Boston High School Students to Host Inaugural National High School Sports Analytics Summit

Getting a big-name keynote speaker for any conference is challenging. However, a group of high school students in the Boston area didn’t have much trouble snagging three well-known speakers for their National High School Sports Analytics Summit, which takes place on March 2.

Jai Malhotra, a sophomore at Milton Academy, and Jayan Gandhi, a junior at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, are the co-founders and co-chairs of the non-profit group National High School Sports Analytics Association.

The keynote speakers are Daryl Morey, president of the Philadelphia 76ers; Jessica Gelman, chief executive officer of Kraft Analytics Group and Nate Silver, founder of analytics company FiveThirtyEight.

Quite a score for a pair of high school friends who are hosting their inaugural event alongside the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which takes place at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center this weekend.

“Jayan and I have both been interested in sports pretty much our whole lives,” said Malhotra. “And a couple years ago, we both got the opportunity to go to the MIT Sports Analytics Conference. And then from there, we were inspired to make a high school version of that conference. We were looking for venues where we could do our conference and we contacted MIT to see if they would give us some space, and they are letting us rent some of their space and they’ve been really helpful and supportive throughout everything that we’ve been doing.”

The half-day NHSSA Summit will take place from 1:45 to 5:30 p.m. on March 2 and have up to 100 high school students in attendance.

“One of the primary goals of the association we’ve created is that both Jai and I believe that high schoolers can make an impact in sports analytics,” Gandhi said. “Sometimes it’s not as great of an impact as some of the groups of PhD students. But we hope that this organization is an avenue for high school students like ourselves to share what they’ve learned and researched.”

In addition to the keynote speakers, the conference will have other professionals in sports and sports analytics on the career panels.

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former ESPN director of social media and marketing, will be a panelist. As will Evan Wasch, executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics at the NBA. Meghan Chayka, co-founder/chief executive officer of Stathletes, a hockey data and analytics company, will also be a panelist.

“We aren’t able to pay any of the panelists, so they’re just doing it because they’re nice people and want to help out the next generation,” Malhotra said. “By getting top speakers like Daryl, other speakers who are already going to be at the MIT conference were more willing to come to ours. And MIT has been super helpful and supportive of everything we’ve done. We’re really appreciative of them.”

The Next Generation

Gandhi and Malhotra are mature beyond their years. Think about what you were doing when you were 15 or 16 years old. It probably wasn’t rubbing elbows with NBA executives and chief executive officers.

But once the duo got their foot in the door — Malhotra’s father has previously spoken at the MIT conference and connected with Morey, leading to the 76ers executive agreeing to take part — they haven’t looked back.

“I’ve been into sports my whole life and in middle school we got an assignment that was a passion project,” Malhotra said. “I’m really into basketball so I wanted to do a project on the NBA and I decided to compare ball handlers and shooters and what matters more to an NBA team. From that, I made a poster and a presentation. And I looked at the data and talked to professionals in the field as well. Then I was able to use my poster and present it at the MIT conference.”

Gandhi has been writing articles on sports analytics since he was in middle school. This past summer he was able to attend a program called the Wharton Moneyball Academy, which taught the technical parts of sports analytics.

“For me, sports analytics would be the dream job, but I’m also aware of how there aren’t too many jobs in that field,” Gandhi said. “But I do believe that data and analytics can be applied to so many different fields and artificial intelligence is becoming more and more important — almost to the extent that it could be our version of what the Internet was for our parents’ generation.”

Malhotra says data analytics as a field is something that he would be interested in possibly majoring in when he gets to college.

“But I haven’t decided that for sure,” he added. “I love sports and this is something that I’m passionate about right now, but while we keep this organization going, I’m going to be dabbling in different fields in high school and seeing what I enjoy and then going from there.”

Building a Brand

Gandhi and Malhotra have known each other since they were in kindergarten and while they’ve always been friends, it wasn’t until last summer they became business partners. In August, they started building the idea of a summit for high school students who loved sports analytics, which led to the creation of their non-profit organization.

“We’re thinking about doing another summit in the near future,” Malhotra said. “But we’ve been pretty busy with this first conference, especially given that it’s our first time creating an organization like this. So beyond the conference, it isn’t something that we’ve had a lot of time to think about. But once we’re done this Saturday, we’re going to start thinking about that for sure.”

In addition to the two friends, their organization includes four other high schoolers from the Boston area — Ginny Choe, Amman Malik, James Constan and Max Haimson — who are managing the marketing and social media side. They assembled the team through word of mouth in the community and by cold calling other schools in the area to ask who might be interested in joining the NHSSAA.

“Even though we’re all still in high school, you can have an impact in the world of data and sports analytics,” Gandhi said. “I have a couple of friends attending the conference who are interested in sports media and what’s great about sports is it’s such a broad field and there are many different ways that you can get into.”

The mission statement of the organization is to inspire other teens and show the impact of data and analytics and how it can play a role in almost any facet of life.

“Yes, we’re focusing on sports for this conference, but we want to show them that data analytics is such an up-and-coming field,” said Malhotra. “We want to show that it’s something that not just some people can have access to. We want to diversify the field and show that anybody can be a part of data and analytics.”

For high school students that may love sports and analytics but aren’t sure how to dive into the space, Gandhi gives the advice that he took when he began.

“I would start by looking at something that doesn’t make sense in the world of sports and then try to get some data and make some statistical predictions on that,” he said. “Even though you’re a high school kid and your research might not be as fine-tuned as higher-educated students, you could still find many interesting things in the world of sports analytics.”