Science For Sport (00:01.44)
Well, Anna, I'm delighted to invite you onto this podcast this week. First of all, welcome along and how are things out there in Utah?

Anna Cruse (00:09.848)
They're great, great weather, little lull happening with our sports. So it's good time to get work done, but also spend a lot of time outside here, which is amazing. So thanks for having me as well. Just really excited.

Science For Sport (00:22.268)
No problem at all. We're delighted to have you on. For those that might not be familiar with you, give us a little bit of info on your background because the last decade, from what I've seen at least, has been hectic to say the least going from being a competitor representing Team USA in the World Championships at rowing to now flipping over it and helping the athletes of tomorrow.

Anna Cruse (00:46.764)
Yeah, when people ask me how I got into sports science, I always say on accident. So I was a competitive rower in college and then at the elite level when I graduated, I knew I wanted to work in high performance. I loved like learning about what training meant to me and how I could basically improve my own performance or my teammates performance. Rowing is the ultimate team sport. So that sort of was laid the foundation for my interest in

sort of high performance and high performing athletes. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was an undergrad and I think that's okay and like important for undergrads to hear. But I worked in a PT clinic, I moved to Boston to keep training and thought maybe I had a really great PT, Maggie Hengem in Minnesota while I was in college and I shadowed her and she was incredible and I was like I want to be like her when I grow up.

And then I worked at a PT clinic for a year and I was like, no, I don't want to be that when I grow up. So I started racking my brain. What could I do? What could I do? I wanted to go to grad school. So I found a GA assistant coaching position for rowing and what an incredible way to give back to a sport that gave so much to me.

Yeah, just sort of fell into an internship through that grad experience with the Philadelphia union and garrison draper. And thankfully he gave me a chance. I so appreciate that. We're good friends to this day and it was COVID. So I didn't actually go to the facility. I'm sure I would have been collecting catapult data and force plate data and, know, doing all of the things that you do as like a really young practitioner on the field when you're just sort of wearing the ropes. I did none of that.

and he sort of posed a question that they were having within the organization. How do we understand the environmental demands of a sort of competition or match or training and how they affect the outcome of that match? And so I learned with a lot of YouTube that summer how to build a really cool model that

Anna Cruse (03:05.804)
basically predicted win-loss draw based on anything that was sort of static that you could predict before the season started. So nothing about injury, nothing about the lineup, nothing about who was on the team at all. It was really just standing differential, which is slightly related to that, of you and your opponent looking at altitude, how far you traveled, were you home and away? And in the MLS, home and away.

like home advantage is real. It's really hard to win away. And so that was like a huge sort of anchor of the model, but the other components played a role and it was able to predict the Philadelphia Union's upcoming season with like 70 % accuracy, something like that. It's been a little bit of time since I've looked at it, but it was around there, which was really successful for something that I didn't know how to build before I started. So was really excited about that. And then from there it was sort of...

That sort of started the story. got a job with Penn State

Applied Health and Performance Science under Josh Nelson, who's now at the Falcons. Also a really incredible mentor and has sort of helped me a lot in my career. And then from there ended up having a connection with our deputy AD, Sharmell Green at Utah and came out here and have been here ever since. But it wasn't like I studied to do this. It just sort of happened. I really liked the data side of rowing. And so here I am.

Science For Sport (04:33.132)
It's a fascinating story I've got to tell you because I think the assumption generally is for people that work in the area and field of sports science that it's something they always wanted to do. It's almost a preordained path. But clearly from your story, that wasn't the case. At what point did you switch from wanting to be a competitor representing your country at major tournaments to going down the path of sports science? And was it purely just a case of

the two lines blurred at one point and that grabbed you.

Anna Cruse (05:07.598)
It was really hard to step away, to be honest. was sort of in this elite grouping of athletes. I was a lightweight rower. So in the Olympics, there's only two seats available in the lightweight double. actually, Paris was the last Olympics that they had that event. So it's done forever from an Olympic perspective, unless they bring it back, which who knows. And so I'd gone to camps to

try to make boats and you know I've been like really this far away from making another national team and it was sort of a decision that I had to make like do I want to uproot my life and move to Florida and train in Florida for

until I either make it or don't make it. And there's some, you know, politics that happen in every sport context, right? So you had to find a partner that was fast enough that you, you know, worked well with where the weight class matched. And it's a, it's a whole thing. And I don't regret a lot of variables and so a lot of uncertainty and

Science For Sport (06:12.65)
a lot of variables there.

