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By Joe Lemire

By John Portch

Few people, if any, have a definitive answer when it comes to the role of psychosocial skills in talent development.

Nevertheless, the Leaders Performance Institute decided to raise the topic with two distinguished individuals: Kit Wise, the Dean of the School of Art, Design and Social Context at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology [RMIT], and Budi Miller, the Co-Artistic Director at the Melbourne-based Theatre of Others.

Both took to the stage at Melbourne’s Glasshouse in February to discuss their approaches to talent development as well as managing challenges as they emerge.

Here, we explore Wise’s work with art and design students at RMIT, where he readily admits his role is to “damage their minds just enough”.

Inspiration, aspiration, expectation

Wise’s philosophy of talent development in art and design is configured to help students further develop mental and social skills such as cognitive reframing, goal-setting, self-talk, and the coping skills needed to move beyond expertise into the realms of creative productivity or eminence[1].

It boils down to three things:

1. Inspiration: he wants to ignite a passion in students and give them the drive to create something “beautiful or wonderful”. He said: “I will lead with that because that’s the one that’s the most exciting. It’s the most fun. It’s the most liberating. Inspiration is what gives people that fire in their belly that allows you to do something.”
2. Aspiration: this involves a student understanding the ‘why’ behind their actions, with a focus on values and purpose. Artists are not as selfish as sometimes perceived, according to Wise. “They want to make the world a more beautiful place, or a more just or fair place, and that aspiration, that value base is really important.”
3. Expectation: Wise will encourage students to have fun and think deeply, while holding them accountable through what he calls “productive tension”. He said: “it’s about raising your expectations progressively as people become creative.”

Risk-taking and raising expectations

Wise argues that risk-taking – another psychosocial skill – is a crucial part of an artist’s creative process and he sees certain parallels between the worlds of art, design and sport. “Risk is fundamental,” he said. “It’s how you innovate, it’s how you come up with something that hasn’t been done before.” Risk-taking is an accompaniment to traits such as openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity and an ability to move beyond one’s earlier ideas with courage[2].

Wise wants artists to step out of their comfort zones and dare to do something different or unexpected. That includes deliberately setting out to break the rules. “There’s a quote from Picasso – a very problematic figure for me – who said: ‘good artists copy. Great artists steal’. What he means by that is that good artists imitate; great artists take all the knowledge and experience of others and repurpose it.” Risk is about challenging people and pushing them to achieve more than they thought they could. It is also about raising expectations progressively as people become creative.

Navigating RMIT’s ‘critiquing culture’

Risk is about transformation and change; moving people, impacting them and changing their thinking. With this is mind, Wise advocates for a “critiquing culture” that enables students to develop their mental skills, including, mastering anxiety and distractions, tactful self-promotion, and knowing how to play the game[3]. “Almost by definition, it sounds like an attack. Of course, it’s how you challenge and grow and do that damaging I talked about.” He has developed a culture at RMIT, defined by its shared language, trust and a series of team dynamics that create a safe environment that breeds confidence and gives everyone in the room a voice.

All that said, it is not a comfort zone, which raises its own challenge. “Empathy has to be central,” said Wise. “So the role of care alongside risk. I guess it’s a bit like flow state where you have the pain end of the spectrum and the comfort end of the spectrum; and you’re pushing things up towards the pain as much as you can.” He draws the line by setting ground rules for interpersonal conduct and, as a tutor, a simple but important reading of the room for social cues. Still, it can be close to the bone. “I’m on record saying that ‘every art student should cry once’,” added Wise. “It’s about transformation, it’s about change. If they hadn’t experienced something that really does move them or impact them or change their thinking, I haven’t done my job – that’s [on me to do] that in a caring as well as risky way.”

Fun and playfulness

For all the talk of tears, there is fun and playfulness inherent in this process of talent development. On one hand, that means being embodied and engaging in what one wants to do, whether that’s painting or playing sport. “Pleasure is part of that process,” said Wise. On the other hand, there is fun in risk-taking. “That transgression: it’s rule-breaking; it’s another word for innovation and creativity. You can’t do that rule breaking if you’re in a body that’s rule-bound.”

