Performance Assessment in Water Polo Using Compositional Data Analysis

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to identify groups of offensive performance indicators which best discriminated between a match score (favourable, balanced or unfavourable) in water polo. The sample comprised 88 regular season games (2011-2014) from the Spanish Professional Water Polo League. The offensive performance indicators were clustered in five groups: Attacks in relation to the different playing situations; Shots in relation to the different playing situations; Attacks outcome; Origin of shots; Technical execution of shots. The variables of each group had a constant sum which equalled 100%. The data were compositional data, therefore the variables were changed by means of the additive log-ratio (alr) transformation. Multivariate discriminant analyses to compare the match scores were calculated using the transformed variables. With regard to the percentage of right classification, the results showed the group that discriminated the most between the match scores was “Attacks outcome” (60.4% for the original sample and 52.2% for cross-validation). The performance indicators that discriminated the most between the match scores in games with penalties were goals (structure coefficient (SC) = .761), counterattack shots (SC = .541) and counterattacks (SC = .481). In matches without penalties, goals were the primary discriminating factor (SC = .576). This approach provides a new tool to compare the importance of the offensive performance groups and their effect on the match score discrimination.

Relationships Between Isokinetic Shoulder Evaluation and Fitness Characteristics of Elite French Female Water-Polo Players

“…Water-polo is an intermittent and high-intensity team sport ( Smith, 1998 ). The objective of this discipline is to score more goals than the opposite team and success requires a combination of technique, a high level of physical fitness and tactical skills ( Botonis et al, 2016 ; Ordóñez et al, 2016 ; Tucher et al, 2015 ). Consequently, the basic characteristics of elite water-polo players are the ability to throw the ball with a high velocity and to swim at high speed ( Alcaraz et al, 2011 ; Martínez et al, 2015 ; Tan et al, 2009b ; Vila et al, 2011 ; Zinner et al, 2015 ).…”

Survey on coaching philosophies and training methodologies of water polo head coaches from three different european national schools

“…In this case also Serbia showed to be the national water polo school with the highest number of employed goalkeeper coaches. Only 37.5% of total respondents declared to have a match analyst in their teams, which is an emergent professional figure that helps to produce and interpret technical and tactical indices for both their own and opponent teams (Casanova, et al, 2020;Ordóñez, Pérez, & González, 2016;Perazzetti & Tessitore, 2021;Takagi, Nishijima, Enomoto, & Stewart, 2005).…”

Compositional data analysis by the square-root transformation: Application to NBA USG% data

“…A compositional data, a type of non-Euclidean spatial data, is found in various fields such as geochemistry (Buccianti and Pawlowsky-Glahn, 2005), sports (Ordóñez et al, 2016), and biochemistry (Li, 2015). A compositional random vector is a vector whose elements are all positive and their sum is fixed constant.…”

“…Especially in elite competitive sports such as soccer, baseball, and so on, observed compositional data has been used as simple observational data, ignoring the dependency. Ordóñez et al (2016) introduced the use of alr transformation to analyse water polo offensive performance, considering the compositional data structure. This approach is uncommon in sports data analysis, and the authors also mention the lack of similar studies.…”