Anna Cruse (06:18.624)
commend everyone who's gone for it is a hard decision to make. And yeah, I just sort of got to the point where like I could continue on this like academic and career journey or I can, you know, try to finish out a sporting journey and I had a really great fall season. And there was just a day that I woke up and I was like, I think it's, I think I'm going to choose career. And so I sort of leaned into that and

It... I think it's worked out.

Science For Sport (06:49.804)
And here you are at the University of Utah now. I know also from reading your LinkedIn page that you're a performance scientist and data analyst for Svex at Silicon Valley Exercise Analytics. What does that entail?

Anna Cruse (06:53.162)
Yeah.

Anna Cruse (07:03.95)
So I just sort of consult with them but have been

working on and off with them and sort of on the side for since 2021. I've actually held that position longer than my position at Utah. And I love it. It is so different. It's a startup. We are sort of an exercise intelligence layer, if you will. So we license our algorithms. And so my role with them has sort of ebbed and flowed. If I have time to give, I give it. If I don't have time to give, I sort of consult, just give ideas.

Sometimes in early stages when I had a little bit more time was helping to build some of what we do now. But it's so different from what I do at Utah from a day-to-day interaction with athletes. We're doing a different type of science, really physiology driven. We have a team of really great physiologists that do incredible research with Spexa and then on their own. It's a fun group to interact with. Everyone's from all over the world.

It's different, it makes me think differently. I get to use my brain in a different way and you know.

Obviously our ideas that happened and what we work on at Spex are protected, like just exercising your brain in a different way helps me so much in my role at Utah. So it's just like a little side situation that is, has been so, so, so fun to sort of see it grow. I started, Spex had started in 2018 and I joined in 2021. So still really early on in the startup process. So it's been really fun to see how it's grown and changed.

Anna Cruse (08:45.905)
over the last five years and to see products that we were dreaming about five years ago coming to fruition and being integrated into products that people use every day. So it's been a really fun brain exercise that I get to be a part of. Here's a little bit tonight.

Science For Sport (09:04.617)
Yeah, I'm sure. And that leads nicely into focusing more on your work with the University of Utah over what is nearly five years now in the role there. Over that time, obviously, the whole field of sports science is evolving at a dramatic pace from methodology to technology that's available. How has that influenced the way you operate at Utah in that period?

Anna Cruse (09:30.115)
think our core values are the same, right? We want to make sure that the foundation is set and that we utilize anything that we collect. So shiny new objects are really fun. We...

encounter people wanting to sell products to us all the time, but for us it's important that if we collect it, we use it. So I think that sort of that sort of core value, if you will, has stayed with us the entire time as staff change has happened. But if we're not using something, we reevaluate why we didn't use it and if we need to continue using it. And so I think like that anchor has been really nice when we're looking at new technology.

I mean, I sat on a call this morning with a new company. So thinking about is this a right fit for us? How are we going to use the information? Is it going to actually benefit the student athlete? Is it going to actually benefit performance on the field? And if one of those answers is no, then it makes it really easy to, you know, shut the door now.

Science For Sport (10:35.935)
Yeah, it's a good anchor to have, isn't it? Let's be honest. And I guess that also plays into the systems that you've built up there at Utah and how they then formulated the programs that have been run.

Anna Cruse (10:50.605)
I think when I'm thinking about the systems, like the first one is sort of our daily workflow. And that's like a real broad way of talking about all of the interactions that happen on a day-to-day basis with all of the things that we collect.

really how do we get the information from the technology to the decision maker? And that system has evolved every single year, every month that I've been here. And I think it's okay that it is evolving. I hope that it does evolve. We wouldn't wanna be stuck in 2021 with our processes unless they're incredible and they're not quite there yet, I think. working on, I mean, when I got here, we built almost everything in Power.

RBI, like embedded it with Microsoft, sort of built like our own athlete management system so that we could get the data to the coaching staffs really, really easily. And we added Teamwork CMS last June. So that has been a new system that we're trying to work through building. But really, the most important thing is that the information is getting to the people who need it and that they're educated.

what that means. So, it's so important.

Science For Sport (12:09.323)
And that's important, that's critical. When you talk about the technology and the variation systems, the evolution of them, put into some context for us, if you can, how you've seen that workflow, if you like, change over the last three, four, five years to benefit both the coaching staff and the athletes involved.

