The AYF Central Executive is pleased to announce the ongoing AYF Olympics Analytics Project, an initiative designed to strengthen the preservation, accessibility and long-term management of AYF Olympic historical data.
Led by U. Nareg Mkrtschjan and AYF Olympics historian Bob Tutunjian, this project reflects a strategic effort to modernize a core element of our organization’s legacy while ensuring that future generations can reliably engage with and benefit from nearly a century of athletic records.
For decades, the AYF Olympics statistics, records and results have all been manually maintained by an individual or group of individuals. Maintaining these records is a tedious task that can also lend itself to manual errors and inconsistencies.
For the past decade, Tutunjian has maintained the AYF Olympics statistical database, and has carried out with exceptional dedication. In 2020, in light of the cancellation of the AYF Olympics, Tutunjian took the opportunity to audit the existing AYF Olympics database. He utilized the Armenian Weekly Archives, past AYF Olympics Ad Books and additional resources to clean up the database and make the necessary chapter and individual point adjustments. His commitment has ensured that generations of AYF members and alumni could access accurate information about one of the organization’s most cherished traditions.
To create a durable and sustainable solution for the future, the AYF Olympics Analytics Project team explored options for professionally organizing and displaying this extensive historical data. After evaluating several possibilities, they came across Shoreview Sports Analytics, a company based out of Canada specializing in sports data management. The company, led by Mike Heenan and Ryan McDonnell, has extensive experience in database creation and management, and their previous clientele includes the Canadian Olympic Committee and Curling Canada.
After an initial meeting and definition of scope, Shoreview Sports Analytics agreed to support the AYF Olympics Analytics Project and digitize over 90 years of AYF Olympic results, while also developing modern dashboards tailored for the general public to view and search. To date, Shoreview has already manually input nearly 15,000 lines of previous AYF Olympics results.
Beyond preservation, this new database will unlock an unprecedented level of insight into AYF Olympics history. It will give the AYF and Armenian Weekly teams the ability to explore statistics in ways that have never been possible through manual recordkeeping — quickly pinpointing when an athlete last posted a certain result, identifying active and historical streaks, tracking record progressions over time and surfacing major milestones, like the youngest person to ever win a specific event.
The AYF will not just be storing our history more securely; we will be able to understand it more deeply and share it more meaningfully with the entire AYF-YOARF community.
The project is currently in development and is anticipated to be completed prior to the 2026 AYF Olympic Games. As the work continues, the team will explore what the final end product will look like for the greater AYF-YOARF community and alumni, including how our community can view and interact with the database.
The AYF Olympics Analytics Project will move the AYF-YOARF organization toward a more modern, accessible and sustainable system for maintaining and sharing our beloved AYF Olympic history.
Stay tuned for updates as the project develops. Those interested in supporting the effort can donate here.
The AYF Olympics retro logo from 1949
