The Athletic Systems Lab is an in-progress online study that introduces a new perspective in sports, focusing on research that gives insight into leadership, team dynamics and emotional regulation among student athletes at USF.
The lab was founded by Dr. Alexander Ochoa in 2021, who has a background in rugby and judo, and also played four years of Division III football. Ochoa currently works as an assistant professor at USF in the psychology department and teaches classes such as General and Abnormal Psychology and Child Psychopathology. Ochoa received his undergraduate psychology degree from Occidental College and has a PhD in family therapy from Saint Louis University.
Ochoa and his team’s primary goal is to translate research at the individual and team levels into actionable strategies that help enhance performance for USF athletic teams. Data is collected through the use of surveys and is primarily analyzed through social networking mapping, a method that involves visualizing and evaluating a network’s connectivity.
The lab is an independent study done within USF. “I’m just a term professor at USF, so I don’t have funding, this isn’t part of my contract,” Ochoa said. “I’m literally doing this because I’m passionate about it. I love it. I want to help USF athletics be dominant on the map when it comes to sports.”
As director of the lab, Ochoa works with a group of USF student research assistants. Devika Kumar, a senior psychology major, works as the lab manager. She said, “I assist Dr. Ochoa in overseeing lab operations by monitoring research progress and working with the research assistants to prepare new research ideas, further develop our current studies, and analyze the data we receive.”
By combining his experience in both psychology and sports, Ochoa believes that a player’s performance is heavily impacted by the team that surrounds them. “I view sports psychology as very individualistic, where I’m looking at the individual, how I can help them perform better, but I think your performance can also be improved by having a robust system of individuals around you,” he said. “I talk about systems a lot, so I see the world and individuals connected as interconnected pieces with people around you.”
Due to his background in family therapy, Ochoa views sports teams through a family system model. “The coach is the parental figure, the seniors or the graduate students [are] the older siblings, [or] older cousins,” said Ochoa. “How do these systems integrate new players? How do they leave? How [can] the inclusion of a person or the removal of a person dramatically impact a sports team?”
To answer this question, Ochoa collects and analyzes data from USF sports teams.
“We send out surveys to the athletic department. I have individuals on the team rate each other on leadership qualities [and] cohesiveness. They will evaluate the overall team’s communication,” Ochoa said. Questionnaires about athletic coping skills, emotional regulation and other mental health perspectives also collect data.
These surveys are sent out during the course of the season, from year to year, in order to capture shifts and potential patterns. So far, the lab has collected data from men’s soccer, women’s volleyball and baseball for two seasons and women’s basketball for one season.
According to Ochoa, the information collected is confidential. He said, “I won’t give [player] responses to the coaches, but the coaches will know overall of how people perceived them, so they’ll have the average scores based on player perception.”
One of his approaches to researching leadership roles and qualities includes conducting surveys where he has athletes rate each other on a scale of one to four of how good of a leader their teammates are. “Zero being absolutely terrible, never going to be the leader, four is exceptional, one of the best. Collectively, I take all of that data, and I have an average of how the entire team sees each individual player, and I can see how that player average changes from preseason to postseason over [their] time here at USF,” said Ochoa.
Taking all this data together, Ochoa is able to turn the responses into a social network map of the entire team. In the graphic above, each box represents a player. If a player views another teammate as a strong leader, then a line extends from them to their teammate.
The two large boxes centered in the figure are athletes perceived as the best overall leaders as rated by their teammates. The next largest box on the left side represents an athlete that is perceived as a strong leader by most of the team. The five medium sized boxes represent athletes who are perceived as leaders by a small number on the team. The smallest dots represent teammates who were not perceived as a leader at all. From this map, Ochoa can monitor the leadership roles of a team, and see how they progress over time.
By analyzing the data, and comparing it to team cohesiveness, communication and success, Ochoa hopes to find ideal team systems that can help predict and bring in athletes that fit into that system, as well as being able to predict how teams will change after athletes leave. “You have a new player come in, the team thrives. You have a player that leaves, the team falters. It’s not just that one player’s sports performance, but it’s about the qualities and relationships that the person is bringing into the sports system,” he said.
Ochoa also tracks athlete’s qualities. For example, a first year can start out in the low twos on average perceived leadership and move up to the high threes when they reach their senior year. “Obviously there’s been some advancement from you as a player to go from the low twos to the high threes across your time at USF versus another player who starts out at the same level as you and never cracks into the threes,” he said. “So what are the differences between you who excelled as a leader over your time at USF versus another player?”
That is where the mental health perspectives surveys come into play, as Ochoa suggests that taking a look into how athletes manage mentally in sports could be correlated with how they progress in their qualities as a player.
Through this data, the lab hopes to find metrics that can be used to predict how a specific player will develop over their time on the team, based on their qualities, but also based on the team system they are a part of. If successful, Ochoa hopes that these metrics can help guide coaches and teams when deciding to make changes for their team, maximizing the team’s chemistry.
The Athletic Systems Lab is still in its early stages, as Ochoa plans to collect data for at least a couple more years. “The hope is to get all the programs here at USF on board with the lab, so we have a rich data set that we can look at,” he said.
Ochoa continued, “I meet with the athletic directors, and have conversations with them on finding new ways that we can help. The lab can help improve the direction and culture of USF athletics.”
Editor’s Note: Foghorn Sports Editor John Lindroos and Managing Editor Jordan DelFiugo are enrolled in Dr. Alexander Ochoa’s psychology classes for the fall semester.
Editor-in-Chief: Jordan Premmer, Chief Copy Editor: Sophia McCrackin, Managing Editor: Jordan DelFiugo, News Editor: Phebe Bridges, Sports Editor: John Lindroos