Anna Cruse (12:31.459)
Well, it's faster now. It was a little bit clunky when we started and that was okay. We just needed to get the information out. And so it's lot smoother now. We went from just like manually exporting data from Catapult or whatever technology and then importing it and refreshing Power BI dashboards. And if you have a lot of data and you built Power BI dashboards, you know that that is...

It's a long process. moving from that to API and the data into building a data warehouse internally for us, to now sort of having that data flow directly into smart base has made just our ability to access the information and for people outside of our, internal department, there's, have three sports scientists, myself, Gretchen Thompson and, Justin Carlton. And we.

Science For Sport (13:21.867)
And that's growth in itself, isn't it, out there in Utah?

Anna Cruse (13:24.045)
Yes, yes. So adding, we added Gretchen Thompson three years ago and then added Justin Carlton this past like a month ago, I guess. He's a brand new tour staff really recently. And then Scott Willis was here. He's now with Michigan football, but he was here with us, with me through that, through the entire process too. So I want to give him a nod as well, but.

Science For Sport (13:37.887)
really recently.

Anna Cruse (13:50.233)
We, I think, you know, accessibility of that information is really important to us. We don't want to, you know, keep that locked into our, in our department. We want to make sure that there's three of us and we have 19 teams on campus. can't.

keep that data to ourselves. We have to be able to empower our strength coaches to know what the information means, to educate them on it, to help them understand how to communicate that with coaches. And the same thing with athletic trainers from a return to play perspective. They need to know what it means when we look at this, this or this, and be able to make the right decision. And we obviously have conversation there, but empowering those other staff members that work in our support staff areas to utilize the information and to trust that they know what that information is.

hugely important to our ability to have enough bandwidth to do anything. And then the coaches are an even bigger layer, right? So like helping them understand what the metrics mean that we're looking at that are really crucially important to their sport.

and how we make, how we take, you know, specific catapult metrics and make sure that they align and work on projects and models and things in the background to understand how they align with our volleyball match data and our win percentage or over under performance in a match. And then we can understand how to better prepare. But that took a ton of education with our volleyball staff, getting them onboarded to what we were doing, helping them understand that just because you have a higher player load than me doesn't mean that I didn't.

work as hard as you or that I didn't do everything else that you did it's just like maybe

Anna Cruse (15:28.16)
I'm a more efficient mover or I was in the right spot or you're a younger athlete like helping them understand that like this isn't a punishable offense. It's okay if we have ranges here. Every single human being moves differently. Like all of that little nuanced stuff that sometimes goes unnoticed. If you just hand a coach a list of you know five metrics from the day session, do they actually know what high and low mean? Are there reference points? Is there context? All of that stuff is important.

and has grown and changed as staff have changed and as we have changed as a department and grown as a department and I think that's it's okay to do that.

Science For Sport (16:08.319)
Let's dig a little bit deeper into that because I think it's a salient point that you make here. Obviously at the University of Utah, there's multiple sports that the sports sciences department have to deal with and help. And essentially, what we've been talking about is having improved workflow, but critically ensuring that the data you get, the metrics you're able to hand over to the coaching staff and athletes transition smoothly.

from sport to sport so it's relevant to each individual. How difficult has that been and what have you done to ensure that it has improved over your time?

Anna Cruse (16:44.996)
Well.

I think when it was Scott and I starting in 2021, we were just trying to plug some holes, put some band-aids on things. so everything was pretty generalized. Like the metrics that we used for swimming were really similar to the ones we use for baseball. And that just came from an in a bit, like we didn't have systems in place to, you know, improve our workflows and give us a little bit more bandwidth to dive into each sport. And now because we have a lot of that in place and things flow really smoothly.

it allows us to spend more time understanding what's important for volleyball. How can we shift things to make it more impactful for them? Or what's specifically important to a cornerback in football versus an offensive lineman? are two very different positions. like, having the systems in place allows us to have more time and we have a lot of interns that work for us too that we steal from the business school or the college of science that are...

analytics interns or statistics students or math students that come and help us understand a lot of those. So we've done a lot of exploration over the last, I would say, like year and a half specifically on what we're like the force plate, just the force plate. What metrics should we be cued into? Which ones are reliable? Which ones are not reliable? And we found some really interesting

things there, like we've done a ton of work on asymmetry. Trying to get away from a 15 % is bad to, okay, what's normal for you as a person, as an athlete? And let's look at the deviation of that asymmetry. Instead of saying that like, okay, you have a 14 % asymmetry that's inherently bad, that means that you're gonna be injured tomorrow. We don't know that.