[1] Olszewski-Kubilius P, Subotnik RF, Davis LC, Worrell FC. Benchmarking Psychosocial Skills Important for Talent Development. New Dir Child Adolesc Dev. 2019 Nov;2019(168):161-176. doi: 10.1002/cad.20318. Epub 2019 Oct 29. PMID: 31663255.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Main Image: Joe Lemire / SBJ Tech

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

The Sandbox series is where we share our experiences testing products, gear, solutions and more in the sports tech space. Previous iterations have included demoing Apple Vision Pro apps from MLB and MLS, taking the new F1 Arcade for a spin, trialing AiFi’s cashierless checkout at the Prudential Center, using Nextiles and Rapsodo for improved pitch velocity and physiological testing at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute.

* * * * *

So pronounced were my pull tendencies in Central Park softball some 15 years ago — long before defensive overshifting became so commonplace in Major League Baseball that a rule was passed to ban it — my New York Press League opponents did it to me, pulling the second baseman to the shortstop side of the base.

They were smart to do so. I was flatly incapable of hitting a groundball to the right side. (I also usually hit the ball in the air, so I don’t think I actually lost many hits as a result of the shift.)

The irony, it seemed to me, is that my golf swing produces almost exclusively shots to the right. I have since learned, however, that a slice is a common ailment of former baseball players: the left wrist (for a righty batter) needs different positioning for golf — more of a flexion than an extension.

Could an app and an Apple Watch help me overwrite four decades of motor learning? I put Golfshot to the test on a recent evening at the Chelsea Piers driving range in New York City.

SBJ Tech’s Joe Lemire puts his swing to the test. (Ash Gilbertson)

And this wasn’t just any Apple Watch but the Ultra 2, whose myriad features include a high frequency motion API that can collect data at 800 hertz and dual-frequency GPS. The former allows the accelerometer and gyroscope to sample at four-to-eight times the precision of what Golfshot used to receive of 100 to 200 times per second from the motion sensors.

“As hardware gets better, we can also get better,” Golfshot CTO John Hawley said. “So Apple Watch Ultra and really this high-frequency motion API that came out is something that was a gamechanger for us. These metrics just get much cleaner, much more accurate.”

The enhanced GPS permits more accurate shot lengths, locating where each shot was taken and calculating the distance between them, though on this day the focus was the driving range.

At Apple’s invitation, a select group of reporters tried out Golfshot’s new Swing ID On-Range experience. The app, which is developed by a core group of about 25 people within a larger company called Golf Genius, has been around since 2008, with Apple Watch features introduced in 2015.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 and accompanying watchOS 10 both were released in September 2023, helping power Swing ID, which is the ability to track swing mechanics. Golfshot first offered that feature on courses where the number of non-putted shots can be about 40 or 50 for competitive players. The range was a scale problem, requiring a new data architecture and storage plan with ardent players logging 10 times as many practice shots.

I only took 34 shots recorded in the app — eight with a six-iron, nine with a driver and then 17 with a three-wood — but that was a sufficient sample to realize that, yes, I do swing with a wrist rotated too far open and, mercifully, the issue seems to be somewhat corrective for me. And I’ve been told I have the raw tools for golf, even if my technique remains barely molded clay.

There are nine key metrics generated on every swing by Golfshot. Some, like tempo and backswing arc, could be improved, but they don’t appear in critical red coloring in the app the way wrist path and wrist rotation do for me. (Of note, the Apple Watch is obviously affixed to my wrist, not the club face, but it’s a helpful, albeit imperfect, proxy.)

On the watch, I was able to select a metric of focus and, after every shot, that datapoint and a visualization of the swing — showing, for instance, my swing path versus the suggested path — would appear on my wrist. It was a helpful way to track progress (or lack thereof) without fiddling with my phone each time. A tripod nearby held the device, where I could use the app for more detailed review of my metrics.

