by FSU Professor Michael Ormsbee, Assistant Athletic Director of Sport Performance Elisa Angeles and doctoral candidate Liliana Rentería in the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine focused on the use of WHOOP bands, which use optical sensors to measure and predict how fast your heart beats, how often you breathe, how you sleep and then use that information to calculate your strain and recovery.
The ISSM research team, which works closely with athletes, monitored 113 NCAA Division I female student-athletes in soccer, golf, softball, indoor volleyball, beach volleyball and tennis. The athletes were equipped with WHOOP bands over a 10-month period, from August 2020 to May 2021.
"One day, after reviewing recovery data and noticing a clear outlier and suspected potential COVID infection, Angeles immediately consulted with Sports Medicine staff to urgently send the student-athlete for testing and quarantine," Ormsbee said. FSU researchers observed how the student-athletes’ metrics changed in the days leading up to a positive COVID-19 test and saw that respiratory rate increased three days before a positive test. Credit: Florida State University
"At that point in time, that student-athlete just arrived at a team function/watch party for the Olympics. Sure enough, she tested positive for COVID. However, because of the swift identification and action, no additional team members were contact-traced or quarantined, and no additional team or staff members contracted COVID via that event."