As Softball Australia were deep in preparations for the inaugural U-23 Men’s Softball World Championships, the team were faced with a problem.  

Unable to take a statistician to host nation Argentina due to budgetary constraints and the costs of travel, it would take some creativity to provide the coaching team with the opposition analysis they’d need to get the team to the competition’s pointy end. The result? The formation of a group of passionate volunteers, now known as the Statisticians Task Force (STF). 

“Working with (National Pathways Manager) Clare Humberstone, we saw an opportunity to think creatively and potentially turn our weakness into our advantage,” said David Metekingi, Head Coach for the team.  

Members of the STF include Chris Trengove, Jim Giles, Kerryn Bell, Allison Pendlebury, all collaborating and contributing in some way to assist the team.  

“Our video analyst Tony Jackson spent cold and windy days at the ballpark gathering data, while the STF, which was led by Chris, scored via distance, relying on live streams to gather statistics which were then analysed and sent on to the team.” 

All in all, the STF collected data on every one of the 50 games played at the U-23 World Cup, allowing Metekingi and his coaching team an unprecedented volume of data which, in combination with further scouting and data capture, enabled the development of highly effective defensive strategies. 

“Offence wins games but defence wins championships. I firmly believe that without the STF data, combined with our video data, we would not have achieved the same level of success.” 

The establishment of the STF is a new pathway for statisticians that can potentially be incorporated with all our national representative team competitions, and was just one of the many stand out contributions made by volunteers to the success story of our Australian team at the 2023 U-23 Men’s Softball World Cup.