24 Teams Participate Inaugural Sports Innovation Challenge – Athletics — Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Video: 2018 GT Sports Innovation Challenge

THE FLATS – Georgia Tech athletics held its inaugural GT Sports Innovation Challenge on Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 3-4 at the Bill Moore Student Success Center.

The GT Sports Innovation Challenge was a 24-hour hackathon, which invited innovators to accept challenges of transforming ideas for sports technology into reality. Twenty-four teams comprised of 130 total participants competed in the event.

A panel including Georgia Tech men’s basketball head coach Josh Pastner, GT alumnus and Kaneva co-founder/CEO Chris Klaus, AMB Sports Entertainment vice president for technology, data and analytics Karl Pierburg and Accenture senior manager Matt Pugmire judged the submissions.

The winning submission was NetPositive, an interactive interface that allows volleyball coaches to utilize data collected from myVERT wearable devices, which are worn by Georgia Tech volleyball student-athletes. NetPositive pulls data from myVERT, uploads it to a database and generates analytics that allows coaches to correlate player statistics with various outputs, monitor season-long trends and even view impact data in an effort to prevent injuries.

The winning team was comprised of Danie Budd (Georgia Tech graduate student – industrial design), Do-Hee Park (Georgia Tech graduate student – industrial design), Cole Bowers (Georgia Tech student – computer science), Nancy Tao (Georgia Tech student – computer science) and Maiya Newton (Georgia State student – computer information systems and managerial design).

The second-place submission was FanPlay, a fan engagement experience that employs a mobile app and a stadium’s video displays to allow fans to compete in interactive games. The team was comprised of Georgia Tech undergrads Braxton Madison (computer science) and Sarah Nee (business).

Georgia Tech assistant athletics director/innovation Doug Allvine will follow up with several teams to see if their ideas can be incorporated or piloted by GT athletics. Georgia Tech has long been a leader in innovation in college athletics. Concepts that originated at Tech include the use of virtual reality in recruiting and the introduction of a dedicated on-campus sports performance center.

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