UTSA Athletics taps School of Data Science to maintain competitive edge

Sophia Kennedy, UTSA director of sports performance for Olympic sports, says these technology tools help coaches and trainers assess player workloads and injury risks so coaches can align training efforts with performance goals.

“If you want to be competitive in collegiate athletics, then you want to have the best technology,” she said.

Kennedy regularly relies on data from these devices to tailor training programs for UTSA athletes. Kennedy added that many coaches and trainers may lack the technical background to fully utilize the tools.

“It’s about keeping up with the competition,” Kennedy said. “That’s why this partnership is really impactful. If you can get people who really understand the data science, then you have a competitive edge.”

That’s where the UTSA School of Data Science comes in. Keying Ye, a professor of statistics in the Department of Management Science and Statistics and a core faculty member in the School of Data Science, is among the faculty leading the effort. He believes that data science can tackle each of the challenges UTSA Athletics has identified.

“Our goal is to help Athletics use data-driven methods to improve performance, reduce injuries, increase ticket sales and optimize pricing strategies,” Ye said. “I may be biased, but I think as long as we have really good data, we can absolutely accomplish this.”

Ye noted that one challenge is the changing roster of student-athletes.

“There’s some data – especially related to the athletes – that will always be changing, because you’ll always have new athletes coming in,” he said. “We can train some general models with this data, but you never know when you’re talking about college athletes. They don’t have long-term contracts. They come, and they go.”

In addition to player performance, Ye and his colleagues will analyze sales and demographic data to help Athletics refine its ticket pricing and marketing strategies. This may include understanding who buys tickets, their age, location and whether they are UTSA alumni.

“If we have good data, I don’t think it will be difficult to build models to make useful predictions,” he said.

While performance and ticketing data are the focus, the partnership also offers benefits for students beyond Athletics. Ye hopes to involve UTSA students in the work through internships, graduate assistantships and class projects.

“We definitely want to use students as the programmers and as learners,” he said. “We can provide them with experiential learning opportunities and treat them as interns or graduate assistants.”

Depending on the complexity and sensitivity of the data, Ye anticipates involving undergraduate, master’s and even Ph.D. students in research that could provide invaluable experience and academic publications.

“This will help us produce students who have actually gotten their hands dirty working on real-world problems, not just hypothetical ones,” he said. “You can market those kinds of students very easily. Most employers will welcome them, because they can give them projects immediately. So, I want us to be training our students this way.”