I am more familiar with what high schools do. They typically have more than one person doing stats. However, I do it myself when I cover games. I do it more or less with a play-by-play stat sheet I use and then tally up stats afterward. After some getting used to, it's not as hard. I believe colleges do sometimes basically have someone who enters official stats with someone else assisting. There are programs you can download for tablets. Those have become popular but I started doing this stuff before those came around and I'm too used to doing by hand to change.

Jump balls are can be turnovers and steals if possession changes. Or in the case of a jump ball following a missed shot, they can be a rebound for the player whose team gets possession.

And yes, in basketball, there can be only one assists per field goal.

It's really, really, really hard to do it in real time. We tried doing it with software on iPads and found it was just too hard to keep up even with two dads doing it and being responsible for different categories. What we ended up doing is video taping their games and then I would do the stats after the fact. I started video taping all his travel team games when he was in 4th grade and posting the games to YouTube. Sounds obsessive and it probably is but the other parents love it especially if one or more parents can't make the games. It also makes it easier to do the stats because you can stop it whenever you want. The other upside of having the video is that his coach has asked me a few times to put together training videos that focus on certain things like boxing out. Plus I do individual highlight videos for each of the kids every season after Nationals which they enjoy.

As far as what stats to keep, you can do whatever the heck you want. Keeping hockey assists or should-have-been-assists, which you have a ton of in 3rd grade is a good way to reward kids for doing the right things. I also track what I call hustle plays. I'm not sure what the official rule is on tie-ups but I have separate categories for tying and opponent up and being tied-up. I believe being tied up is a turnover even if you don't lose possession but I might be wrong.

I kept stats for years not only at my son's games but at most games I attended.

When I started it was on a Palm Pilot and eventually graduated to early Android.

Out of all the programs I used the best was Digital Scout.

https://www.digitalscout.com/basketball (looks like it has been moved to google play or itunes store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gamecen... )

Simple interface and speedy to keep rebounds, subs, fouls, turns, deflections and shots made/missed. Generated reports for coach at half time way before bluetooth was a thing. I imagine the company has updated the software and printing capabilities many times over since then. Always ended up with opposing parents looking over my shoulder (and in some cases spotting for me) and asking for print outs post game.

As tech savvy and given your penchant for numbers I suspect you would be a natural. Early versions were free then by his HS years I pad for a more feature rich version but I see they still have free versions. I would probably not use a full size I pad. I think a 7 inch tablet or smaller would be easier to manipulate. My old Kyocera Palm Treo and the stylus was perfect. I think the bigger it is the harder to keep the court populated and tend to the shot chart and navigate the menus/subs/turns/OR/DR etc. THe more compact form would be better for me. Good luck. If you need help PM me.

My humble advice - don't do it. Just go to the games and watch. No wonder so many kids quit before they get to 7th grade.

http://changingthegameproject.com/the-race-to-nowhere-in-... /

Alan....thanks for always contributing to the negative. Not all folks helping keep stats, volunteering and sharing with their kids are pushing the kid as if they will be the next All Pro....in fact most of the parents of the next Lebron have no intention of doing anything but watching (and sitting in the stands critiquing the coach, his decisions and loudly letting the ref know what they think..."just watching" as you say). Why would you paint ALL parents with the same brush. I say to parents, enjoy the ride, share with your kid and help them find joy/discipline/lessons from the game in their play. I found the article to focus on folks that I have not seen on this board over the years. Including the OP in that subset of adult parents and coaches is a bit of a reach. Ted, Andrew, 695 and others do not fit this mold IMHO

I think MOST (including the OP who has been a bastion of good decision making on this board) of us know sports are not life or death and that only a select few will make it to HS without getting cut...helping with that process is as important as is developing skills in a particular discipline. Your admonishment to "don't do it " and advice to just watch is a bit offputting in my opinion.

Telling a stat geek like Mike Drake to just sit there and watch is entertaining. He can not just do that...his mind does not work that way.

These stats are solely for the coach and won't be shared with everyone. Coach wants to be able to make informed decisions, recognize trends and understand what the team and each player needs to work on. Nothing we are doing here would cause a kid to drop out...I don't think my own son even knows I am keeping stats at the games.

