Winning with statistics | UDaily

Growing up in a family with season tickets to University of Delaware football games and three older brothers to look up to, Colin Pié, a sophomore statistics major at UD, was immersed in sports from a young age. 

“My brothers and I were all athletes,” Pié said. “We all played sports throughout high school, and sports is my biggest passion. I’m a huge fan of all professional and college sports, and I love keeping up with my favorite teams.” 

As a Delawarean, coming to UD was a no-brainer for Pié, whose older brothers all attended. But although he knew he wanted to attend the University, he wasn’t sure what his path would be, so Pié applied to UD undeclared. 

After enjoying his AP statistics class in high school, he gave UD’s statistics major a chance. 

“I did well in the course, and I really enjoyed it,” Pié said. “I am also interested in applying my statistical knowledge to sports.”

In order to blend his two interests, Pié earned an internship with UD Athletics. He works to track student-athlete performance in practice based on data from wearable technology and in games with manual data collection.  

“Student-athletes wear GPS technology that assists coaches, athletic trainers, and strength and conditioning coaches in practice planning and load management,” said Christina Rasnake, director of UD Athletics Sports Science and Analytics. “Decision-makers can see real-time data such as high-intensity distance, max speed, number of sprints completed and fatigue level to name a few.” 

“We attend practices and games and track their repetitions, analyze the data we find and write reports for the coaches to review,” Pié said. 

The reports that Pié creates for coaches provide quantitative information on strengths and weaknesses within the team and within each player. 

“Take football, for example,” Pié said. “If we go to practice and they are doing a seven-on-seven drill (seven offensive versus seven defensive players), we keep track of information beyond the box score statistics, including depth of target, location of the play on the field, the nearest defender and time of play.” 

Using the data gathered during practices and games, Pié can see different trends that appear and analyze how those trends change as the season progresses.

According to Rasnake, internships allow students to get hands-on experience with sports analytics and how to communicate their findings to coaches, athletes and other training staff.