Maryland Mathletics

As Dr. Lawrence Clark, Associate Dean in the Office of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Maryland, looked out across the room on Thursday, July 20, he could see his dreams coming true right in front of him as middle school students from around Maryland poured into the Gossett House Auditorium. Over 60 Mathletes sat in the black leather seats in the academic hub for Maryland Athletics, waiting to start a day filled with learning about sports science and data analytics.

Clark could’ve never imagined that his vision for the Maryland Sports Data Analytics Camp For Youth, more commonly known as Maryland Mathletics, would progress to the point where so many kids attended a summer camp dedicated to combining sports and math together. He, along with former UMD faculty member Stephanie Timmons-Brown, wanted to create a summer curriculum that would help Black youth around the DMV develop their math skills and connect with the concepts through sports.

“We really wanted to try to tackle and engage students in building up their math skills because the data just didn't look good,” Clark said. “The performance data did not look good for particularly our Black boys in math. So we wanted to create a summer experience to keep them engaged, to push them to think about mathematics as something that they can enjoy within the context of the ways that they're socialized.”

After piecing the camp together during the first few years, the possibilities of Mathletics continued to grow to its current heights, as Clark’s camp has grown to include two college campuses, the University of Maryland and Coppin State University in Baltimore. Additionally, the camp has partnered with Maryland Athletics, where the Mathletes have the chance to work with the IT wing of the athletic department to collect data and learn about math and statistics from a new angle.

“This shows the depth and breadth of what this institution is about, and more specifically about education and this is an educational program,” Damon Evans, the Barry P. Gossett Director of Athletics, said. “But blending an educational program with athletics and letting these young people know that you can do both is truly amazing. You don't have to be one or the other. So what Dr. Clark is doing and his team is amazing, and the exposure that this gives these young people to this institution is significant.”

In the first couple years of operation, Clark pieced together Mathletics with a focus on teaching young Black boys around the area through college-aged counselors who looked like them and were STEM majors. Eventually, Clark opened the camp up to both boys and girls of underrepresented communities.

At the same time, Clark was on the hunt for top-notch instructors at the middle-school level who could help with teaching elementary statistics to the Mathletes and help conduct an investigation project. 

“One of the things that we really wanted to do was to have students engage in a project of some sort or investigation of some sort so they can have a product at the end of the three weeks,” Clark said. “Through that, they can show what they've learned and have been thinking about, because we wanted them to have a good time and collect data on their own performance and do all these great things, but we wanted them to be able to walk away and say, ‘Wow, I thought about a really interesting question and I gathered some data. I probably wouldn't have done that this summer, but being in this experience, I did.’”

After sustained success in the early and mid-2010s, Clark decided to apply for funding through the National Science Foundation (NSF). Through the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grants, Mathletics had the ability to grow to Coppin State, an HBCU in Baltimore as a second campus.

After the COVID-19 pandemic limited Mathletics in 2020 and 2021, Clark got right to work on building the brand of Mathletics, connecting with Evans to partner with Maryland Athletics, achieving what he considered to be the ‘ultimate goal.’

“When you can see what coaches do, what performance trainers do, you see that they use data a lot in their everyday work,” Clark said. “I really wanted kids to see that because I felt like if we don't finally get there, showing them how professionals in the field in our athletics department use data to inform lots of things like litraining, coaching, marketing, you name it, then we've missed the opportunity that we have here.”

The pairing of sports and STEM is something Clark emphasizes as something that can coexist for those who are dedicated to sports, whether as an avid fan or as an athlete. By connecting with the Mathletes in their love of sports. His hope is that the campers are thinking about their long-term future and the possibilities that can come from sports analytics.

“They don't really see that the world doesn't work where those two things can kind of coexist,” Clark said. “And we want to continue to push the systems to allow those two things to coexist.”

With his role in leading the charge for Maryland Athletics, Evans sees the work of college athletics and the analytics that go into helping the Terps perform at their best as a way to promote higher education, and he sees Mathletics as a great intersection of the athletics program being a part of the university, not completely apart.

“I want to use our platform to uplift the research of the institution, the academics or the institution and all the various programs,” Evans said. If we can do things from an athletics perspective to help out with that, then we're doing our job. The purpose of college athletics is simply to promote higher education, and this is a great opportunity to do that, whether it's through sports science, whether it's through data analytics, what have you. This presents a great opportunity for us.”

After Clark and Evans spoke to the Mathletes in the Gossett House Auditorium on the Thursday of the field trip, the students had the opportunity to go across the street to the Jones-Hill House, where they had the chance to participate in different sports science drills to obtain data to be analyzed over the next week in camp.

Timothy Santosa, an IT Software Engineer for Maryland Athletics, worked with the Mathletes at Jones-Hill House to participate in three data collection exercises. With a force plate test, the students jumped on a plate, measuring each leg and how strong each leg is with a jump. Following that, the Mathletes engaged in a 1080 running drill, where students track a sprint profile with a harness placed on the student. Finally, students participate in the 10-yard dash, tracking their speed through timing gates.

With the rise of sports analytics across all levels of competition, Santosa says that exposing middle school Mathletes to data used by collegiate and professional sports teams gives them an idea of what’s possible through tracking sports data.

“When you're growing up, you don't really relate to math and it can get boring,” Santosa said. “And I think that putting it in the context of sports, it helps them realize if it’s something that they’re really passionate about, and they could really just dive deeper into it more and more. At the same time, for those that are athletes as well, it lets them know if they're on the right path and they could start taking their own data and put it towards their training and help them track and develop into what they want to do.”

The trip to College Park to collect data at Jones-Hill House and the final data presentation on Friday, July 28, were just two of the marquee days that the Mathletes got to experience during their three-week long camp experience. The Mathletes at the camp spend time learning how to collect and interpret data at their camp site either at UMD or Coppin State while also having the chance to record their own data collection at a Washington Mystics WNBA contest.

As an overall experience, Clark wanted Mathletics to break down boundaries for underrepresented communities at the University of Maryland, letting Black, Asian and Hispanic youth around the community that they have a place at the UMD campus.

“I think it's a small cost for an opportunity to literally bring kids in that live two miles away from the University of Maryland, but would have never come on this campus,” Clark said. “Many of them have never been opened up to what the University of Maryland and what Maryland Athletics has to offer. So I was very excited about finally making the types of connections that I wanted to make by taking them to Gossett Hall.”

Through the experiences of Mathletics, Clark hopes that the Mathletes hold onto the experiences they gain through the camp so that they have a potential career path that they can go down later in life.

“We just want to plant a message in their head, and we want them to remember when they had this experience,” Clark said. “They're more than an athlete. Pursue your mathematical interests, love sports. Know that there is an entire mathematical and statistical and data science world behind sports if that's what you choose to pursue.”