SBJ Tech’s Joe Lemire was able to review his swing metrics on Golfshot (Ash Gilbertson)

Golfshot’s app only offers normative datasets in broad strokes (pun intended), because it has found that swings are too individualized for hard guidelines to be helpful. But reviewing what data I saw — plus a short consultation from PGA professional Jonathan Doctor, the Northeast sales director for Golf Genius — helped mitigate my wrist supination, at least for a few fleeting moments.

My wrist path, which should be 0 degrees for straight contact, usually ranged between 15 and 20 degrees out-in; again, that can work in baseball, but less so in golf. And my wrist rotation, which should also be around 0, instead averaged around 30 to 40 degrees.

As Aristotle should have once said, the whole shot can be greater than the sum of its poor component metrics. In my case, I hit a handful of good golf shots interspersed between a larger number of bad ones. But at least I felt encouraged when, near the end of my session, I hit back-to-back three woods on a straight line into the netting 200 yards away.

It’s a helpful start, but I’ll need more monitoring and instruction to keep it up, which, conveniently is on the Golfshot road map.

“Going out and practicing is one portion of it, but making a plan to practice is really the greater aspiration here,” Hawley said. “Part of this developing practice plans is also going to be integrating with apps like [Golf Genius-owned] CoachNow, where you can communicate directly with your coach. Your coach could even get alerted after you play a round. ‘Here’s the round, let’s review his shots.’”

Hopefully alerts of my play include trigger warnings, but maybe someday I’ll work up the courage and play on a course. I take solace knowing that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is chockfull of safety features — Emergency SOS, Backtrack GPS, siren and international orange action button that can be used for compass-based wayfinding — so no matter how deep my slice goes into the woods, I won’t get lost.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

Main Image: Orreco

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Orreco’s heritage is in analyzing blood biomarkers to improve athlete recovery.

It became a leader in supporting women athletes through its pioneering free app called Fitrwoman. It developed a holistic athlete management system called Recovery Lab and devised machine learning algorithms to identify injury risk based on an athlete’s movement signature.

All those modules and have been built in-house from the same data architecture, laying the foundation for its newest innovation, Orreco.AI, to improve efficiency for performance coaches. They can now interact through voice and text prompts, plan training sessions based on expected workload, model injury risk automatically and even guide return-to-play protocols with an auto-pilot drone.

“We built it from the ground up so that the AI layers through it all,” said Orreco CEO Brian Moore, whose company won SBJ Tech’s Best in Athlete Performance award in 2023. “It’s the operating system, really, for the body.”

Built under the direction of Orreco’s Head of Engineering, Matt McGrath, the new AI products rely on custom-built large language models that can generate its own recommendations of athletes who need additional attention, complete with relevant video clips, datapoints and relevant research to guide the practitioner. Educational resources can then be sent to the relevant player via his or her use of the accompanying @thlete app.

“It’s surfacing that information for you in real time, and it’ll tell you what to look at,” Moore said. “So rather than having to go into each of these different systems, now it’s just telling you this is the athlete to look at, these are your priorities and this is why. It’s also giving you suggested outcomes for the player.”

Image: Orreco

The generative AI also enables someone to type or dictate a command such as “show me Player X’s high-speed running as a bar chart” and see exactly that rendered within seconds. Add prompts for inflammation levels or number of decelerations, and those lines get superimposed over the graph to help connect trends.

A new Drill Planner enables users to select any number of athletes from a roster, select the focus for training, the number of sets, duration, field size and other variables to predict the expect load for each player and the group, to help create an appropriately targeted session based on the club schedule.

The most dramatic application of AI is in the use of drones to help rehabbing players. Current RTP plans can’t fully replicate an athlete’s distinct movement patterns, but the drone can be programmed to mimic his or her typical running based on position and preference — and all done with ascending intensity. As the drone flies, the athlete tries to keep pace, cutting and pivoting to stay close.