Anna Cruse (18:33.017)
And like, if you're a baseball pitcher, 14 % might be fine. And that asymmetry might actually make you a better pitcher. And you've been doing the same movement for the last 18 years of your life, you know? So we've done a ton of work with, and that's changed some of the metrics that we feel are important for certain sports and that aren't important for sports. Right now, actually, we're...

sort of evolving that system again, sort of giving the reins a little bit more to our performance team. So each sport we have on campus has a sports performance team and it's a sports scientist, a strength coach, athletic trainer, dietitian, and then a mental health practitioner. And they meet regularly, but every single sport has someone assigned to them from each of those areas.

And trying to give the reins to them so that they can think critically about what metrics are important for their sport. Because it's important for them to be involved in the process too. Like they should have autonomy in knowing what they're doing. And it's, can't know what every, all 19 sports are working on, what their training looks like, you know? Like a strength coach should be involved in that process. An athletic trainer should be involved in that process. Maybe we have a new coach and our injury incidence has changed, right? Or maybe we have a new strength coach and our injury incidence has changed.

Like how those things should evolve with those performance teams. So they've been empowered this summer to make the decisions on what they want to see what's most important for them. What's going to move the needle for them? What are they actually going to use to help them make the best decision for their sport?

Science For Sport (20:09.515)
It sounds to me a lot of the work that's been done over the last handful of years has allowed you and the various teams to have greater context around the data, the metrics, the athletes you're dealing with. Would it be too simple of me to turn around and say that that's perhaps been the biggest improvement over that period?

Anna Cruse (20:32.593)
I don't think so. I think it has been a big improvement. I, we, one of our sort of other pillars is that we want to do good science and science is evolving your processes and it's okay. Like if something made sense five years ago and it doesn't make sense anymore, that is what science is. If we can showcase that some, this makes way more sense and move the needle more than this thing, then we should.

change and just like you know just like really intently change right we're not just like willy-nilly every month we pick a new metric and now we don't care about power anymore and I don't care about force production like those that's not what's happening it's just like small tweaks here and there we're aiming at you know

then how do we get that like last one percent, right? Yeah. And we have some really high performing teams on campus and like that's been the focus. Like how do we just move the needle this much? Like that could be the difference between third at nationals and first.

Science For Sport (21:20.563)
It's the 0.1 % that make the difference.

Anna Cruse (21:36.664)
So we're just we're trying to continually find that like small amount of edge, if you will. I mean, we do that. We've been talking about force plates, but the same thing is true for on field metrics. The same thing is true for any of our sort of testing and like how we're evolving return to play processes and everything like that. But yeah, we're I think still in building and growing and it certainly doesn't feel done. So.

Science For Sport (22:02.835)
No, sports science is never done. It's a constantly evolving field. But of course, given what you've said there, a lot of people would argue that the thing that's going to have the biggest effect on moving that needle is the development of AI, artificial intelligence. There's a counter argument, of course, that says it can run away with things and give you bad information. Where do you stand on the debate over AI?

Anna Cruse (22:05.265)
you

Anna Cruse (22:28.177)
I think I would almost put it in the realm of how we have to educate and sort of be there to...

counterpoint coaches and what they perceive from information is like the same sort of care that we have to have if we utilize AI from that component. think from a, you know, writing code and like helping us with a lot of that backend stuff, like that's happening. Our interns use it. It's okay. As long as we're not putting student athlete data into AI, that's a problem for sure. We would address. But.

I think that it can be a really helpful tool.

if you have sort of like a practitioner censoring that information. Like we hope that a coach wouldn't use AI in replacement of sports science. think that that could like as it stands right now, probably provide incorrect information sometimes or just like slightly incorrect information. And we're dealing with human beings as athletes, right? Like these are their lives. This is what they've devoted their lives to. And if we start making wrong decisions because we

have little bit of carelessness, like we start trusting too much and not using our brains, which we've trained really hard to be here, then we could be harming a student athlete. we carry that with us from a sports science lens. We talk about that a lot in our department. Are we making the right decision? Because this is her life. This is her sporting career. If she wants to play professionally, we want to help her get there. is this decision

Anna Cruse (24:14.393)
in her best interest.

