Cunupia FC's technology attracts UWI students

On­ly re­cent­ly, the cen­tral club, the newest mem­ber of the Pro League, signed a five-year mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the Sports Sci­ence So­ci­ety at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Cave Hill cam­pus in recog­ni­tion of the club's pi­o­neer­ing role in the use of ad­vanced sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy on the foot­ball field.

Cunu­pia FC is present­ly the on­ly lo­cal foot­ball team in the coun­try and the Caribbean us­ing a per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment sys­tem, which al­lows for com­pre­hen­sive mea­sure­ments and cap­ture of vir­tu­al­ly all as­pects of foot­ball play­ers on-field ac­tiv­i­ty. This gives coach­es and oth­er tech­ni­cal staff mem­bers an in­sight in­to play­ers' strengths and weak­ness.

It al­so, with ob­jec­tive da­ta, al­lows staff to con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess train­ing pro­grammes and match sta­tis­tics.

The agree­ment was ini­ti­at­ed by Trey Hart, the as­sis­tant coach at Cunu­pia FC, who is the hold­er of a BSC in Sports Sci­ence from the Cave Hill cam­pus.

On Thurs­day, Cunu­pia coach Michael De Four said he sees the MOU as a huge step­ping stone to­wards the en­hance­ment of sport lo­cal­ly and through­out the Caribbean.

Hart praised De Four and Taahir Bul­bu­lia, pres­i­dent of the Sports Sci­ence So­ci­ety, for their dili­gent work through­out the process.

The aim is to give hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence in­to a pro­fes­sion­al sport and show­case to stu­dents the pos­i­tive im­pact of en­com­pass­ing Sci­ence in sport and the mea­sur­able im­prove­ments it sup­ports.

The club, in on­ly its first for­ay in the coun­try's top-flight foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion, broke two key records by win­ning their first four match­es and qual­i­fy­ing for the semi­fi­nals of the First Cit­i­zens Cup last year. And in the on­go­ing T&T Pro League, De Four in­tends to spring more sur­pris­es.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian