Researchers use sports analytics to study youth archery trends

With data and curiosity, one Cornell professor and his research student are right on target to discover something new for their Cornell Summer Research Institute project.

Professor of Mathematics Tyler Skorczewski and Kasper Kittredge ’18 are using sports analytics to study youth archery data.

“We are looking at trying to model archery performance or tease out some information that might be beneficial for coaches or for athletes,” Kittredge said.

They’re using a dataset that includes student competition scores from across Iowa. Mount Vernon, home to Cornell, historically has one of the state’s best teams.

“We are currently looking for change points, which are points where somebody’s performance very rapidly changes a level … and see if we can learn what that might mean,” Kittredge said.

While there’s a big audience for sports analytics, Skorczewski says this is also about digging deeper into how people learn, using math.

“If we can find out how students learn in youth archery, maybe we can compare different learning styles or different coaching styles to tease out what the best is,” Skorczewski said.

Watch their video story to learn more.