Sport
Performance Lab
Mission
Unite sports, technology and country to establish Toronto as the leading global hub for sports performance.
Objective
The Sport Performance Lab will bring together leading minds in science, technology and coaching to challenge, research, and reinvent high performance.
Key pillars
Basic research
Work carried out to advance scientific knowledge without practical knowledge and develop ideas that originate from hypotheses with successful outputs published in scientific journals.
Applied research
This work aims to advance scientists' knowledge with a specific practical application in view. Ideas often come from journals with successful outputs implemented in the field.
Experimental
development
Work is carried out to achieve technological advancement via both new and existing products/processes with the ultimate goal of creating a prototype.
Sample Areas of focus
Injury Prevention & Performance Enhancement
Equipment research
Coaching & management
widenet
Overview
Athlete identification is a varied, club-by-club approach in Major League Soccer and across the globe. Our Toronto FC team currently identifies athletes for our Academy through a number of avenues but it is difficult to get the best players.
Our Digital Labs team viewed this as a challenge and developed a product to solve it - Widenet.
What is widenet?
It is a mobile app-based technology to identify young soccer talent based on speed and overall fitness.
How does it Work?
Players can complete tasks and submit times and videos corresponding to certain challenges
AR is used to set up an athlete's test area to earmark specific distances or markers
Those with the best scores appear on a public-facing leaderboard
Toronto FC can use these results to identify high potential prospects and invite them to tryout for the TFC Academy
What are the objectives of widenet?
Find new, undiscovered talent throughout the Canadian soccer ecosystem
Identify many promising athletes who may have been overlooked
Create a pipeline of talent to develop professional-level players in the future
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