Matt Adams knew he liked both sports and numbers pretty early on.
Growing up in Fairport, New York, Adams enjoyed polling and surveying the members of his family about random topics. He also avidly collected baseball cards, drawn in particular to the players’ statistics.
Years later, he’d parlay his passions into a career in sports analytics, culminating in his current role as a performance analyst for the Michigan volleyball team where his aptitude for technology and passion for volleyball has made him a crucial asset to the Wolverines’ staff.
Adams attended Syracuse University, double majoring in sports analytics and economics, with minors in information management and technology, and credits the program with developing the skills requisite for his role.
“The professors are great,” Adams told The Michigan Daily. “The other students push me too, because there’s a lot of really bright kids there, and I also learn there.”
In addition to building a network, Adams also gained hands-on experience in the form of an internship with RSPCT Basketball, a basketball tech company, where he assisted in ball tracking. Though not pertaining to analytics, he played volleyball as a practice squad player for the Orange’s women’s team and was President of the men’s club team, furthering his aspirations in the sport.
And when Erin Virtue took the reins as head coach at Michigan in 2023, she saw so much value in analytics that she decided to create a full-time position for an analyst on the coaching staff — a role Adams fit like a glove.
“When I became the head coach and talked with the administration here in athletics, the value that I found in that position was enough that I really, really wanted that to be a full time position, and one that is as integral to our staff as an assistant coach,” Virtue told The Daily. “So that was a nice change, and he is at every practice. He’s at every match. He helps with camps. We want him as involved as he can be, so he’s somebody that is year round, full time.”
Adams has several tools in his toolbox, but chief among them is a volleyball-specific program called VolleyStation, which provides both video and numerical data. Making use of VolleyStation on the sidelines at every game and practice, Adams uses the software to track a variety of statistics, namely passing percentages and attack types. Using VolleyStation, Adams codes individual touches from matches and practices, and syncs the data to video, to review in one-on-ones with players and coaches. He also keeps on hand these statistics in spreadsheet form. Other notable programs he utilizes include Catapult and Volleymetrics, which track athletes’ load management and assorted statistical and video data, respectively.
In addition to keeping track of data on the Wolverines, Adams applies the same methods to reviewing film on Michigan’s opponents, identifying common tendencies and strategies of the teams the Wolverines face. Together with the detailed statistics on Michigan, Adams’ skill set has helped the Wolverines implement a data-driven approach in a sport where analytics haven’t become quite as widespread as in other sports, such as football or baseball, just yet.
With this myriad of tools, Adams encountered a bit of a learning curve early in his role.
“My job is a hybrid between the stats and the technology, and the technology part is always frustrating,” Adams said. “I feel like even people who are the most advanced with technology are still going to have things come up that don’t make sense right away. … Maybe my first year, if things went wrong, I would get frustrated or maybe not know how to fix it. But now I’ve done the process enough times where I can kind of slow down and be like, it’s going to take a few points, but I figure this out, and then it’s everything okay, I’ll catch up with whatever I missed, and things move on.”
Beyond his own growth in terms of his patience and his penchant for troubleshooting, Adams also credits the volleyball community and his fellow coaching staff as instrumental in his evolution in his role as an analyst.
Additionally, Adams has had the opportunity to expand his portfolio of skills through his work with the U.S. national team, having joined Virtue at multiple national team and Olympic-level events in the past two years. He’s networked with fellow performance analysts from across the country, as well as analysts working with the U.S. men’s national team.
“It’s a cool thing where it’s a small community, but everybody’s getting to know each other a little bit,” Adams said. “ … It’s been nice to meet other people from around the country doing the same thing as I am, but also learn from people who’ve been doing it longer and are now doing other things.”
Adams continues to look to the future and evolve on his own, especially as it pertains to the incorporation of artificial intelligence. As the prominence and use of AI grows, so does the controversy surrounding it. But Adams welcomes AI with open arms and looks forward to its use in volleyball analytics — in particular, he’s looking to use computer vision to track things such as ball movement, vertical jumps, speeds and spin rates on serves.
Whichever tools Adams has at his disposal, he’s committing to furthering the growth of the Wolverines’ volleyball program by hoping to turn numbers on spreadsheets into wins in the recordbook.
