I am trying to help some friends build a system for sports training data acquisition, and at minimum we need a method to accurately read when a player crosses the start line, and automatically tell different players from each other. (And also can't rely on anything much thicker than duct tape laid on the track, which is about 10 feet wide. So receivers placed either to the side or suspended above the track.

I have been playing with some video based systems, but I'm running into reliability issues (Training is frequently in poorly lit arenas.) and I've started looking at RFID solutions. I'm assuming a high frequency active RFID tag system can give me the data resolutions that I need, but the market appears rather flooded with products and lean on actual details. I'm finding lots of info on shorter ranged devices, ones that can bulk read tags from a few inches away are easy to find and price, but I'm having trouble finding much info or prices on devices that could read from a few feet away.

Anyone have any leads or suggestions?

Project is focused on roller derby, specifically timed lap trials. Our goal is to be able to collect at least one data point per lap, ideally being able to track their position through the entire lap, and then generate live reports for each skater. (History, distance from idea/minimum, personal bests, etc.) However I would prefer if I could build the software system backing it to be flexible enough and easily applied to other sports and on various track sizes/layouts.