I’m reading this piece on an app called Game Changer. You use it to keep score and stats for youth league games on an iPhone.
It then puts all those stats on a site for the team and all teams in the league.
It’s brilliant. I have to say that because Ed Walsh and I dreamed of creating such a system about a decade ago for high school sports.
Collecting scores and stats in Maine is a nightmare. Most newspapers rely on coaches to call in details. And there are a few problems with that. Most notably is that coaches don’t tend to get the full names of players on opposing teams.
So Ed and I imagined what it would take to get scorekeepers to enter the data into our system. We would aggregate all the info and the divisions would be able to have complete stats available at a fraction of the cost and effort.
It’s a win-win – which you don’t get in any sport.
So I gotta cheer on the efforts of Fungo Media. It’s a great idea. I don’t know where it’s going to go.
I say it solves some problems for organized teams. Like I say, it should lower costs and effort for score keeping. Its success depends on how easy it is to enter information and access it. The second part is key. Leagues want stats for their own purposes. This needs to match what they want.
