Statistics should be used as an aide to evaluate talent, to help overcome any hidden or unrecognized bias. In sports drafts, the recruiter has to back up their analysis with stats.
Every human has bias. Seven years of great recruiting also means seven years of inherent bias built up within.
In baseball, they have a machine that can tell how many spins and rotations on the ball. That was likely invented because the naked eye was wrong too many times.
In the work world, we have them as well.
Some typical examples include:
Affinity bias: The recruiter unconsciously favors candidates who resemble them (in age, background, origin, or personality).
Confirmation bias: They seek information that confirms their first impression.
Anchoring bias: The first piece of information (a prestigious degree, a well-known company) influences the entire evaluation.
If left unchecked, these biases can distort perceptions of actual competence and exclude qualified candidates.
Having used the Game Desk app, i feel that a free version should be made available for all to use. Potentially this gives the sport a larger number of people that are at least self trained on inputting the stats. If you dont want that unreliable data then dont let them submit it. Charging parents $10/mo to use Game Desk is just greedy IMO. Believe it or not some of the waterpolo parents aren’t ultra rich and have to make tough budget cuts to give their kids the opportunity to play this niche sport.
Edit: a good compromise would be charge for the app once.
I think from a player perspective it is $3.99 month and typically clubs/teams pay a fee for keeping live scoring and tracking for X number of teams based on the package they buy. Typically this is done at the team and club level.
Hello, all. This discussion resonates with me. I like solving problems with better tools. Anyone who knows me has seen me on deck filming games. We use that film as does any team. I also take stats while watching the film. To assist with this, I created an excel file with a few bells and whistles. The tool is customizable and extremely easy to use and could be populated at the table during a game. I may look to make this a web app
$10 to be able to use Game Desk to take stats and upload. I just suggested allowing Game Desk without subscription (no upload capability) to facilitate more people taking stats.
I have sat with paid 6-8 scorers. It isn’t easy. For good stats, two people are required.
I created a google scoresheet with flexible stats – meaning you can add tracking for stats that you feel are important. Being a google sheet, you can crowd-source the stat tracking. Then you can accumulate league stats by collecting all the game sheets if you want.
Next step is to add voice editing. There are versions of that out there already.
Water polo stats are some of the hardest to do in sport. The amount of stats is one thing (EE, ED, assist, goals, steals, turnovers, etc.) but primarily since the plays don’t stop. So trying to capture who the exclusion is on, who earned it while trying to see refs hold up numbers, while watching live play for a possible assist to a goal all within a couple of seconds while looking down to input it. Having a second person is very important. All that is true regardless of platform. It’s just part of the sport. I appreciate those that work to provide stats and data for the rest of us. @poloobserver the voice editing feature is a great suggestion.
In our HS and club programs, we are fortunate to have experienced players/long time observers to do running play by play commentary. This makes it possible to record stats during the game and then confirm things via review of game film. But we only do stats for one team. Doing both in a single game would be exhausting, so I would agree that if you’re running stats for a game (like 6-8), you’d want three people: one each to enter events per team, and one to call out the events just like the scoring table does (should do) to ensure that the match secretary report is agreed and correct.
If you’re paying people to do this (at a tournament, for example) as opposed to co-locating stats keepers from the competing teams (first, assume each team has a stats keeper!), this would be prohibitively expensive (assume a complement of at least 3 refs, and now 3 data entry folks, plus guards on top of pool rental costs).
100%. You can see why if there is a game with one stat keeper trying to keep both teams stats, they may only do goals and assists. Especially if they are not very experienced at doing it. I find most of the complaints about it are just coming from not understanding what it takes or that a tournament may not allocate the resources to do it properly, and end up blaming the platform.
Not to sound like a party crasher and disrupt your youtube video…But, I think this should be moved to Statistics and Analytics Tracking which was a Board that Clark setup for people to talk about what different types of system they use for Statistics.
FYI, I will probably ‘borrow’ (steal) some of your ideas from your spreadsheet to see if it improves mine.
3 people running the clock and 6-8 is accurate. 6-8 doubles as the game book so you don’t need paper. One person does the clock, one person does the book and stats, one person does flags and spots.
This doesn’t add extra people since most desks are done with 3 (or more with big games). To be honest, more experienced people can easily do all of it with 2 people cause the 6-8 is so much faster than writing down everything.
I might add that 6-8 should probably consider having a section of public games for people who want to do “game book only” and then “game book and stats”. Then when the public see that they only collected goals and exclusions, they might understand why certain games are completed without full statistics including steals, earned exclusions, etc….
This. Most clubs in Australia have a volunteer score/stats keeper. They are trained and the job is taken very seriously. Very helpful to know shooting% and that your ability to convert 6v5 is 18% for example… Would be easy for this to be mandated for clubs. I don’t know how we can be in 2026 and so archaic with the use of stats throughout waPo. 6/8 is a good attempt at rectifying this and should be mandated in all clubs IMO. Coaches flying blind and making decisions on feel without relevant stats; and I’m sure if you have had a player move through club and HS for a number of seasons you can know how badly this can go…
That’s awesome they have that in Aus, Water Polo is certainly bigger and a more important part of their sports culture with a professional league so it makes sense. On the other hand, it’s not easy for clubs to “mandate” kids coming to the pool deck to work on their off weekends, lots of other commitments. It certainly can be done but you have to have buy in from the parents
I do my best to take stats for my son’s club but have had zero training and have never played the game. It has been tough at times but I am improving (easy to get better when you start at abysmal). Training would be sweet.
I do agree stats could reveal low hanging fruit when trying to improve a player or some team weakness. Not sure how many teams actually apply individualized workouts though. Assuming one has access to 6-8 challenge stats it seems that a coach could come up with an algorithm to correlate the feedback (challenge + game stats) to optimize each player’s efforts.
For endurance sports one can use online tools like www.trainingpeaks.com to build entire annual workout plans that are quite good at managing stimulus/stress vs. recovery/rest optimizing adaptation and preparing for key events. It seems like that could be (yet another) pay to play feature on 6-8 sports.
“…no way a player who goes 2 for 12 should have a positive number”.
This can be fixed if each shot has a negative value. If a goal is worth one point and each shot cost something like 0.35 points, the 2 for 12 shooter would generate (2*1.0)+(12*-0.35) = -2.2 points, reflecting both the lost opportunity of the poor shoots and the potential goals against from a quick counter.
An average shooter going 2 for 4 would generate 0.6 points and an above average shooter going 2 for 3 would generate 0.95 points.
The issue here is that not all missed shots result in some kind of defensive problem. Many times the best player on the team is relied upon to shoot a shot from half pool at the end of a quarter. This should not be punished — also many times a shot at the end of a possession can be a positive thing if the goalie tips it and you retain possession.
Count me as someone who doesn’t think missed shots should be always a negative stat. Now, if you have a button for “ball hog shoots too early and didn’t pass it to an open center” that would be an option to count some as negative
