Polocrosse Stats

I have developed a code for documenting actions that happen during a polocrosse game.  I’ve been working on it off and on for about 10 years, and since I quit competing about 2 years ago I’ve been using this system at every polocrosse event I attend, for every game I watch.  By writing a few simple letters and numbers, I can record every time every player possesses the ball, every time he scores, bounces, misses a bounce, misses a 10-yard throw, throws a pass, throws a bad pass, catches a pass, has a pass thrown to him, misses a pass that was thrown to him, has the ball hit out of his racquet, commits a penalty, snags a ball, misses a pickup, as well as throw-ins, re-starts, and out of bounds off a horse.

This code can be written on paper, easily, by anyone watching the game and later copied into a computer, or typed directly into a computer while watching a game.  It can also be done while watching most videos of a polocrosse game.  These numbers can be counted to come up with statistics in each of these areas for all players.  I think tracking statistics can help players improve by recognizing and targeting areas of weakness, and showing how they compare to other players.  It can also show a player’s progressive improvement (or not) over time.

When I got my code developed, I made an Excel program that would count all the events and calculate the stats from them for each game.  Then I expanded the program to contain an entire tournament with all the players in all the games, complete with stats for each player per game, and/or stats for each player for the entire tournament.

The Excel program was very useful, and besides the stats and scheduling, it also kept track of and calculated the performance ratings of each player, kept the running scores and stats as the game was being played, calculated the standings of each team in each division, and kept the running stats of each player for each game, and for each player for the entire tournament.  I had so many calculations in the program that it got huge for each tournament, and was slow to re-calculate after every entry.  Now I’ve paid someone to build me a database system to do the same things.

The database system will hold all the tournaments, with stats etc., and still be quick and not very big.  I added horses to the database system, so I can also track all the horses that play or umpire.  When I go to tournaments I take my computer and enter the tournament and the stats for all the games on the one field that I can watch, and at the end of the tournament I can tell the players how their stats went, and/or who had the best stats for the tournament.  If I don’t get the stats from a tournament, or some games in a tournament, I still can enter the players and horses, the games they played and their scores for each chukka, from the score sheets.  With that information I can calculate the performance ratings for all the players at the tournament.

Theoretically anyone can write my code on paper, and if I could get anyone to do it, then I could also get the stats from games that I can’t watch.

I was able to put all the 2010 tournaments into my database, and I’m going back and entering the stats from my Excel files into my database.  I have done all of 2009, and about ½ of 2008.  Since my Excel file didn’t have horses, I’ll perpetually be trying to complete the database file by figuring out which horse people played at each tournament.

I can also enter the stats while watching a video of games.  I’ve started a separate database for World Cup games.  I have some videos of the 2003 games and will watch them and enter them into the database as I get time.  I don’t have any videos from the 2007 games, but I would like to get them and have all of them entered before the next 2011 World Cup event.

I will be happy to teach my system to anyone that wants to use it or even experiment with it.  I would also like to get more people in the US to help take stats so that all games are preserved for statistics.

Paul Johnson

Cell Phone 512-698-6827

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