Science For Sport (24:17.16)
Yeah, it's a really good point to make, especially when you put it in the context of we talk about the 0.1, 1%, can make a difference. It can work the other way as well, of course, can't it? I wonder moving forward then, given the enormous work that you and the team have done out there at the University of Utah, what's next? Where's the next major advancement, do you think? Where's the next opportunity to move forward?

Anna Cruse (24:26.424)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Anna Cruse (24:44.242)
Anna Cruse (24:52.486)
I think... I don't necessarily know the answer to that right now. I hope that's okay. We are... If you talk to me in June, I might have a better piece of information, but we're having a bit of a staff retreat in mid-June, and I think we all want to be aligned on what we're...

Science For Sport (25:06.09)
See, that's already given us intrigue. I love it.

Anna Cruse (25:16.952)
aiming towards. I don't think that our pillars or anchors or whatever you want to call them will change. We still want to do good science. We want to care for the student-athlete. We want to win championships. I don't know exactly what an advancement will be necessarily, but I think it's always important. We can't overlook the simple things. We want to use our data better. We want to use and integrate with our sports better.

can we use on-field football data with our catapult data better than we're using it right now? Are there insights that we're missing that can help us win a national championship, make the college football playoff, win a big 12 championship, right? And I think, you know, if those are, if that's what we're aiming for, we have to make sure our foundation is solid. And I think for the most part it is, but we don't, we can't always be sure that.

everything that we're doing is is the right thing. I don't know if I said that correctly.

Science For Sport (26:17.534)
Is that the overriding message then that no matter which direction as a team, as a department you go off in, it's always got to be underpinned by being anchored to a set of core values?

Anna Cruse (26:29.458)
Absolutely. You lose.

track of where you are supposed to be going, I think, if you deviate too far in one direction. I think our goal for this year is really truly defining, again, what that means. Not that we have a new staff member who has completely different experiences. How can we adjust and learn from him and what he brings to the table? And maybe we do, like Gretchen and I have been pretty aligned for the last few months when it's just been us two holding down the fort. But what can Justin add? Where can we sort of think outside the box? I'm so fortunate.

to have both of them there just like incredibly creative and brilliant people. So how do we align what we're doing so that we like we have a core value?

that we can always tie something back to. And that goes beyond us too. We have a high performance leadership team at Utah. So that's all of the departments that I mentioned earlier in the performance team, all of our head of those areas. And then we've got Pat Jenkins, who's our director of high performance. So he oversees all of our areas. And so for us to also be able to tie what's important to us from a sports science perspective to the overall goal

and pillars of Utah high performance is also really important. And that helps us align with nutrition and with strength and conditioning and making sure that we are all sort of moving and heading in the same direction. Like, I don't think you can overlook that. I think things get chaotic and it's hard to pick which direction to go and which initiative to focus on if you don't have those. So yeah, I think our next thing, especially in the immediate is like making sure we have really good clarity around that.

Anna Cruse (28:13.012)
Thank

Science For Sport (28:13.93)
Well, it sounds like to me the next thing is this leadership meeting you're having in June, which we are going to have to circle back on to find out what the outcome is. Listen, Anna, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you on this week's podcast. And if like me, our listeners, our viewers via the YouTube channel have been drawn in by many of the things you've had to say, where can they follow you on social media to stay abreast of what's the latest that's going on at Utah?

Anna Cruse (28:18.192)
Yeah. We see.

Anna Cruse (28:40.05)
I'm like a...

I'm not a social media user. I have a LinkedIn. You can find me on there. Happy to connect. Please feel, I love talking and connecting with networks. We have a great one here in Salt Lake City, but I love to expand and learn from new practitioners. If we stop learning, then what are we doing? So happy to also answer emails. You can find my email on like the Utah athletic staff directory. So please feel free to reach out there. But yeah, I'm not really a social media connoisseur.

Maybe I need to change that. don't know, but...

Science For Sport (29:15.294)
Many people would argue you have an easier life if you stay away from social media. Who knows if that's a bad thing? Listen, once again, I really appreciate your time. I'm intrigued by lot of things you've had to say, and I'll certainly be staying across the athletics departments at the University of Utah now to see how you're progressing in the weeks and months to come. Thank you once again, and all the best in the future.

Anna Cruse (29:18.104)
I think so. think so. Yeah.

Anna Cruse (29:37.436)
Yeah, thanks Richard. Come visit. We'd love to have you.

Science For Sport (29:41.353)
You got it.