Data could help solve ACL crisis in women's game, according to software firm

Stephen Smith, CEO of sports software company Kitman Labs, stated that vast amounts of data generated in professional sports will be used to try to reduce the number of serious knee injuries suffered by female football players.

The 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was a huge success, but it was short on star players after big names like Dutch striker Vivianne Miedema, England attacker Beth Mead, and a host of others were sidelined due to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.

Smith's firm is working with a number of teams and leagues, including the reigning National Women's Soccer League champions NY/NJ Gotham FC, to find ways to help players avoid such injuries.

"What we're really excited about is that we're now working alongside a couple of female-based leagues and teams globally to start collecting that data and understand what it means," Smith said.

"(We want to) couple the game information, alongside the healthcare information and the information in relation to things like menstrual cycle, so that we can better understand the cause and effect. Then we can help these clubs and leagues to learn about how to better manage the female athlete."

Working as a senior injury rehabilitation and conditioning coach for Leinster Rugby in his native Ireland, Smith noticed that the medical, strength and conditioning, and performance departments all operated independently, generating massive amounts of data about players but failing to share it effectively.

"The idea was to be able to take all of this information, pull it into one place, and give teams the ability to create that 360-degree view of the reality of their athletes and to make way better decisions that were tailored to what the athletes actually needed," he explains.

That idea sparked the creation of Kitman Labs, a platform described on the company's website as a "centralised, advanced operating system that streamlines and automates workflows to help achieve specific performance outcomes."

SportsLigue