Header Image: Team USA Men's Volleyball at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Photo by Michael Gomez for USA Volleyball.

When the world tunes into the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris to watch the U.S. Men’s National team compete in Indoor Volleyball, they will find a Cal Poly alum among them – not as a player, but as a statistician.   

As technical coordinator for the U.S. Men’s National Team, Nate Ngo’s (Mathematics, ‘10) duties include tracking and analyzing statistics and scouting for the team. It’s a role he’s played in three consecutive Summer Olympics and one he prepared for as a student at Cal Poly.  

“The things that I'm doing today are exactly the things that I learned to do at Cal Poly," Ngo explained. “I've been fortunate because I've just been in a place where I can take all those things that I've learned and keep evolving and growing in it.” 

A former player and statistician for the women’s team at his high school in San Francisco, Ngo began his road to the Olympics taking stats for the Cal Poly Women’s team. First starting out with pen and paper, he then moved on to excel until the team invested in a computer program called DataVolley and asked Ngo to see what he could do with the new technology. 

“I took it back to the dorm, fiddled around with it for a couple of months, then came back and showed them. They were like, ‘Would you be willing to do this for us?’ And so they made me the volunteer assistant coach my second year, and I ended up doing that for the rest of my time at Cal Poly,” Ngo said. 

The program, which Ngo still uses to track statistics for the U.S. Men’s National Team, became pivotal to his advancement in the world of sports analytics. Ngo became known for his use of this technology to analyze stats and video and began to make connections that led to an internship with USA Volleyball, and coaching roles with the University of Nebraska and University of Portland. Eventually he got a call from the Men’s National Team in 2014 asking for his expertise to help the team qualify for the Rio Olympics. 

Ngo is one of the top talents in the country in sports analytics for volleyball. It’s a field that has continued to grow since he first began his career in Mott Gym. 

"Nowadays it's a lot more common, and it's really competitive,” explained Ngo. “NFL teams are starting to have more of these positions where they're looking at analytics, and NBA teams too. I think there's a lot of smart people who are vying for these positions. Who doesn't want to work with a professional sports team?” 

Since graduation, Ngo has stayed in touch with his alma mater, especially the volleyball team. In addition to coming out to cheer for the Mustangs whenever they play in southern California, he has even come back to campus to help coach. 

“Caroline Walters, head coach of the Cal Poly volleyball program, is a really good friend of mine. From back when we coached in 2009 – 2010 together, we always said we'd love to coach together again down the road. In 2018, after the national team season was over, I came back to Cal Poly as the volunteer assistant coach from October through the rest of the women's college season. I came back for the last three weeks of last season as well.” 

He also gives back by speaking to and mentoring students in the Statistics Department, working with Beth Chance, Ph.D., a professor and big volleyball fan. In 2018, Chance asked Ngo to speak to her students, which led to a Cal Poly student following Ngo’s footsteps into sports analytics, working for the Women’s National Team. Since then, Ngo said other Cal Poly statistics students have interviewed and been hired, continuing the tradition of Learn by Doing on the USA Volleyball Team. 

“We're effectively on our third generation,” Ngo said. “So that’s been a cool way to give back and to build this position for the team.” 

Seeing students step into this career path and looking back on his own journey into sports analytics has been rewarding, Ngo said. As for his own career, he’s looking forward to Paris and hopes to help the team compete for at least another few years. 

“Especially with the next Olympics being in Los Angeles, hopefully we get to do this again at least one more time on home soil” he said. “I've been super fortunate to be in the position that I've been in and a lot of it has just been going with the flow. When opportunity comes, just hop on it.” 

“Learn by Doing, that's what I've been doing this this whole time,” he added. “And I certainly wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my experience at Cal Poly.”