The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdown and regulations have drastically altered the world of competitive sports. The global shutdown beginning in March 2020 put a significant strain on athlete's ability to train, as many fitness centers were closed to prevent disease transmission. When it was deemed that athletic competition was safe to resume, there were still strict regulations in place to support public health efforts. This retrospective study primarily aims to evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 safety regulations in competitive sports. Specifically, the successfulness to correctly implement social distancing guidelines is of high interest. A secondary aim of this study is to assess changes in workload during preseason training before COVID-19, during the time of heavily enforced COVID-19 regulations, and following strict COVID-19 restrictions, as workload can be a predictor of athletic injury. Participants in this study included Virginia Tech Women's Soccer athletes and data were analyzed from the first 9 preseason training sessions during the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons. Data were generated from participants wearing the STATSports Apex device during training. A custom MATLAB spatiotemporal program developed by the Williams Research Group was utilized to determine player proximity. Total distance (m) and high metabolic load (HMLD) (au), and high-speed distance (HSD) (m) metrics were analyzed to understand changes in participant workload. It was found that overall the Virginia Tech Women's Soccer Team's implementation of the guidelines was effective, as there were no invasion violations during the 2020 preseason sample. / Master of Science / The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the world as we know it. Competitive sports are no exception. The worldwide shutdown as a result of COVID-19 made it difficult for athletes to train while in isolation, as most facilities were closed to prevent disease transmission. When sports were able to continue again, there were still barriers preventing normal practices and competition. Athletes were asked to make every effort to maintain social distancing, even during training sessions. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate how well NCAA Division 1 Women's Collegiate Soccer players maintained social distancing during preseason practices. A secondary goal of this study is to uncover changes in workload from before COVID-19 (2019), during strict COVID-19 regulations (2020), and when COVID-19 restrictions had been less enforced (2021 and 2022). The reasoning for this is that how much work an athlete does can be indicative of risk for injury. If an athlete does significantly more work than usual, there is a higher risk of injury. This study will use global positioning systems (GPS) and measures that reflect workload collected from Virginia Tech Women's Soccer players. It was found that the players remained farther apart during the 2020 season due to the emphasis on social distancing, and that the workload will show a gradual increase to prevent injury. Overall, the study found that the COVID-19 regulations were effectively implemented among the Virginia Tech Women's Soccer Team in the 2020 preseason when restrictions were the highest.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115232 |
| Date | 26 May 2023 |
| Creators | Andreano, Kylea Joelle |
| Contributors | Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise, Williams, Jay H., Tegarden, David P., Serrano, Elena L. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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