FC Tulsa Partners With Tulsa High School For STEM Event

Students at Booker T Washington High School are learning how subjects like math and physics apply to sports.

Soccer is a complex sport.

“It is a lot more free-flowing and intermittent,” said Andy Costin with FC Tulsa. 

Each team has 11 players on the field, but there's another one that often goes unnoticed: physics.

“Physics applies to everything, there’s gravity that’s keeping the balls and the players down, there’s friction which keeps the balls from flying too fast," said Bethany Johannsson. 

High school students like Johannsson are bringing science to the soccer field for FC Tulsa’s Kicking for Kinematics event. They’re not just watching the game… they’re studying the players closely for a school project.

 “We use the data that we collect over the players and their playing, and we come up with a question to improve their playing,” she said. 

Each group from Booker T Washington High School is observing different things.

“My group specifically is looking for, just kind of how they play, other groups are looking for maybe the different techniques in how they kick the ball," said Johannsson. 

By calculating things like trajectory of shots to understanding forces behind sprinting, students get to see firsthand how physics influences the game and how it applies to the real world.

“I feel like it makes physics a less scary science topic and it makes it more applicable to real life," Johannsson said. 

Andy Costin is FC Tulsa’s Director of Performance and says, for the team, the student’s findings offer new insights into player performance.

“Any chance for these players to interact and learn, they’re always keen to do, which is great," he said. 

And he says the team is excited to see what solutions these young physicists bring to the pitch.

“It does interest me, these kinds of projects and the ability for the kids to kind of come out, find their own questions…obviously for us, FC Tulsa, it's a chance for us to link with the community and give back,” he said. 

The students work on the project for about 6 weeks and will then present their findings to the team later this year.