Part of the Team
“I started playing soccer when I was five years old and I’ve pretty much been all about it ever since,” said computational data science major Maxwell Gerhart, describing his love for the sport. “When I was younger, I’d spend hours playing soccer outside with my neighbors, come inside, and jump straight onto the FIFA video game.”
As he got older, Gerhart became interested in mathematics and, after taking a class in high school, programming.
“I really loved studying mathematics and programming, but at the same time I was spending a huge amount of time on a website called Sports Reference, which has stats on basically every sport,” he said. “I was always looking at the soccer data. Eventually I just connected the dots: I could use my programming skills to analyze stats from soccer and could do this as a job one day instead of just for fun in my free time.”
Gerhart, who is also pursuing a minor in Economics, began his studies at Penn State Harrisburg in 2023 and transferred to University Park in his third year.
“As soon as I came to University Park, I got connected to a student who worked as a student manager for the soccer team, and through him I was able to connect with the coaches of the Penn State men’s soccer team,” Gerhart said. “They gave me access to the data and free reign to analyze it however I saw fit.”
Gerhart immediately got to work writing code and building dashboards highlighting player and team stats for the coaching staff. He also built a player rating system that allowed coaches to estimate the performance of players, giving key insights into future training regimes and player strategies. He also built an app to track player positions and visualize shots during the game to gather even more data during off-season games.
One of Gerhart’s favorite memories was traveling to a spring game against the University of Pennsylvania in 2026.
“I got to spend the whole day down there with the team and record stats on the sideline,” he said. “It was really cool to feel fully like a part of the team.”
Of course, as a lifelong soccer fan and player, Gerhart continues to play intramural soccer at Penn State. He is also involved in the Sports Analytics Club where he serves as the coding chair, helping club members analyze and visualize their sports data.
This past summer, Gerhart took his skills to the big leagues, interning with the Philadelphia Union as a data analyst.
“At Philadelphia Union I was assigned to take ownership of the opponent scouting app, a tool that the coaches use to gain insights on opposing teams before games,” Gerhart said. “Within the app I included percentile rankings for metrics, radar charts, and other visuals to help our coaches understand our opponents.”
Back on campus, Gerhart plans to continue his work with the men’s soccer team, taking advantage of the additional data that coaching staff has invested in after seeing the power of his analysis from the fall and spring seasons. Gerhart hopes to use this data to calculate new metrics, build more powerful dashboards, and offer deeper insights to the team staff.
Gerhart was also selected as a 2026 Penn State Smeal Sports Business Fellow for the Data and Analytics team where he will continue to build his sports analytics skills and learn how data can influence decision-making in sports.
After graduating, Gerhart hopes to continue working for a soccer club, providing data and insights for soccer teams.
“I'm set on working specifically in soccer,” he said. “I know a lot of students who say they'll go into whatever sport they can get into, but for me it's soccer or nothing.”