Sports are a major part of the everyday lives of people living in the United States.
Categorizing sports into any type of ball sport, especially basketball, raises the amount of
attention given from athletes. A major part of basketball is free throws, which could ultimately
win or lose the game for a team. With the significance of basketball, and free throws, the aim of
the present study was to analyze the visual strategies prior to a basketball free throw compared to
answers from a Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire. We analyzed 42 Fort Lewis
College students (25±7 years), 10 expert men, 9 expert women, 10 novice men, and 13 novice
women, all with a freshman to senior academic standing. Each participant completed 3
pre-participation surveys and 2 post-participation surveys containing information about
mindfulness, task and ego orientation, and competitive state anxiety. Along with the surveys
each participant also completed 10 free throw shots from the standard basketball free throw line.
During each throw the movement of the eyeballs were recorded by the Tobii Pro Glasses 2.
Results indicated two statistically significant correlation coefficients with eye fixation frequency
and task orientation (r = .312, p = .05), and eye fixation duration and task orientation (r = .370, p
= .019). The conclusion of this data can be interpreted that participants who are task oriented
tend to fixate their eyes more often and longer on the rim. It is important to remember that this
area of research has recently come into the spotlight of many coaches and athletes. These results
highlight several areas to further investigation regarding eye tracking and free throws including
diverse age groups and other ball sports.
