Student Makes Stat Program Hit For Viewers

The efforts of Thor Lancaster has made staying at home a lot more pleasant for many area residents this winter.

Lancaster, a 2018 graduate of Medicine Lake High School, has developed an app so that followers of the Froid/Lake basketball teams can easily keep up with the squads’ status.

“It’s started out as a hobby project,” Lancaster explained.

His statcastr program provides information such as scoring and rebounding information for players of each team as well as ongoing playby- play details.

The free service has been a hit with viewers. Feedback on Facebook has included, “Greatest Alumn from Medicine Lake,” “You have no idea how much this means to those of us who can’t come to the games now,” and “You really are amazing. Thank you for keeping us home bodies updated.”

Lancaster is a junior at Montana State University and is majoring in computer science. Although some areas still need to be worked on, he is pleased with the statscastr software.

“I’ve been interesting in this kind of stuff ever since I’ve learned to program,” Lancaster noted. He is pleased that one recent contest attracted 124 unique computers.

In preparation to cover basketball, Lancaster watched hours of recorded games on TV while getting his routine down for keeping statistics.

“I’m a one-man stat crew,” Lancaster said. “I wanted to make sure I don’t have to look down at the screen while doing stats.”

His goals include being the stat provider for all the colleges in Montana. “That’s my dream,” Lancaster said. “It has that potential.”

Because he is heading back to Bozeman for classes, the stats won’t be available now for Froid/Lake games until he returns come divisional tournament time. “If someone else wants to run this, I will give them my help,” Lancaster said. “But it’s a steep learning curve.”