Data Solutions 2025-26 Summary

Introduction

An Integrated Support Team (IST) is a collaborative group of individuals who support athletes, coaches, and teams by consolidating expertise from their respective domains to ensure that athletes are optimized for performance. This is a model used by numerous professional and national sport organizations, and is being implemented with Waterloo Warriors Athletics and Recreation to provide both experiential and work-integrated learning opportunities for students and best-in class support to several varsity athletics teams.

As an IST member, students have the opportunity to get academic credits while collaborating with other undergraduate students to further support Warrior athletes and coaches. Integration is an essential element of professional practice in the sports industry and this opportunity provides concrete experience which allows students to develop interpersonal, and collaboration, and technical skills.

Data Solutions is one of 4 streams within Waterloo’s IST. Student volunteers complete tasks in data science infrastructure and sports analytics, including software development, data engineering, application deployment, sports research, addressing ad-hoc requests from practitioners, and interpreting results of analyses to non-technical stakeholders.

2025–26 was the sophomore year for data solutions, and the program serviced 8 varsity programs:

• Men’s Basketball (MBB)
• Women’s Basketball (WBB)
• Men’s Volleyball (MVB)
• Women’s Volleyball (WVB)
• Men’s Hockey (MHKY)
• Women’s Hockey (WHKY)
• Men’s Football (FTB)
• Swimming (SWIM)

In this article, members from data solutions will share details on some of their projects and reflect on their experiences.