According to Heintzelman, the new major will be the perfect blend of the statistics program and the long-standing internship – the one that Pié participates in – through UD Athletics. 

“Our faculty [in CANR] have the expertise in analytics, and are building research interest in sports topics,” Heintzelman said. “Our partners in UD Athletics will then bring practical expertise to the classroom for our students.”

Sports performance analytics students will take core statistics classes, like Basic Statistical Practice (STAT200) and Introduction to Statistical Analysis (STAT470 and STAT471), but also dedicated sport analytics courses. 

“I will be teaching Strategy and Behavior (APEC310) which is an introductory course on game theory that is required for the sport performance analytics major and will also welcome students from other majors as an elective course,” Heintzelman said. “I am looking forward to bringing students a set of tools for analyzing strategic situations to optimize strategy in sporting and other contexts.”

Christina Rasnake, director of UD Athletics Sports Science and Analytics, created the sport analytics internship program in 2019. In addition to overseeing the internship program, teaching two Sports Performance Analytics internship classes, Rasnake is also introducing two new classes for the new major: Sports Performance Analytics (SPAX232) and Wearable Technology and Performance Analysis (SPAX403). 

“Wearable Technology and Performance Analysis will be very specific to how to utilize the technology, the ethics behind it, the athlete safety and how to communicate information to coaches and decision makers,” Rasnake said. “Sports performance analytics will have a higher focus on utilizing statistical tools and analysis programs to determine what statistics affect or don’t affect the outcome of a game.”

Jack Davis, associate athletic director of business intelligence analytics and strategy, is also slated to teach Predictive Analysis with Athletics Data (SPAX402), a class covering everything predictive modeling in sports from proper data collection to communicating model predictions to head coaches, strength and athletics trainers, nutritionists and the athletes themselves. 

“It's one thing to build these models, but it's another thing to make sure that you are getting the right story from those models and not misinterpreting them,” Davis said. “My class is teaching a lot of the theory behind those things, but then our students are going to have the opportunity within UD Athletics to take those skills and practice them in the real world.” 

Davis is right. Once students learn the theoretical side of sports performance analytics from their professors in APEC and Athletics, they can practice their skills in the field through Rasnake’s sports performance analytics internship program to cover the experiential side of the major. 

“We are able to provide a really great opportunity for our interns to work with high-level performance technology which they use to create reports about game statistics,” Rasnake said. “It began with attending games and doing post-game analysis reports, but we are now giving halftime reports to our coaches.”

From identifying where players are most efficient at shooting from in basketball to determining the best plays on the football field, reports created by interns give Blue Hen athletes a competitive advantage.

“I'm very excited to see our students simultaneously learning and supporting our UD student-athletes to improve performance,” Heintzelman said. “It will be fun to observe improved performance on the court and on the field and be able to attribute some of that to the analysis that our students are learning and doing.”

Rasnake emphasizes that joining the well-established internship with the theoretical courses on performance analytics through the major is something that not many universities can boast.  

“There's no other program out there that's doing what we’re doing,” Rasnake said. “They might have an analytics major, they might have some interns, they might have performance technology, but they don’t have it all working seamlessly together.”

The uniqueness of the new major can also assist with finding jobs or getting into graduate school after graduation. 

“In the past, the internship program has allowed interns to secure real time jobs after graduation or go on to new education paths through advanced degrees such as master's degrees or MBAs,” Rasnake said. 

Careers in sports performance analytics can range from analysts for professional sports teams to working at wearable tech companies, creating tools and wearables to track athlete performance. Some even pursue advanced degrees in data science, sports management or in business. 

According to Rasnake, no matter where the students end up in their careers, this new major will change the face of sports analytics. 

“It’s going to be game changing, and when I say game changing, it's going to change the way students work with metrics coming from athletes, as well as really build on top of what we're already doing and advance our program as a whole.”

Learn more about UD's new sports performance analytics major.