The first game yesterday went OK, I had a friend next to me spotting for me when I had my head down which helped in the crazy sequences.

In retrospect, perhaps I did. I feel that youth sports 1) start to early and 2) have completely gotten out of hand as evidenced by a travel team for 8 year olds. This hit me square between the eyes back in October when my daughter asked my thoughts on my granddaughter (8 years old - third grade) playing on a club volleyball team. My first thought was "are you crazy" but after examining the practice schedule (2 or 3 times a week) and the number of weekends of tournaments, I asked her if she had lost her mind. Again, this is my opinion and for some parents and kids this may very well work. Where the article comes into play is that from the research that I've read, burnout from starting too early/playing too much is the leading cause of kids quitting sports before they get to junior high. In that context, my perceived seriousness of keeping stats for third graders lead to my response. Sorry if I offended anyone. Those thoughts I expressed are ones that I've developed over a long time of watching and coaching girls volleyball.

You didn't offend me, you're a boat rocker and boat rockers don't offend me.

Just to add to my son's situation, don't be too fooled by the term "travel." We play for Worthington. Half our games are home obviously, and road games are Dublin, Upper Arlington, Columbus, Hilliard, Olentangy, Westerville (in other words all within about 10 miles). We play 1 home game and 1 away game each week for about 10 weeks. We practiced 2-3 times per week before the games began and 1-2 times per week in-season. Just in case you think we're heading out of state every weekend over a 6 month season.

In my experience, rec numbers drop drastically as they age while travel numbers remain steady. Maybe that goes against national data and what your impression has been, but that has been my impression.

The irony of this discussion is the popularity of club/travel is hurting the quality of the rec programs, which forces more into club/travel...a vicious cycle. Many families would love to just do rec if they could provide at least a little bit of a challenge to their child. I'm heavily involved in youth baseball, and the difference in the 9-10 year old kid pitch of rec & travel is startling. If you've got a talented kid that loves to play, it is very difficult to keep them engaged in rec.

Part of it is just a changing of the times, where before kids spent so much time outside playing sports for fun on their own and now it rarely happens. I think a lot of the time lost there has been picked up with more team events. Maybe I'm naive, but the vast majority of kids playing on these teams love it and plead to do it. The stereotypical Dad whipping his son into playing something he doesn't want to do is the exception not the norm.

Interesting discussion. What I'd be interesting in learning more about is the evolution of travel/club teams. Below is what I considered a typical athletic experience for a boy who was very interested in sports in the 60's and 70's - at least this was mine starting in the spring of 1963.

Hot Stove League baseball in H league for three years, G league for 2, and F league for 2. Starting in junior high (7th grade), soccer, basketball and track and then staring in high school (10th grade) football for a year, basketball all three, track for a year, and then tennis for the last two. Every season there was some sport to play.

So my question is how did we move from this sort of schedule to what we have today? One thing I know for sure is that there was much more kid initiated play/pick-up games than I see now whether that was football in some field or baseball in the street.

I am a numbers guy (go figure), a parent, and coach middle school teams in the season and the varsity team in the AAU/Travel season. I use stats to supplement the teaching of fundamental basketball. While we do track typical things like turnovers/assists/steals/rebounds/scoring, we also do shot charts. Sometimes the final scoring doesn't tell the story of whether our kids are actually getting better. I remember a game two years ago that our kids were really depressed about because we lost to our biggest rival. I didn't like the loss, but couldn't convince myself we really played that poorly. The shot charts showed that we missed 15+ shots within 4' of the basket. We couldn't get the ball to go in despite taking way more quality shots than they did. I put the shot charts up in the locker room for the boys to study to reinforce that they ran the offense correctly and took good shots. Our offense continued to become more efficient as a result of that information because they recognized the anomaly. We also stress the importance of assists per made FG. I use stats to take the emotion out of how the boys evaluate their performance. I can praise kids for things other than scoring, and increase their BBIQ.

Personally, I would not start tracking anything but offensive rebounds and charges taken until around 6th grade.