“The return-to-play [protocols] are typically in a straight line, but we haven’t been able to understand the twisting and the turning,” Moore said. “So it’s basically being able to hyper-personalize and say, I think you’ll be able to get more efficient with your training. You need to do these very specific moves at these very specific times. It’s like an inoculation dose.”

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Harjiv Singh, a performance and development scientist at the Orlando Magic, is another example of a practitioner who suffered their own debilitating injuries.

Hot on the heels of Andrea Hudy, who recounted her own story of ACL troubles in episode one, Harjiv told the tale of a pickup basketball game that ended with him tearing his ACL and meniscus while also suffering an avulsion fracture.

The 16 months of rehab stoked an interest in sports science that not only led him to the NBA but, since January, roles at the Grand Rapids Rise women’s volleyball team, as Director of Performance Science, and the University of Michigan, where Harjiv teaches out of the Human Performance and Sports Science Center.

John Portch and Joe Lemire could not have wished for a more engaging guest on this finale to this People Behing the Tech podcast series, where Harjiv delved into the sports science principles that define his work.

He also shared his thoughts on training drill design [15:39] and the transferability in competition – a relatively new area of enquiry. “It could be as simple as, in basketball, you’re putting a defender in front of you,” he says. “But it can also be as complex as the angle and the approach of that defender, the people in the vicinity of the athlete, where the athlete is starting from, their position on the court. And that’s merely the introductory part of this.”

Then there’s his thoughts on the “neglected” cognitive component to ACL injuries [6:41]; the need to know your audience when visualizing data [27:38]; and his ability to ask applied questions in the lab at Michigan.

Check out episode two:

Five Years on from the USWNT Introducing Menstrual Cycle Tracking, Sports Science for Female Athletes Remains Under-Developed. So What Can Athletes and Practitioners Do about it?

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A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

* * * * *

Oscar Piastri raced his way to Formula 1, winning three consecutive tiers of developmental circuits: Formula Renault Eurocup in 2019, Formula 3 in 2020 and Formula 2 in 2021.

The native Australian driver spent 2022 as Alpine’s reserve F1 driver, while also testing with McLaren and then joining McLaren’s Formula 1 team as a full-time driver in 2023.

In his rookie season, Piastri claimed two podiums — third in Japan, second in Qatar — and he claimed a further second-place in Monaco last month. Piastri, 23, currently sits in sixth place overall in the driver standings, and he spoke with SBJ last month just before the Miami Grand Prix, at which he finished in P13.

On what makes the Miami Grand Prix unique…

It brings a lot of star power to the calendar. Now that we have Vegas as well, we have two American events that are in pretty prime locations. We have Austin as well, which is, let’s say, a more traditional circuit. But yeah, having Miami on the calendar is very cool. It’s a place where a lot of people want to go. There’s a lot of celebrities and stuff, and it just adds a lot of stardom to the event, really.

On the start to the season…

It’s been a pretty good start to the year, I think, for the team. It’s been very positive. We’ve established ourselves as the third-quickest team at the moment on average. And for me, personally, it’s been a pretty good start. The last couple [before Miami] were a little bit more of a struggle in certain areas. But on the whole, it’s been a nice, clean start to the year. Definitely a much better place than we were 12 months ago.

On being teammates with Lando Norris…

You always utilize your teammate to try and go quicker. With Lando and especially his experience knowing how to drive a Formula One car in the best way and knowing how to drive a McLaren F1 car in the best way as well — because all the cars are going to be a little bit different across the grid — he’s been very useful for that. There’s certainly been things I’ve learned from him along the way.

We’ve been both pushing each other to become quicker, and that’s what you want out of out of a teammate, really, is to be able to push each other and find little bits and pieces here in different corners. Every driver on the grid is going to be looking at their teammate’s data. It’s how you go quicker, especially if there’s corners where they’re there quicker than you. It’s a good idea to look at what they’re doing and try and learn from that.

