The present invention relates to a handheld device for counting technical or skill-based actions of individual players in sports games involving balls, for example, Australian rules football, American football, Gaelic football, rugby union, rugby league, soccer, cricket, softball, baseball, netball, basketball, hockey, handball, ice hockey, etc.
Sport games involving balls require individual players to perform a variety of technical or skill-based actions during the course of a game, for example, marking, catching, kicking, tackling, goal shooting, goal scoring, goal assisting, foot passing, hand passing, bowling, throwing, contesting, etc. The performance of individual players in a sport game is generally assessed by summed or total counts of various different technical actions that they perform during the course of the game. However, keeping complete and accurate counts of multiple different technical actions by individual players over the entire duration of a game is generally difficult or at least inconvenient for coaches, commentators, spectators, statisticians, etc.
A need therefore exists for a simple and easy-to-use handheld device to enable coaches, commentators, spectators, statisticians, etc of sport ball games to conveniently and accurately keep count of multiple different technical actions of individual players.
According to the present invention, there is provided a handheld device for counting technical actions of an individual player in a sports game involving a ball, the handheld device including a housing sized to be handheld, a plurality of buttons in the housing including count-advancing buttons to respectively additively count the technical actions and a count-zeroing button to reset each count, a memory in the housing operatively connected to the buttons to store respective counts of the technical actions, a display in the housing operatively connected to the memory to display respective counts of the technical actions, and a power source in the housing operatively connected to the memory and the display.
The count-advancing buttons can respectively correspond to predetermined skills/technical actions. One or more of the count-advancing buttons can be reserved for a user-defined technical action. The buttons can further include a count-decreasing button to subtract a count from the count of the last-pressed count-advancing button.
The sport game involving a ball can be one of Australian-rules football, American football, Gaelic football, rugby union, rugby league, soccer, cricket, softball, baseball, netball, basketball, tennis, 10 pin bowling, lawn bowls, badminton, squash, volley ball, hockey, and ice hockey etc.
The housing preferably is shaped in at least two dimensions to generally correspond to the ball used in the game and can have a generally ovate or circular two-dimensional shape which corresponds to the two-dimensional shape of the ball used in the game. The device can further include a lanyard secured to the housing to prevent the device from being dropped and damaged during use.
The power source can be a battery and/or a solar panel. The display can be an LCD or Active Matrix display. A clock can also be operatively connected to the display in the housing to thereby enable the display to indicate elapsed playing time of the game. The housing includes a reset button to reset all counts. The housing can further include an on/off button to switch the handheld device on and off.
The device can further include a controller or a processor to selectively and individually control one or more of the buttons, the memory, the counts, the clock, the display and the power source.
In a highly preferred embodiment, the device includes a data interface to transmit and/or receive data. By the data interface, the device can interact with a remote website for the transferring of recent skill counts to a web-based database, and the transferring of significant data points of interest such as personal bests, averages against the user and against other users in the database between the database and the handheld unit.
Embodiments of the present invention will now be described solely by way of non-limiting example and with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
The housing 102 includes predetermined count-advancing buttons 104 to respectively additively count technical actions. A user-defined (or new) count-advancing button 106 is reserved to count a user-defined technical action. For Australian-rules football, the technical or skill-based actions respectively associated with the predetermined count-advancing buttons 104 can, for example, include kicks, handballs, marks, tackles, goals, hard ball grabs, etc. The technical or skill-based actions associated with the spare count-advancing button 106 can, for example, include ruck hit-outs, shots on goal, free kicks, etc,
To enable a user to correct a miscount, a count-decreasing (or undo) button 108 is provided to subtract a count from the count of the last-pressed count-advancing button 104, 106. A count-zeroing (or reset) button 110 is provided to zero all counts at the end of a game so that the device 100 can be reused.
The housing 102 also includes a memory operatively connected to the buttons to store counts of each technical action, and a display 112 operatively connected to the memory for displaying counts of each technical action, lle display 112 can be, for example, an LCD display.
An alternative embodiment of the device 100 is depicted in
A cricket embodiment of the device 100 of the present invention is depicted in
It will be appreciated that embodiments of the present invention provide a simple and easy-to-use handheld device that enables coaches, commentators, spectators, statisticians, etc of sport ball games to conveniently and accurately keep count of multiple different technical actions of individual players.
The present invention is not limited to the embodiments that have been described and depicted, but variations and modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. It will be understood that the present invention is not limited to the sport games described hereinbefore, but may be implemented for any and all conventional sport games involving balls, and any and all combinations of technical or skill-based actions performed by individual players thereof.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/AU06/01937 | 12/20/2006 | WO | 00 | 8/4/2009 |