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A Comprehensive Databank Designed for Student-Athlete Research

Significant barriers can exist when conducting research with student-athletes. Obtaining individual consent can be logistically complex, and navigating athletic department protocols can pose challenges, as these departments are often inundated with requests and have limited bandwidth to support external research.

To overcome these barriers, we developed a centralized, IRB-approved databank that consolidates student-athlete performance, wellness, health, and academic data. With a large and diverse volume of records, this resource is purpose-built to support advanced analytics and artificial intelligence applications, enabling more scalable, ethical, and impactful research.

Student-Athlete research needs a boost…

  • Less than 5% of sport science research is conducted in real-world, collegiate athletic environments. (Abt et al., 2020; Claudino et al., 2019)
  • Over 80% of NCAA athletic departments collect performance and wellness data, but much of it is under-analyzed, under-utilized, or remains siloed. (Luczak et al., 2020)
  • Fewer than 1 in 10 studies on athlete monitoring involve integrated data from health, academic, and performance domains. (Luczak et al., 2020)
  • Sample sizes are often underpowered: 50% of published sport science studies lack the statistical power to detect meaningful effects. (Abt et al., 2020)
  • Data fragmentation is cited as a primary barrier to advancing injury prevention and performance optimization in elite sport. (Passfield & Hopker, 2017; Zadeh et al., 2020)
  • Student-athletes miss 1–3 weeks of sport per injury on average. Targeted data use could reduce these absences significantly. (Seshadri et al., 2020)
  • Coaching staff are often forced to act as data analysts and privacy gatekeepers without adequate tools or support, limiting the impact of the vast data already collected in collegiate sports. (Brewer et al., 2025)

Despite the immense data collected on collegiate athletes, much of it remains untapped – the UF Athletics Databank changes that.

Our Solution: A Research-Ready Databank

  • Performance data (force plates, wearables, GPS, motion capture)
  • Health & injury data (sports medicine medical records)
  • Wellness & physiological data (DEXA scans, heart rate, hydration)
  • Academic records (GPA, major, attendance)

All data is stored securely on HiPerGator, with full HIPAA and FERPA compliance and a rigorous governance process.