On the data he checks first after a race…

The first thing is you just look at where everyone’s finished in the race because you often don’t really know how exactly it’s gone. We make a graph of how everyone’s race has gone, so there’s a bunch of different lines, and you can see where people have been quick in their stint, where they’ve been slow in their stint, what their tire degradations look like. And the next thing is then looking into the data itself. You’re looking into what you do in every session like in practice and qualifying the race, looking at which corners you’re better in which corners you’re worse in, looking at how the tires are being used and stuff like that.

On his points of emphasis in development…

It can change a bit from weekend to weekend. For me, managing tires is probably the biggest thing I’m working on at the moment, which is difficult because you need to go as fast as you can but use the tires in a way that’s as friendly as possible for them. So that’s probably the biggest thing I’m still getting to grips with.

On simulated race time…

We do a lot of dedicated simulator work at McLaren trying to prepare the weekends, so the track is as close as possible to the real thing. We’re trying stuff with the setup, trying to get used to the track again, build up some references. I play some iRacing every now and again, as well, but more just for fun, because I enjoy driving racecars. So that’s more what I use that for, rather than actually using it to train or anything like that. It’s more just for a bit of fun in my free time. So yeah, mainly the sim work at McLaren to get a bit of a starting point for the race weekend.

On his fitness training…

Data certainly influences it, for sure. There’s certain metrics that you want to improve, which is, I guess for everyone, trying to get your muscle up and your fat down. But there’s some specific things as well. The biggest strain for us as a driver is our neck, so trying to build that up. And it’s not just your neck muscles that you need but the supporting muscles around it as well, to try and to build that up and see progress in the numbers that you can sustain when you’re training it.

We always log that and monitor that and see where I’m at. Same with my running and cardio side of things, always trying to improve your VO2, trying to get your pace down for a similar heartrate. We monitor all of that kind of stuff, just trying to improve your general fitness because you use a few weird muscles that you wouldn’t normally use in everyday life. But even just with the schedule, with all the jetlag, having a good cardio base is also important. Just so you stay healthy, and you’ve got to get to be able to concentrate for a long time.

On cognitive training…

Everyone’s a little bit different with that. You train your reflexes just by driving in some ways, and we drive so often that you’re always keeping it topped up. I do a bit of reaction training before the session, with tennis balls or whatever, just keeping your mind and hand-eye coordination switched on. We always try to improve our reactions for the start as well, but for me, a lot of that is the state of mind that you’re in, rather than actually training for it. You gain more by knowing whether you need to be revved up or relaxed, or whatever you need to be.

On help from McLaren’s partners…

All of our partners are pretty incredible. To be working with the likes of Google, with Coca-Cola, Dell, just to name a few, working with those kinds of big brands is pretty special. It’s good fun. Of course, they support us in going racing, in all kinds of ways — through financial support, of course, but especially with a lot of our tech partners, with a hands-on approach to helping us, whether it’s through computers or better ways to analyze our data, quicker ways to analyze it. That’s all very important to us. I always enjoy that side of things, the data and, and tech side of things. So yeah, being able to work with some of those big companies like that is very special.

We rely a lot on our partners, especially for our simulator, which we completed not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. Having all the computing power for that, being able to run the graphics well enough, being able to update the model quick enough in real time — I know exactly how important that is when I’m driving it because you know, when you’re lacking in that area.

On Netflix’s Drive to Survive…

I’m still pretty new to Drive to Survive. So I think people are still catching up with me on that. But it’s cool. The benefits it has brought to the sport are pretty incredible. All the sort of new fans that is brought in is very, very cool and positive for the sport. They’re not particularly intrusive on our weekends, so it’s OK. At the end of the day, it’s a good way of getting our sport out there more, and it’s exciting to watch as well.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

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By Joe Lemire

The sampling rate of sensors and frame rate of cameras are typically measured in the tens or hundreds. The new technology from LLume has collected data at 250 kilohertz — that’s 250,000 datapoints per second when few others on the market even get to one thousand.

