Project leads Anna Warren and Tham Wedatilake discuss the factors that enable Insight 360’s data-led approach to athlete management.
Insight 360 is a data-driven approach to performance management and athlete monitoring. It was launched in February 2024 by the ECB in collaboration with Ascent, their digital services provider, and includes an app for players (to view their data), a dashboard for practitioners (to view data across the board), and a portal that practitioners can use to input data.
“When you see the little research that’s out there, you’ve not got much to hang your hat on,” said Anna Warren, the Head of England Women’s Science & Medicine, at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “We’re using this platform to better understand in depth the female cricketer; what they look like from the academy through to the international cricketer.”
The rollout has been a success and, as the ECB launches phase two (the wider introduction of injury data and more sophisticated use of match data), we highlight the factors that led to its sport-wide take up.
It reflects the concerns of players
Insight 360, as the name suggests, represents a holistic approach to collating athlete data. There is a focus on availability and performance, but there is also a focus their health, home life, and career progression. “Players come to us and discuss their issues quite openly,” said Dr Tham Wedatilake, the Lead Physician for England Women’s Cricket, who joined Warren onstage to discuss the project. “They want to perform without any barriers.”
It is a co-designed platform
Ahead of the launch, the ECB gathered input from practitioners and coaches across the English game. “This means Insight 360 is bespoke for women’s cricket,” said Warren. Players, she said, are happy with an app that allows them to review their own data in as much detail as they like. “This is good for player buy-in, which is always a challenge in relation to athlete monitoring.”
There is also the power of a co-designed project. UK Sports Institute have found as much with their Project Minerva. Dr Richard Burden, the UKSI’s Co-Head of Female Athlete Health & Performance, said: “Get the practitioners involved, get athletes, get the teams and bring them along with it because if they’re onboard you get easier access to them and you’re going to produce something that’s more translatable, meaningful and applicable to them.”
Warren is on the same page with Insight 360. “You can link loads of different data sources together and start to answer some key performance questions – we’re not looking at everything in isolation.”
It provides a single source of truth
Collaboration can be easier said than done. “When you have so many people pull data together it becomes almost impossible for the human brain to comprehend and then deliver effective, unbiased solutions to players’ needs and expectations,” said Wedatilake.
Insight 360 is the single reference point and it provides continuity. “As soon as one person leaves and another is working with the players, that record gets lost,” said Warren. “We’re really trying to create a joined-up system.”
It is future-proof
Wedatilake explained that Insight 360, as part of its next phase, will include injury data. He said: “It will be a game-changer for us in terms of load and injury risk and other factors such as the menstrual cycle and wellness.” The platform is primed to integrate future sources of data.
He does, however, also temper his excitement with a note of caution. “We didn’t want to get greedy too early,” he added. It was critical to have the right structure and means of integration before adding different elements, whether they are rooted in stats or video.
One of the next steps is further automation, particularly with regards to match data. “That’s the beauty of this system,” said Warren. “It’s so much quicker for people.”
She and Wedatilake wrapped up their presentation by setting out their ambitions for Insight 360:
College teams across the US are starting to consider the mental side as a critical element of player development and are using Pison’s AI-powered solution in their pursuit of answers.
Main image: Pison
Priced annually at $359 per player, the package comes with the same hardware and ENG technology as the company’s Pison Perform product – which encompasses sleep tracking in addition to cognitive assessments – plus access to an online data visualization dashboard and Pison Baseball Pro app with drills specific to the sport.
“As far as this game goes, it’s been known to be 90% mental, but how often do we train the mental part of the game?” said Marc Deschenes, Pison’s VP/Sports Operations and a former professional pitcher. “Us being able to use that information and integrating that into player development for performance and awareness on the baseball field is integral in making this game more complete for our players.”
Pison’s sensors detect electrical signals that emanate from the brain, pass through the nervous system and manifest in muscle movements. Its breakthrough is in coining what it calls ENG (electroneurography), which measures electrical signals in a way that would typically require complex lab testing via a chip pressed to the surface of the skin.
The roots of the company’s technology are in treating degenerative brain illnesses such as ALS, but it broke into sports about one year ago with an eye on performance and evaluation use-cases. Pison’s sensors measure cognitive functions such as reaction time, mental agility and focus through light-based reaction tests that range from 20 seconds to three minutes.
Image: Pison
Pison has public partnerships with the baseball programs at Penn State, Oral Roberts, West Virginia (including use by 2024 No. 7 overall MLB draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals JJ Wetherholt), and Lansing Community College, which Deschenes calls a “power user” because of feedback they have provided. At the youth level, Pison works with USA Prime New England (which Deschenes owns) and Fort Worth Christian Academy for baseball, as well as the Boston Hockey Academy.
Multiple MLB teams are also evaluating the technology, and the league itself is in the process of testing it for on-field approval.
The new product was formally announced at the American Baseball Coaches Association conference in Washington D.C. this morning. In the future, Pison will look to expand to other sports and potentially integrate its sensors into existing wearable vendors.
“The product, really, is taking a sophisticated technology that has been in the medical world – and kind of out of reach even there because of the cost – and bringing it down to something that everybody can use,” said John Joseph, Pison’s CRO. “When we look at the market, we aren’t just going after the MLB market or college. This is really for anybody that wants to develop that elite mental game.”
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.
For the first time, all players will access to their data and video within 40 minutes of finishing their match.
Main image: ATP Tour
The tour treats the Next Gen Finals as an experimental ground for innovation, whether that be in competition format or technology. At the last edition that meant expanding access to filterable snippets of points within matches, which can be sorted by factors such as point result; shot type, direction or spin; and score, among others.
Metrics such as Shot Quality, developed by ATP partner TennisViz, are accessible within Tennis IQ in real-time to coaches sitting courtside, and supplementary video is typically available within 40 minutes of matches ending.
