How Math Students Are Helping LSU Softball Win the Game Within the Game
February 24, 2026
A 2-2 count. A pitch placed just above the letters. A swing—or a take. In that split second, preparation meets probability.
LSU softball pitcher Tatum Clopton celebrates with teammates.
– LSU Athletics photo
In college softball, the difference between a win and a loss can hinge on key moments often too small to spot from the stands. Coaches and players rely on experience and instinct to meet those moments and give their team an edge.
“Softball is like playing a game of chess,” said Tatum Clopton, an LSU softball pitcher and fifth-year grad student from Lawrence, Kan. “You're always trying to outsmart the opponent. You're always trying to think 10 steps ahead. You're always trying to position each player for the most success.”
At LSU, a unique collaboration between LSU Softball and the Department of Mathematics is turning that challenge into an opportunity.
— Videos by Callie Boyd
A Competitive Edge
Zach Jermain, the director of player performance and analytics, first saw the opportunity for collaboration when the softball program began using TrackMan, a Doppler radar system that tracks every pitch and batted ball in 3D, capturing such data as ball velocity, spin rate, movement, launch angle, and exit velocity.
He said TrackMan has been used in baseball for years and is now making inroads in softball. LSU Softball has been an early adopter.
“There are a lot of really cool things that you can start to dig into once you have all that data,” he said. But you need the right tools to unlock it.
Because of his math background—he earned his master’s and PhD in mathematics at LSU—Jermain knew his connections in the LSU math department could help unlock the potential of the TrackMan data.
He reached out, and with Head Coach Beth Torina’s support, a collaboration was formed with the Math Consultation Clinic, which runs capstone courses within the math department that help units on campus make sense of their data using sophisticated mathematics.
Zach Jermain, director of player performance and analytics, LSU Softball
Nadia Drenska, assistant professor of mathematics, LSU’s College of Science
A Real-World Application of Math
Nadia Drenska, assistant professor of mathematics in LSU’s College of Science and one of the clinic’s two faculty advisors, sees the project as an opportunity to benefit both math students and LSU Softball.
She and her students are building machine-learning models that help coaches improve player preparation and make smarter strategic decisions during games. By engaging in meaningful projects that help the Tigers succeed, the students themselves are also winning, Drenska said.
“First, these projects contain serious math and train students in machine-learning algorithms, which are crucial in the modern workforce,” she said. “Second, they are impactful, involving a real-world application. The students know that they are helping our LSU softball team win—something we can all celebrate. Lastly, the projects are fun!”
Charles Bloss of Brewster, N.Y., a sophomore industrial engineering major with a math minor, was drawn to what appeared to be a fun opportunity.
“I saw that this class was available, and I said, well, why not take it?” he said. “This seems like something fun. This seems like something I can sink my teeth into. And ultimately, this project was a ton of fun to work on.”
But it turned out to be much more: a chance to take math outside the classroom, work on real-world issues, and help LSU Softball players and coaches achieve success. The partnership with Jermain was invaluable, the students said.
“Zach was part of our little team,” said Austin Louque of Gonzales, La., a senior in computer science and mathematics who helped launch the softball project. “We met with him at least once a week. He knows that data better than anybody.”
A former baseball player, Louque immersed himself in the data aspects of the softball project.
“We wanted to see how likely a ball was to be hit whenever a pitch was thrown,” he said. “And given the data from the TrackMan showing us all the stats of the pitch and also the batter's reactions to those pitches really gave us a good starting point.”
Making the Most of the Data
Undergraduate students, under the mentorship of graduate students and Drenska, play a central role in the work, helping transform raw TrackMan data into insights coaches can actually use.
For one of those undergraduates, Madden Gleason of Zachary, La., the softball project was a way to connect the dots. Jermain served as her hitting coach throughout high school before she went off to LSU-Alexandria to play softball. She graduated in December with a degree in math.
At LSU’s Baton Rouge campus, she was able to combine her mathematics background with her athletics background. And she got to work with Jermain again in a whole new way.
“Zach is incredibly helpful and insightful,” she said. “He's the perfect bridge between analytics and coaching. So, just coming to him with any question, he is able to guide us in the right direction.”
Tools
for Success
Strike Zone Project
Auto Pitch Tagger
Softball generates enormous amounts of pitch data, but labeling every pitch by hand is time-consuming and inconsistent. As part of the collaboration, math and data science students helped develop an automated pitch-tagging process that uses TrackMan data to identify pitch types.
Louque, who spent much of his effort in this area, said the real value of pitch tagging lies in freeing coaches to focus on instruction rather than data entry. “Instead of needing to do this whole multi-step process, the pitcher throws a pitch, it's seen, it's tracked by TrackMan, and it's labeled,” he said.
The auto-tagging work shows how mathematical modeling can turn raw tracking data into immediate, usable information—giving LSU faster, cleaner data than manual tagging ever could.
Expected Stats Model
Box scores capture outcomes, but they don’t always capture performance. That gap is what LSU math students set out to address with an expected statistics model for batters that evaluates the quality of contact using variables like ball exit velocity and launch angle.
For junior math major Thomas Emerick, of Livonia, Mich., the goal was to “fill in the gaps that the box score leaves us” by adding context to every batted ball. By comparing what did happen to what should have happened, the model helps distinguish skill from luck, he said. That insight allows coaches to separate temporary slumps from long-term trends.
“This really adds the context,” Emerick explained, noting that it can reveal whether a hitter is making strong contact even when results don’t show it. For coaches, that means better player evaluation and development.
Excellence in Class & on the Field
The result of the project has been a true team effort: a collaboration in which LSU Softball gains a competitive edge, math students see the power of their discipline in action, and the university demonstrates how bringing diverse strengths together can lead to smarter decisions and stronger performance.
For Emerick, the project has checked off one of the goals that brought him to LSU.
“I really wanted to do something in the field of sports analytics,” he said. “That was really what I had dreamt of for my entire life. So, I ended up taking a tour at LSU in February 2023, and I just fell in love with the place.”
He said the research opportunities at LSU ultimately swayed him.
“And, I mean, no greater opportunity than to do a research project in sports analytics. So it's really wrapped in perfectly for why I chose to be here.”
For LSU pitcher Clopton, the collaboration between LSU Softball and the math department has also made a tremendous difference, and she appreciates the passion the math students bring to the work.
“I think it's really just capitalizing on the technologies and the tools that we have,” she said. “We have incredible resources at LSU, and the fact that we can use all of these to become the best athletes, the most successful on the field—and using real science and data and math to back that up—I think it's just an incredible opportunity.
“That directly leads to the preparation every single day in practice, which then leads to the preparation for games, which then leads to execution come game time.”
In a game of inches and split-second decisions, LSU is adding something new to its strategy board: mathematics. And move by move, pitch by pitch, that advantage is beginning to show.
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