The core IP is the “LL” in the product name: Light Lace. Spun out of Professor Rob Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell, LLume uses red LED light to measure, for starters, respiration, heart rate, joint motion and impact detection. It’s an exceedingly versatile tool when inhibited only by the speed of light.

“We are right now the only solution that has such high precision, and that’s because we’re using fiber optics instead of electrical sensors,” LLume CEO Ilayda Samilgil said during a recent SBJ visit to its workspace in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston.

Following several years of development — during which time it won the NFL’s First & Future innovation contest, received grants from the Department of Defense and did early testing with an MLB club — LLume is now launching its first commercial product in beta.

The LLume strap resembles a standard chest worn heart rate monitor, only it doesn’t need to be worn directly on the skin and its initial focus is respiration. (LLume does monitor heart rate but initially won’t report that in the app until it has more time for validation.)

Most measurements of VO2 and — VO2max, a limit of oxygen consumption during exercise that is increasingly understood to be the single best predictor of fitness and longevity— need to be done either in a lab setting or else with expensive portable equipment, such as the VO2 Master that retails for $6,295.

LLume’s beta price tag is $199, with possible discounts for high usage. The early target market demo is the cycling community, with a preference for those near Boston for additional support testing.

“We’re going to start direct to consumer mainly to get feedback from the customer, but I think eventually — whether it’s with apparel companies or something like Peloton or iFit equipment or gyms — we’re definitely very open to going B2B2C instead,” Samilgil said.

The LLume strap doesn’t use a mask to quantify oxygen intake and carbon dioxide exhalation but rather uses its high sample rate to detect minute changes in the chest as a proxy for lung ventilation. (Though capable of higher sample rates, the team realized anything over 400 hertz is overkill for biometrics.) The idea is to provide personalized exertion monitoring that’s more precise than the standard wearable’s heart rate zones.

“Heart rate is affected by how you breathe,” LLume biomechanist Riley Edmonds said. “So that zone can change quite quickly if your breathing is not controlled. So if you want to look at the step behind what’s powering your heart, breathing is what does that so it gives you a more accurate, precise control over your zones.”

Image: LLume (Melanie Lyons)

This chest strap for endurance athletes is a starting point, but future adaptations are nearly limitless. With its baseball partner, LLume has been working on sleeves to track pitchers’ elbows and shirts to monitor their shoulders — those motions might be tracked at 20 kilohertz, they said. It can capture rapid accelerations in the joints, which Edmonds said is a more actionable datapoint than torque.

The 250 kHz measurements have been used by the military in research contracts to measure impact and trauma. LLume has developed algorithms that enable the device to sample at moderate rates continuously but then automatically increase when triggered by, say, a potentially concussive explosion.

Impact monitoring is, of course, applicable to sports such as football, hockey and rugby. The potential for embedding Light Lace into helmets or uniforms is possible but it hasn’t attempted that yet. The company’s winning pitch in the NFL competition — for which it received a $50,000 grant — was for tracking respiration and muscle fatigue.

At the time, LLume was doing business as Organic Robotics Corporation in a nod to its roots, especially with Shepherd remaining with the company as co-founder and CTO. But the name proved confusing to the marketplace, leading to the change. LLume has that double L, is pronounced as “loom,” which is relevant for its ability to be embedded into textiles and “llume” also means “fire” in Asturian, a regional dialect in Spain — fitting for a company whose core technology is red light.

There are future opportunities to make the Light Lace glow either as a fashion accessory or as an indicator — maybe it blinks twice when you reach a set respiration target. It’s another idea yet to be realized, on a long roadmap of possible destinations for the adaptable technology. And often when Samilgil looks at her iPhone, the auto-generated memories will be a picture of earlier product form factors.

“I’ll get a photo of an older prototype,” she said, “and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, my God, this is only like three months ago. We’ve come such a long way.’”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

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Paige Bueckers’ stellar performances at this year’s March Madness proved that her ACL injury is long behind her.

