On Sept. 7, Naomi Consiglio ‘25, a Sport Analytics and Statistics double-major, presented her research on volleyball analytics at the 2024 Women in Sports Data (WiSD) Symposium at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, PA.
The WiSD Symposium is a daylong event presented by the Philadelphia Phillies to amplify women's voices in sports analytics.
“(WiSD has) done a great job of highlighting some of the female stars and up-and-comers in sport analytics, and the conference has drawn a lot of industry interest,” Dr. Scott Powers, Assistant Professor of Sport Analytics, said.
According to Powers, the attendance at WiSD is generally 75% women making it the closest conference to achieving gender parity in Sport Analytics. Consiglio said that because of how male-dominated her classes can be, WiSD was a great first conference for her.
“This specific symposium is a great starting point for a woman and in sports because it really lets them know that there are women working in the industry and that it is very male dominated, but you have the opportunities and you should go for them,” Consiglio said.
During the spring semester, Consiglio began working on her project with Powers through independent study. She used attack charting data from the volleyball platform VolleyMetrics to find the optimal defensive positioning for volleyball players by using an adaptive K-means algorithm.
“[It was a] very technical talk, but it's just finding the best places for players to stand on defense depending on who is attacking the ball,” Consiglio said.
She worked on the project through the summer, and after presenting it to Powers’s research group he encouraged her to submit an abstract for the WiSD Symposium. Powers said that it was not a surprise when the conference organizers accepted Consiglio’s abstract to give a presentation at the conference.
“I felt so proud sitting in the audience while Naomi gave her presentation,” Powers said. “She did a fantastic job, which was no surprise, and really impressed the audience.”
There was no set time for a Q&A after Consiglio concluded, but people came up to her anyway to ask questions. They were especially impressed with her work because she was only an undergraduate student.
“Several of my peers in the industry commented to me after Naomi's presentation that they were really impressed,” Powers said. “One friend in particular remarked on how incredible it is what undergrads are doing these days — this is the type of work my peers and I were doing as graduate students back in the day.”
While Consiglio said she was nervous to present, she also believed that presenting expanded her public speaking skills and made it easier for her to facilitate networking conversations.
Outside of presenting, Consiglio was also able to attend a variety of sessions at the symposium. She credits those sessions with helping her to see and understand more of the possibilities for her after she graduates with a major in Sport Analytics.
“It's definitely opened my eyes a lot to the applications of data,” Consiglio said. “I didn't expect it to be so broad. And hearing a variety of presentations on how people use it in their day to day life was actually very eye opening.”
Powers called Consiglio an “up-and-coming star” in the Sport Analytics industry, and hopes that she continues to build on this experience.
“Naomi impressed a lot of people and leveled-up the perception of Rice among the sport analytics community,” Powers said. “She demonstrated at the symposium that she belongs here, and I hope that's something she takes away from the experience.”
Kathleen Ortiz, a junior from Kingwood, Texas, is studying Social Policy Analysis and Sport Management with a concentration in Sport Law.