学生统计学家将研究带到比赛日
Junior Conor Kerr teamed up with Carolina 体育运动 和 statistics scholars to create the 运动分析情报实验室.
On basketball game days at Carolina, Conor Kerr is always close to the action.
从科尔在太阳城娱乐的第一年开始, the junior from Wilmington has worked with the men’s varsity basketball team as a student statistician, 他帮助创造了这个角色. 的 position bridges re太阳城娱乐城 和 athletics to provide Carolina’s coaching staff 和 players with pivotal information to help improve performance on 和 off the court.
He got the idea to pursue sports re太阳城娱乐城 with Carolina 体育运动 before he enrolled, asking the admissions office to connect him with athletics teams who might want to work with an undergraduate statistician.
“I wanted to make an immediate impact on my community,” said Kerr, a double major in 统计与分析 和 经济学 with a mathematics minor in the 文理学院.
When someone on the men’s basketball staff gave him a call, 让我得以进入卡罗莱纳, 他说.
“开始的很慢，”科尔说. 在道格·霍尔沃森的监督下, 首席运动教练, 还有男篮的工作人员, 科尔开始研究夏天的数据. His first projects focused on scouting or evaluating players’ 和 the team’s overall strengths 和 areas of improvement. But player performance soon became his main area of interest.
霍尔沃森和 运动与体育科学 和 统计与运筹学 departments helped Kerr re太阳城娱乐城 possible effects of players’ training intensity 和 load on game day performance. He used metrics from wearable accelerometers — small sensors that collect player data like sprints, jumps 和 stops in real time as they practice — to analyze the effects of practice time 和 movement intensity on game outcomes.
科尔太阳城娱乐，数据支持了卖空, 在比赛前一天和更长的时间里进行高强度的训练, 比赛日前两天减少高强度训练. 他在去年春天的科学会议上展示了他的太阳城娱乐 Office for Undergraduate 研究’s Celebration of Undergraduate 研究. He was able to repeat the re太阳城娱乐城 with the women’s varsity basketball team, which he has worked with since the summer before his sophomore year.
在这个过程中, 科尔说他学到了很多关于篮球的知识, sport science 和 professional life from Halverson 和 is “incredibly proud to call him a mentor.另一位导师是马里奥·贾科马佐, teaching assistant professor in the 统计与运筹学 department.
Giacomazzo encouraged the creation of a formal program to exp和 undergraduate sports analysis opportunities to other Tar Heels. 的 运动分析情报实验室 was founded in 2022 和 became a formal tie between Carolina statistics 和 athletics.
除了篮球, the SAIL program works with varsity swimming 和 diving, women’s varsity tennis 和 the Applied Physiology Laboratory –– including professor Abbie Smith-Ryan 和 doctoral student Sam Moore –– in 运动与体育科学. SAIL has also grown its team: Two more graduate students 和 a faculty member have joined, 和 SAIL is accepting applications for more undergraduate sports analysts.
2025年毕业后, Kerr plans to pursue a master’s 和 doctorate in 经济学 和 to “lead a life of public service through creative re太阳城娱乐城 和 make a positive impact on those in my community.”
SAIL, he hopes, can make a similarly positive 和 long-lasting impact.
“我希望, 随着集团的不断壮大, 它将成为北卡罗来纳大学的主要内容, where people from all over the university can come to collaborate on top-notch analytical re太阳城娱乐城 in sports.”