She returned to action in November 2023 after 15 months out and drove UConn all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Behind the scenes, Andrea Hudy, the Director of Sports Performance (Women’s Basketball) at UConn, was critical to Bueckers’ convalescence and is working (while pursuing a PhD) to ensure there are fewer such occurrences in the future.

“My passion is trying to understand why people get hurt or the story behind their injuries and keep them strong and resilient for what’s unexpected or the challenges ahead,” she tells The People Behind the Tech podcast.

Andrea speaks from her own experience of injury as a varsity volleyball player. Indeed, when anyone says she “played without an ACL” for six years – as Andrea told Joe Lemire and John Portch – it makes you sit up and take notice.

In the first episode of this new series, we discuss the questions that still need to be asked about female injury occurrence rates [18:00]. We also touch upon Andrea’s career in college athletics, which took in tenures at Texas and Kansas before she returned to UConn three years ago for her second spell [8:40]. Then, we broach her willingness to experiment with new technologies while concurrently seeking better insights from existing datasets [11:40]. Finally, she tells us why she can occasionally see herself as a modern, real-life Icarus [26:30] and much more besides.

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By Rob Schaefer

When NFL teams draft college prospects, they are selecting more than a player. They are also hiring a person to represent their organization, on and off the field.

Ferretly is acutely aware of that dynamic and the startup has developed an AI-powered social media screening platform for a half-dozen NFL teams who took part in April’s NFL Draft in Detroit.

“The behavior off the field is almost as important as their athletic prowess to these organizations,” Ferretly Founder/CEO Darrin Lipscomb told SBJ in a recent interview. “Because their brand is at stake.”

Ferretly’s platform scans publicly available posts across seven top social media sites – including Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn – links accounts to the subject (with a confidence score attached) and analyzes their activity across 12 classifications, like disparaging/prejudicial remarks, political speech, threats, drug mentions/images and so on. Such posts can include text, images or even memes.

The engine’s findings are then distilled into in-depth summary reports, with elements ranging from a subject’s flagged behaviors listed chronologically, a word cloud of frequently used phrases or topics, sentiment trends, and aggregated news coverage of the subject.

“A person that’s evaluating that individual can then use [the report] to better assess an individual’s character and integrity,” Lipscomb said. “We don’t adjudicate. We just want to surface those and say, ‘Here’s what he posts.’”

Image: Ferretly

That surfacing is surface-level, Lipscomb added, so past posts deleted at the time of the report would not be included, nor would posts from a private profile. Ferretly’s services are also Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) compliant, a federal law protecting the privacy of subjects of consumer reports.

Still, Lipscomb noted that among this year’s top 200 or so NFL Draft prospects, about 70% had at least one behavior flagged – more than double the rate in other industries Ferretly covers (where the average is 33-34%). The three most common flags: profanity, disparaging remarks and political speech.

Lipscomb estimated sports teams comprise about 10% of Ferretly’s business, which encompasses nearly 1,000 clients across the retail, media, finance and public sectors, among others (they added 75 customers in Q1 this year). Influencer vetting is another popular use case, and teams in the English Premier League, NHL, NBA, MLB and Division I college are clients.

“There’s no real separate distinction between whether you’re hiring an NFL player versus an influencer,” Lipscomb said. “It’s the same report, the same assessment.”

Image: Ferretly

Ferretly offers its platform as a SaaS solution, or with analyst support at a higher cost. Running an analysis takes about an hour, with reports typically turned around within a day, Lipscomb said, adding that most clients average about $20 per report. The price point is determined by volume of reports per month.

“It’s really a rapid turnaround because of the use of AI, especially for social profile discovery and the machine learning classifications. We probably do more use of AI than most of our competitors,” Lipscomb said. “There’s some competitors that do this mostly manually. They’ll produce a report at about three times the cost of what we charge.”

This year, Ferretly had analyzed around 250 NFL Draft prospects across their client’s potential targets by the time the Chicago Bears used the No 1 pick to select USC quarterback Caleb Williams.

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