One of the things I started this year for 3rd and 4th grade basketball was keeping youth basketball stats.  In prior years, I had a feel for how well people were doing but it wasn’t until I started doing the stats that it really opened my eyes.  There are two main ways to do this, keeping stats during the game via an app or piece of paper, or keeping stats after the game via game film.  I’ll try and give the pros and cons to both below.

Keeping basketballs stats via app

There are a few really good apps out there for keeping stats.  The one I’ve used the most is BreakthruStats on my iphone.  It does all the normal stats + shot charts + multiple games.  I’ve been really happy with it so far, but in a game time situation it’s really hard to keep up with everything when you have turnover/steal then missed layup and then rebound and another missed shot, etc, all in a 5 second period.  Because of this, I’ve really kind of given up on trying to keep stats realtime.  Plus being the coach most of the time means it’s almost impossible for me to do it during the game.

There’s another app out there that people recommend called “”.  I haven’t used it personally, but one of the things it features is a real time scoreboard for those not at the game.  I’m not sure how many people would actually follow along with that though, if you’re that into it that you’re following along on your phone, you might as well have that other person tape the game for you so you can watch it later.

Keeping basketball stats via film

If you’ve seen my other article “How to film youth basketball games the easy way” you know that it’s fairly easy to setup a wide angle lens camera on the side of the court and capture everything except for the far corners.  This makes it really easy to take stats after the game since you can pause and catch up when you get behind.  The disadvantage is that it takes an extra hour to do it this way, and if you’re really busy this can be a pain.  I don’t mind it though, especially now that I’m using the Breakthru basketball app.  I originally was using paper as you can see below:

It’s much organized through the app though, below is a printout of a game we played:

Obviously the app is a lot cleaner and easier to manage.  One thing about the app that is kind of a pain though is initial email setup to get the stats.  If your email isn’t setup on your phone, then you have to go through some menus to set it up, and even then it probably won’t work.  I basically had to turn off my phone and then turn it back on sometimes to get the stat emails to work properly.  I think part of the problem is that they tried to use the built in email stuff from Apple (so they could get your email address as well) and it just doesn’t work the greatest.

Conclusion

So my recommendation is to tape the games and then take stats with an app of your choosing.  That way you’ll have the games for the future when they get older and you’ll be able to enjoy the game a lot more in the moment.  If you’re constantly trying to hit your phone for stats, that isn’t going to be much fun unfortunately.  Check out my filming article for tips on how to make it a lot easier to tape games than sitting there with a video camera going back and forth.  Hopefully all these tips will make it easier to take youth basketball stats.