Six years ago, the Hockey Coach on the Uconn field, Paul Caddy, contacted the head of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He wanted to find an informal way for students learning statistical methods to work with his team, integrating data analysis to win a competitive advantage.
After a pandemic and various other obstacles, collaboration has never concluded.
Then, in the fall of 2023, Alyssa O’Keefe, university advisor to the Department of Statistics and Applied Data Analysis, launched a formalized sports analysis internship program and Caddy saw a new opportunity to give life to this vision.
Over the past two years, the experiential learning program for sports statistics has provided UCon Athletics statistical information to improving their performance while allowing students to obtain practical practical experience to prepare them for data in data.
O’Keefe says that she had the idea of the program after the parent of an incoming student asked if he would be acceptable for her to take advantage of her connection with a coach to get her son’s experience with a team. O’Keefe says that she has seen the opportunity to expand this access to other students who may not have these personal relationships.
“I had so many students sitting on my desk, telling myself that their dream work would be sports analysis,” explains O’Keefe. “We have 18 teams. How could we not have a way to make this connection for them? ”
In the fall of 2024, the program twinned Caddy with Julia Mazzola ’25 (CLAS), a double major in science and economy of statistical data, which analyzed the attacks of attack penalty, an opportunity for crucial notation that occurs when a fault is made in the area around the lens. The data has provided real -time information that Caddy says that he will use as part of his coaching throughout the seasons.
“During the two seasons preceding it, our performance was not what it needs to be offensively or defensively when turns,” explains Caddy. “So we need to get data to see what works and what doesn’t work.”
Having already met Joe Ferriss, former director of male hockey operations, O’Keefe contacted his idea of statistical students in partnership with sports teams. Ferriss was impressed by the concept and became the first to agree to join the program.
While the word spread around the athletics teams of the O’Keefe initiative, more teams have started to show interest. The program started with only three teams – baseball, hockey and male football – but has since extended to 11 teams, including the women’s basketball team that won the 2025 NCAA Division I Women’s basketball championship.
The internship program will add the Ministry of Sports Performance to its list of athletics programs participating in the fall and O’Keefe says that it hopes that more teams will connect.
Unlike traditional courses, this internship places students in dynamic sports environments where they work on various analytical projects adapted to the needs of the teams with which they are associated. The projects include monitoring of players positioning and movement through game images, evaluation of players’ performance during various points of the game to refine the strategy, the provision of statistical information during competitions and the analysis of recruitment data.
Many trainees work directly with coaches, integrating data meetings and game planning, says O’Keefe.
Students can earn credits for the internship and can intervene for a semester or a full year. Time commitment varies from one placement to another, and O’Keefe says that the students selected for the program must accept the conditions before their start.
Mazzola did an internship with the Caddy team during a semester, and Caddy says she felt like a member of the team.
“It’s a unique experience,” says Caddy. “She is on the sidelines during the matches. She will get a championship ring because we have won the Big East championship. We think they are part of the hockey family on the field.”
He says he hopes to continue working with student trainees and that Mazzola’s project is something that the team “can rely a little, moving through the seasons”.
For Mazzola, the program is a career springboard. She plans to start her career in the subscription of the Cigna group after graduating in May and attributes the internship to strengthen her passion for analysis and problem solving.
“One thing about subscription is that there are many pieces in motion, and there is a lot to learn,” she says. “You must take many aspects when you make a decision, and the hockey internship in the field has been very useful to learn to reconstruct things, such as the resolution of a puzzle.”