We set out with the goal of tracking the amount of height change in a pitcher's rise ball. We collected video evidence from three of Coe's softball pitchers at one of their indoor practices. We analyzed ten videos for each of the three pitchers using Tracker, a video analysis program. Tracker enabled us to plot the position of the ball in flight through each of the video's frames. We then created position time graphs for all thirty videos. However, we ran into difficulties trying to analyze our 3-dimensional calibration of 43 ft (mound to plate) in Tracker, which is a 2-dimensional program. Because our filming had to take place at an angle due to limited space constraints, we could not incorporate the z-axis into our calibration of the videos, so we were not able to track the change on the y-axis effectively. While we originally intended to compare the change on the y-axis between pitchers, we could only compare their x-axis motion.
We found that the pitches had cubic fits, so we analyzed each of the coefficients per pitcher. We calculated and plotted the averages for each pitcher. We had large standard deviations and variances for each pitcher, so a larger sample size would have been beneficial to obtain a more accurate sample mean. We found that Arran's rise balls traveled with a higher velocity earlier than both Kalyn's and Mariah's. Mariah's pitches sped up faster than Kalyn's as they got closer to the plate. While we were not able to analyze what we originally intended to, our data still led to relevant insight for the pitchers' rise balls.
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