Driven by data – Summer 2024

FINDING WHAT WORKS

Murphy and Winters laugh at the memory of their many animated discussions — just outside of the athletic director’s office — about the data they were collecting from soccer games and practices. The excitement made speaking with their inside voices challenging.

“We were hooked, and we drove poor Nan nuts talking about it,” Murphy recalled.

Combining forces with HESS and data analytics — two of the university’s most popular majors — immediately made lots of sense to the athletic director.

Murphy and Winters weren’t in a rush, however. They began thinking of an academic-athletic partnership in 2021 when the athletic department purchased its first GPS devices. Murphy was still coaching the women’s soccer team and didn’t want to commit to the project until turning the program over to Brink following the 2022 season.

From the start, they knew protecting the athletes’ identities was vital. The data analytics students wouldn’t see the names of the players they analyzed. No individual results would be posted.

Winters and Murphy learned quickly how easy it is to become paralyzed by the sheer volume of data points.

“You can go down a lot of rabbit holes,” Murphy said.

They used trial and error to determine what metrics were most relevant to women’s soccer, their test program. They focused on distance run by players as well as bursts of acceleration and deceleration.

Another important factor was learning how to communicate their findings. The 173-page report was filled with bar graphs and charts that made it simple for Brink to recognize trends from games and practices.

“When you are doing a school project, everyone in that class is aware of the technical stuff you are describing,” said Matt Iammarino ’18, an assistant developer and analytical football researcher for the Tennessee Titans. “But in any corporation, the NFL included, you have to be able to explain it in their language or the analysis can get lost.”