full time to run their CyberSports during games as well as practices.
Woods is no stranger to the world of statistics. He is the winningest coach in Washington state community college basketball history and has worked with numerous NBA teams as well as national teams from Australia, Brazil, Germany and Sweden. Woods was also a consultant for Microsoft’s “NBA Inside Drive 2000” video game.
One point Woods stressed was that schools who use CyberSports gain a definite competitive advantage over those who don’t. Woods said, “With the online capabilities today, it has opened up a whole new world to schools like Clackamas.”
The program is run during the game by a person using a computer who updates the program in real time.
Someone scores a basket, gets a rebound or a steal, it all goes right into the computer.
Reminiscing about years past, Woods said, laughing, “When calculators came out, I thought it was the greatest gift to mankind.”
Alexa.com, a Web site information site, ranks CyberSports as the 135,462 most visited site in the United States and the 500,853 most visited site worldwide. Alexa.com also estimates that about 84.7 percent of the site’s traffic comes from users in the U.S. with 15.3 percent coming from sources outside the country. CyberSports has also made its program available to soldiers overseas who are unable to watch games of family members and other loved ones.
A press release on the CyberSports Web site states, “The wealth of information that the CyberSports reports and charts produce has a definite impact on the outcome of the game and the coaches want access to it. Once outsiders looking in, [Sports Information Directors] and statisticians now have become a vital part of the team itself.”
SID’s were formerly used for public and media relations and were used to pass out stats to media during games. CyberSports has helped to change the role SID’s play in the sports world. They have become an intricate part of the statistical strategies that many coaching staffs base their game plan around.
Each year CyberSports grows larger and gains more recognition from schools across the world. Woods cited his main reason for helping develop CyberSports, “It’s a hobby for us. It’s just about trying to give back to the sport.”
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