Research into field conditions means better safety for athletes

We're trying to see how surface variability impacts athlete safety and performance. We're researching four different fields around campus. We have three different drill setup at two different locations. There we go. We're doing a lot of testing both with pieces of equipment where we are measuring field conditions, as well as bringing in the student athletes to see how they respond on the different parts of the field. They're going to be wearing ankle, IMU. They measure the impact of each step, as well as gate asymmetry, so they can see if you're kind of favoring one leg over the other. They're also going to be wearing STATSports GPS units. And those measure all kinds of things. You can get maximum speed, total mileage, accelerations, decelerations. Which is a really unique way as a turf grass researcher to look at things. That's not something we've done before, so it's really neat to kind of, you know, cross over it and work with some of the human component as well. I was a student athlete for four and a half years on the women's soccer team. I've seen so many of my teammates suffer things like ACL injuries, Achilles tears, even, and a lot of them are non-contact. I hope that this can show field managers, maybe even coaches and trainers and athletes themselves, just the importance of maintaining a good quality field. Even subtle changes can make a difference in both the athlete's performance and also have a safety concern as well.