Rocket Science: Mathew Young

Mat is a Tasmanian transplant, lucky golfer, and Business Development Manager at Catapult Sports.

What is your favorite arena or stadium experience?

The Melbourne Cricket Ground. Watching an Australian football game there among 100,000 people, half going for one team, half going to another, on a sunny Australian winter’s day, with a cold beer in your hand and a meat pie and a bit of banter between some of your mates … it’s hard to beat.

I was lucky that last year my parents and sister were in town from Australia for Christmas, and they’d never been to an NBA game before. So, I took them to a Celtics game at the Garden on Christmas Day.

It went to overtime and the crowd’s energy was electric. The Garden’s a special place to watch basketball and the Christmas atmosphere made it so festive.

What was the biggest adjustment moving from Australia to Massachusetts?

Winter! It wasn’t too bad this year, I think, but it’s definitely harsher. I mean, Melbourne only gets down to 45 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the depths of winter. Boston … different story.

Lots of little things too. The police in Australia have a limited tolerance for speeding, so you’ll get a ticket for going four miles over the limit.

Also, everybody uses PayPass in Australia, so if you want to buy a coffee or groceries you just tap your card on the machine and that’s it. There’s no signing for everything. Supermarkets are all self-serve. You get that here with Apple Pay and such, but it hasn’t taken over in the U.S. yet. It’s the little day-to-day things where you notice the difference.

When you listen to music when you’re working, what kind of music is it?

I am a weirdo with the music I listen to. I was listening to some classic jazz, yesterday. I was listening to Disclosure today, who are an electro-pop band. Actually, I’ve taken to listening to Boston Sports Radio.

Oh no.

It’s wild. Just to have a 50-year-old guy call up in the middle of the afternoon and say that to trade Brady, you need to trade Gronk, and Bill Belichick can’t coach anymore. That guy calls and says the same thing every week and then he turns around and is totally supportive of the team on Sunday. It’s quite funny.

Is it true you hit a hole-in-one?

I was on King Island which is an island off Tasmania. Really small, about 1,500 people. The name of the course is Cape Wickham, it’s in the top 5 or 10 ranked courses in Australia. A beautiful golf course on the edge of this island that sits in the middle of the Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria.

It was the 16th hole, and I was with a dozen of my best friends from high school and college. The perfect crowd to bear witness. I actually lost my first ball! So, in reality, it was my second ball off the tee. I missed the tee by about three meters to the left. The ball hit a bank on the edge of the green, it just rolled straight across the green and dropped in the hole. I’m still gonna claim the hole-in-one on the scorecard, so it’d be interesting to throw it out there and see if anyone’s on my side!

What’s a coming trend related to wearables in sports?

Wearables are already really ingrained in pro sports, maybe more than most fans realize. We’re probably at the point where they are an essential part of helping athletes reduce their risk of getting injured and perform at peak levels.

They’re so embedded in day-to-day training and operations, I think the real area of expansion will be data-related. I think we’re gonna come out with more specific algorithms that detect and monitor different things, like a pick and roll in basketball, for example. Being able to seamlessly combine this wearable data with video so that athletes and coaches can see the ‘what’ with the ‘why’ to help them answer some questions that they may have.

I’m not sure how soon this will happen, since there are a lot of hoops to jump through, but the gambling side of things is really interesting too. The data collected from wearables can inform bettors in different ways, especially when it comes to in-game wagering.

The idea that someone at home can see real-time data displayed on their screen about speed or situational performance or player-on-player match-ups … I think that context would be exciting for the fans watching at home. Sports seem to be facing more competition from video games and so many other forms of entertainment out there now.

What is your favorite outdoor space?

I grew up water skiing in a place called Lake Barrington, which is a lake in Tasmania in Australia, and that’s got some fond memories of just sitting on the side, skiing on the water, spending time with friends and family.

I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts about seven months ago, and there’s a basketball court about half a mile from my house. That’s probably turned into my favorite outdoor space at the moment. I’ll wander down there after work and there’s always people playing a pick-up game. It’s nice to just walk down there and unwind for an hour, forget about whatever else is going on.

Follow Mat on Twitter @mnyoung10