On a relatively cool morning, at least for July, a group of middle schoolers are playing soccer on a makeshift pitch on the Humanities Lawn at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. While this might sound a bit unorthodox, the kids are actually taking part in a soccer camp with a twist. Not only are they honing their soccer skills, they’re also learning how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can play a role in sports.
Here’s the neat thing: each of the 16 participants are wearing GPS trackers while they play soccer. After an hour, they’re off to a classroom where they will analyze the data gathered from the trackers. From that data, the kids will learn how fast and far they run, code the information in Python and eventually develop a webapp to share what they’ve learned over the five-day camp.
It All Started Over Coffee
Josh Rosenberg
A couple of years ago, Josh Rosenberg, an associate professor of STEM Education in the UT Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education (TPTE) and Gus Alvarez, a data analyst and director of growth with One Knoxville Sporting Club, sat down over coffee to discuss an idea. Both Josh and Gus are really into soccer; they’re also really into data. So, why not merge the two and bring sports analytics to youth?
“Gus had this vision of bringing sports analytics to kids because it could give them an engaging context to learn about data and how it can fit into sports. It also can help improve their soccer,” said Rosenberg. “I helped to incubate the idea along with Gus and we laid out what a sequence of classes looked like, and then Gus would just take off and run with them.”
For some, STEM concepts can be a challenge. However, when the concepts are applied in a sports setting, learning takes on an exciting dimension.
“It was just something that I really wanted to do,” said Alvarez. “I think education needs a bit of a fresh look, especially STEM education, where it can be so inaccessible for a lot of kids. So to me, this is a way to make it really engaging and create a new avenue for learning some really difficult skills.”
“A lot of kids play sports because they like to play sports,” said Rosenberg. “So, by using sports as the basis for learning STEM, you have some degree of buy-in that’s not always present in formal educational contexts. It’s something kids already like.”
Getting kids to think about data early in life can pay dividends in the future, according to Rosenberg. By planting that seed early, it might even lead to a STEM-related career.
“I think I would want for kids to understand that there is data in their everyday lives,” said Rosenberg. “That they can learn more in the future and possibly even a major in college or through a job that has something to do with data, whether that’s in sports or in some other area. Then, they start to think about data as something they can use and they can have an impact.”
A Community Partnership is Formed
Fast forward to July 2024 and that makeshift soccer pitch on the Humanities Lawn. Sam Wesibrod, Executive Director of the One Knox Collective, is watching the idea hatched by Alvarez and Rosenberg become a reality.
“Josh grew up playing soccer. He coached soccer. He’s one of the leading data science minds in the country,” said Weisbrod. “This ticked all the boxes for him and so I immediately had to get him involved once I heard about this concept. So Josh had been integral to the development of this program kind of from the start.”
As a faculty member, Rosenberg, along with Alvarez and Weisbrod, helped get the ball rolling at the university (pun intended). It was a perfect fit between the One Knox Collective and UT to keep kids physically active while exploring concepts that may lead to a STEM-related career.
Community partnerships like this one play a major part in an expanded outreach role for the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences (CEHHS) and the College of Social Work. UT faculty experts, along with community leaders like Weisbrod, are starting to make a marked impact in the Knoxville community and beyond.
“We have so many different ways that we hope to partner with UT, with CEHHS and the College of Social Work,” said Weisbrod. “For us, yes, of course we want to develop pro soccer players, but way more than that, we want to have a positive impact on our community.”
Off to the Computer Lab
After an hour playing soccer, it’s off to the Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (HPER) building and the computer lab to examine the results of the morning. During the weeklong camp, the kids spend one hour playing soccer and about two hours in the computer lab analyzing the day’s data.
“Then all of a sudden, they want to know who’s faster than who and who’s doing what. But we’re reading bar graphs and learning about histograms and little by little all of a sudden we’ve made an app,” said Alvarez.
The web app that Alvarez is describing is a dashboard where each camper makes a graph, along with pictures and highlights of the week’s soccer play. The kids are having so much fun working with the data they’ve gathered that they may not realize they’re learning a valuable skill.
“What I hope they get out of it is that they have a ton of fun, to be honest with you. And that would be out here on the field, but also in the classroom – that learning math and computer skills can be playful and fun,” said Alvarez.
By the end of a very ambitious week, the campers walked away with a newfound way of looking at sports through data science. They now understand how to ask a statistical question, collect and analyze data, organize and structure data, and share their findings.
As Alvarez calls it, “A true data scientist’s initiation.”
“Parents and coaches use data to reflect on their play. It’s not always clear what we should collect data on or what’s the most important thing to try to quantify. And that’s part of learning to work with data,” said Rosenberg. “What do we want to measure and what do we not want to measure? What’s something like team spirit over the vibes of our group that we can’t really quantify, but we still think that matters in trying to kind of marry those two perspectives together, I think is part of the fun of the data in soccer.”
You can see a typical day at the Soccer Lab Camp here.
We’d also like to thank Josh Weinhandl, associate professor of biomechanics in the department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies for allowing the campers to utilize his biomechanics lab to experience a research lab environment.
If you’d like learn more about empowering youth through the science of soccer, visit datarook.com