Students investigate how baseball players use performance data, habits, and support systems to improve while managing pressure, confidence, and mental health. Using observations from the A’s game, scorekeeping, player and coach interviews, and simple skill-data collection, they study what stats reveal, where data has limits, and how choices affect growth over time. They apply those insights by building and revising an improvement plan and player-growth product that connects physical performance, emotional well-being, and long-term enjoyment of the game. The experience helps students see how evidence, reflection, and collaboration can guide improvement in sports and in their own lives.

Students will analyze baseball performance data from games, interviews, and practice trials to explain growth, setbacks, and the limits of statistics and measurement. Students will model how forces, motion, and stored energy affect baseball actions such as throwing, hitting, and fielding, and use appropriate tools to improve precision in their observations. Students will collaborate to set personal performance and wellness goals, document improvement over time through journals or trackers, and revise plans based on feedback, reflection, and evidence. Students will communicate through scouting reports, player comparisons, and exhibitions that show how pressure, confidence, habits, and mental health can shape performance and long-term enjoyment of the game.

Throughout the project, students create scorecards from the A’s game and class scrimmages, short video or audio reflections, interview note-catchers, and a habit tracker for sleep, exercise, support, mood, and performance. Each student also builds a mock goals journal or player growth portfolio for a chosen, dream, or fictional baseball player that includes stats checks, mental health check-ins, revisions, and evidence of improvement over time. By the end, students produce a scouting report presentation or player profile poster/slide deck comparing player attributes, pressure responses, and key performance numbers such as batting average, on-base percentage, ERA, strikeouts, and errors. Final products are shared as a data-backed case study and personal improvement plan that connect baseball performance, habits, confidence, and long-term well-being.

Kick off with artifacts from the April 30 A’s game: students examine scorecards, short video clips, and photos, then generate “I notice/I wonder” questions about player performance, mistakes, pressure, and body language. Next, run a quick batting-or-throwing challenge where teams collect simple class stats across multiple trials and compare how it feels to perform while being watched versus in a low-pressure round. Follow with a short clip or quote set from baseball players discussing confidence, setbacks, and mental health, and have students connect those voices to the data they just collected. Close by introducing the driving questions and asking students to make a first prediction about how stats can help improvement without taking away enjoyment.

Host a “Stats and Stories Dugout Night” where families, classmates, coaches, and invited players rotate through student-led stations featuring scouting reports, player comparison posters, and mock goals journals. Each student or team presents an improvement plan that connects performance data, habits like sleep and exercise, and mental health strategies, then explains one long-term takeaway about staying healthy in and beyond baseball. Include a short live share-out or recorded mock interview segment where students respond to questions about pressure, setbacks, confidence, and how their thinking changed over the project. End with an interactive station where guests try a simple baseball skill, view scorecards from the A’s game or class scrimmages, and leave feedback on which strategies for growth and resilience felt most realistic.