For Love of the Game and Statistics 

A love of numbers and statistics can be a near-birthright for some people or downright not a mathematical affinity for others. In Keara Thompson’s personal history, her zeal for stats and data analysis hit like a lightning bolt in a Kansas thunderstorm. 

“When I went to the University of Kansas, I really wanted to study psychology,” said Thompson during a recent conversation.  “I thought clinical psychology was super cool. You could learn all these secrets about the brain and mind.” 

Then, in a relative blink of time, Thompson’s life and career track changed. Sort of the like the sun shining on a clear day after heavy rains.  

“One of the first classes they put you in on that track is a research methodology course covering stats for psychology,” said Thompson, who grew up in Aurora, a Chicago suburb 40 miles west of Chicago. “My reaction was, ‘Oh, this statistical research is very interesting and very good. Everything about the subject matter just clicked in my brain. My attraction to stats didn’t totally make sense at first because I was struggling in a calculus class. I continued taking psych classes, realizing I did not enjoy the other parts of psychology. But I truly loved the stats.” 

During her second semester as a freshman , Thompson discovered Kansas offered a business analytics major. She thought it made “perfect sense” to apply to the KU business school. She was accepted and had to do “a bit of crash course” as a sophomore to catch up with the degree program timeline while learning how to crunch data and write code, plus ascribe to the tenets of analyzing and interpreting data.  

Thompson was busy, happy and deeply engaged in her studies while also embracing sorority life (more coming on that). When asked to decipher the joy of mathematics, the Kraken senior business analyst didn’t hesitate.

“If you compare a query that I write versus [other colleagues] on our team, we're all going to write different queries,” said Thompson. “But we're going to get that same answer. It's just so satisfying when it all works out. I think of it as a big puzzle. We're given this raw data from, say, Ticketmaster and our retail group and the food and beverage sales at the arena. Then, OK, how do we put all these pieces together to make sense, so we can understand that final picture?” 

Hard stop: What exactly is involved in writing a business analytic's query? 

“A query starts as a blank page and a question from the various groups we support with the Kraken,” said Thompson. “Then we use a programming language like SQL [Structured Query Language] or Python to ask simple questions such as give me ‘x’ from ‘y’ data table. We are using filters to get to the answer we are looking for. For example, this morning I was looking at our ticket plans to see every season ticket member who had made a deposit and purchased tickets [for next season] to see what type of plan they bought and how many seats. It helps the sales staff to know what to expect from remaining season ticket members with deposits and what plans they will be buying ... it's all formatted so we can slot in any sort of query.” 

From the Chicago Suburbs to Kansas 

Thompson’s hometown of Aurora has twice the population of Lawrence, KS, and is more than 500 miles from home. But the eight-hour drive never fazed the Kraken staffer who grew up an avid Chicago sports fan.  

“Yes, it’s a long way from home,” said Thompson. “My brother [five years older] went to school there. I very, very vividly recall like the first time visiting him when he was a student. Specifically, I remember going to a basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse. It was life-changing, just an incredible experience for me. I had been to Bulls games and White Sox, Cubs and Bears games. But that fieldhouse had such a different and amazing atmosphere. Every time I visited and went to games, it was clear the community and culture were so strong. Not just the students but people who lived in Lawrence. There was just something in the air that draws you in. I applied to a handful of other schools. But as soon I got into Kansas, I was like, ‘Yeah, great, we're done.’” 

Thompson put that love of “KU” culture and community into becoming a leader on campus. She started as a student ambassador at the university’s visitor center and advanced to a role overseeing some 30 ambassadors plus organizing recruiting materials including student panels and scholarship mailers. Over three-and-a-half years, she corresponded with and hosted thousands of prospective students and their families. 

In parallel, Thompson pledged with the Alpha Delta Pi sorority, which was most decidedly out of her presumed comfort zone. Within a year, Thompson served as director of recruitment for the sorority. She advanced to an executive vice president position in which she coordinated and supervised operations for more than 200 members.  

“Once I got into a managerial role in the ambassador program and especially with my sorority, it taught me how to be an adult,” said Thompson. “I was very introverted, very quiet in high school. I wouldn't ask questions in class. I wouldn't like talk aloud. I had my friends, but struggled to get out of my bubble. Going to school so far away, along with the ambassadors and sorority roles, pushed me to grow. I realized I could stand in front of 50 people to give a presentation without fear.” 

Connecting to Diversity, Hockey and the Kraken 

While embarking on her leadership roles in college, Thompson realized how attending Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, IL, informed her in a way that wasn’t replicated by all classmates growing up in Kansas and other midwestern reaches.  

“My high school was really diverse,” said Thompson. “In terms of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, religion. I was exposed to a lot of different people and a lot of different beliefs. Then going to Kansas I had friends who had not been exposed to a lot of different people at that point. I was grateful for my high school experience.” 

For all of her stepping into leadership and out of her then-teenage comfort zone, Thompson was floored in the fall of 2019 when her father died. The pandemic soon followed. The grief and loss staggered our Kraken colleague’s heart and mindset.  

“I was maybe not in the best place to have a life plan after graduation,” said Thompson. “I didn't quite know what I wanted to do.  I moved back with my mom. She was living at the time down in the Tampa, Florida, area. I worked at Starbucks because you need to have some sort of job and income. Then I just kind of decided I wanted to work in sports, because sports brought me joy. I especially thought about hockey.”

OK, another hard stop. Thompson has mentioned attending Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Bears games as a Chicago sports fans. Where does hockey fit? 

“It’s a funny story,” said Thompson. “My brother was dating this girl, Tara. Her family were all [NHL] Blackhawks fans.  My brother started watching because of her. I started watching because of my brother. They broke up, but I still attribute my love of hockey back to Tara ... I fell in love with the sport.  Soon enough, I could tell you almost every roster for every team in the NHL.” 

As Thompson navigated through the grief of losing her dad, she dug into to applying for sports analytics positions with “every league and every pro sports team.” She did generate “a handful of interviews” but no job offers.  

As it turned out, Thompson’s architect-brother and sister-in-law were living in Seattle. Her sister-in-law sent Thompson a Kraken-generated LinkedIn post describing an entry-level business analyst coordinator role. Kismet was calling long-distance.  

“My sister-in-law said to apply ASAP,” said Thompson. “She said it had just popped up.” 

Thompson’s first interview was with our colleague Fiona McKenna, who started in with the Kraken in business analytics but now works in similar fashion for the hockey operations group. That was four years ago, but McKenna recalls there were “a lot of applicants” vying for the Kraken position.  

“From my first conversation with Keara, I knew I wanted her to get the job,” said McKenna. “I knew she would come into our small team, where everyone wears a lot of hats, and absolutely own her work from Day 1. She strikes the very rare balance of having a calm demeanor while also speaking with confidence. She came to the Kraken only a year or so out of college, but her maturity felt exponentially higher than that.” 

The rest is an unfolding history as Thompson has grown from early days of “cleaning” or validating data to three-plus years later serving a senior analyst who regularly presents to upper-level management with parent company One Roof Sports and Entertainment.  

“It will be four years in July, which is wild,” said Thompson. “A lot of the work we're doing now is going right to our top executives and decision-makers.”