A sport in which a player competes with teammates to achieve the competitive performance aims of each team. Examples include football, soccer, basketball and cricket. Also, curling, synchronized swimming, rowing eights, four-man bobsled and sprint relay races.
In contrast, solo sports (such as wrestling or MMA) do not require teammates and are contested by one person at a time. While these types of sports require considerable physical fitness, they may not improve the agility, endurance and hand-eye coordination of a student or young person compared to other team sports. They may also increase the risk of injury and psychological stress, and they can be expensive for schools to organize and run.
While working as part of a team in a team sport can be challenging, it is also highly beneficial for athletes. As explained by the Janssen Sports Leadership Center, working with teammates teaches athletes to collaborate and communicate, which can help them develop a sense of community and responsibility in other areas of their lives.
Studies of team sports and their performance have shown that teams exhibit emergent patterns of stability, variability and transitions in their functional states. These patterns are channeled by surrounding constraints (i.e., environmental and informational) which structure the state space of all possible configurations of the dynamical system. Such patterned energy distributions can be measured with motion sensors and have been used to measure the synchronization of players’ lateral and longitudinal movements as well as their expansion and contraction movement patterns which are often instigated by changes in ball possession.