“What we’ve looked to do is offer the players an enhanced version of Tennis IQ across those two events (the ATP Finals and ATP Next Gen Finals), which actually is a bit of a glimpse into what we expect the future of Tennis IQ to be,” said ATP Director/ATP Events Adam Hogg. “It’s something that’s not currently available for the players on a week-by-week basis through the Tennis IQ platform, but ultimately something that we as the Tour at our own events wanted to offer as a premium service.”
The ATP is planning to roll out the video feature, along with biometric data derived from approved wearable devices, within Tennis IQ for its full schedule of events sometime in 2025, likely between Q1 and Q2. Tennis IQ launched as a match data platform last September.
To derive the metrics available within that platform, TennisViz applies custom-built machine learning algorithms to ball and player-tracking data provided by the ATP and ATP Media’s joint venture, Tennis Data Innovations (through the tour’s work with vendors like Hawk-Eye). TennisViz has collected data from more than 7 million shots dating back to 2004 and identified more than 60 different shot types, according to Head of Performance/Media and Broadcast Tom Corrie, with a shot’s quality determined by an assessment of ball characteristics, including speed, spin, bounce angle, and a shot’s depth and width on the court.
Relative to that process, the video feature is simple.
“What’s advanced is creating the Steal Score or the Shot Quality,” Corrie said, referencing two of the metrics TennisViz has developed. “We’re just attaching a time-stamping process to the [match] video, which we’ve developed the technology to do.”
TennisViz has a similar partnership with Wimbledon that encompasses video-tagging and has also worked with the USTA’s player development department. Corrie said the company is half-staffed by former coaches and half-staffed by engineers and developers, giving them a unique lens on the sport.
“Our vision was, ‘tennis data is dated,’” Corrie said. “All the other sports, particularly American sports, have moved on massively in the last 10 years in terms of different analytics and different fan-facing metrics. Tennis is still using ‘break points won’ as the number one determination of winning.
“This platform (Tennis IQ) rivals any platform in any other sports now, in terms of the fact that is’ live data. If you take the number of matches, the 24-hour nature of tennis, all those things – it’s now as good as any platform in any sport… We’re (tennis) now not behind. But we were.”
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.
Lasso Safe’s AI-powered software helps sports teams to assess risk and better care for its athletes.
Photo: Lasso Safe
Founded by a pair of retired professional athletes — endurance cyclist Pamela Minix and figure skater Luis Hernández — Lasso Safe has developed an evidence-based, research-validated survey and software to detect potentially toxic environments and unsafe relationships.
Players Health, a sports insurance group that recently raised a $60 million Series C round, will use it to “create safer, more supportive environments that lead to both healthier athletes and more sustainable businesses,” said Kyle Lubrano, Chief Mission Delivery Officer of Players Health.
Minix said Lasso Safe completed validation of its most updated product in October and described it as “a machine learning software that recognizes athletes’ experiences — specifically the areas are mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing. We recognize them on spectrum from healthy, happy experiences to harmful and even abusive experiences.”
Lasso Safe described the product as “a machine learning software that recognizes athletes’ experiences — specifically the areas are mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing.” Image: Lasso Safe
It was originally developed for national governing bodies that serve Olympic sports but has been modified for age groups as young as elementary school. Minix noted the increasing pressures at the youth level, in part because of growing expectations from the coaches and the growing financial investment in the space.
“Any level can experience this, not just highly competitive levels, so we focus on youth, but we do all age groups,” Minix said. “The software is designed to recognize even the first step away from that, when maybe those pressures start to come up or any type of misconduct within those wellness pillars.”
The frequency of surveys is at the discretion of each organization. Minix noted that Players Health will typically require them at least once during an application process to the platform, but many groups will administer them periodically or after incidents.
Questions asked of athletes include whether they feel valued by the coach, whether they have adequate access to nutrition and hydration during training sessions and more. Surveys can take anywhere from five to 15 minutes to complete.
Minix said Lasso Safe has run pilots with about 50 universities in the past five years, led by Utah State and Victoria University in Australia. The first adopter of the latest software is Globocol, a case management company based in the UK that offers services for sporting integrity, DEI, health and safety and data governance, among other uses.
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.
The seven-weight world champion spoke to SBJ Tech ahead of her second fight with Ireland’s Katie Taylor.
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.
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Two of her losses included the tightly fought split decision against Katie Taylor that headlined Madison Square Garden two years ago. Their rematch last month, which Taylor won by a controversial unanimous decision, was as the co-headliner with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in the Most Valuable Promotions card was held at AT&T Stadium in Texas and streaming live on Netflix.
Also in November, Serrano, 36, partnered with Total Wireless, a no-contract 5G provider that runs on the Verizon network — and received her very first mobile phone. Citing an unwavering, distraction-free focus on boxing, Serrano had resisted owning a phone until now. She will host a meet-and-greet with fans at a Total Wireless store in Brooklyn on Dec. 1.
On not owning a mobile phone…
No, never. It’s going to be my first one. All my communication has been through my trainer, my brother-in-law, which is Jordan Maldonado, and every now and then, I’ll steal my sister’s phone and do everything there. I do have an iPad, but this would be my first phone.
On who she’ll call or text first…
I think it’s going to be my sister, and I’m going to talk. She will be happy that I don’t take her phone anymore. Now I have my own.
On working with Total Wireless…
Total Wireless definitely has a good commitment with the Latino companies, Latino athletes. What really got me was because their plans, and then they’re associated with Verizon. I needed a plan and something that’s not going to slow me down. Because I’m always high pace, and I needed something that’s going to do that for me.
On how she evaluates brand partnerships…
If I truly believe in it, if I’m happy with them, if I see their work and what they’ve done for others, and what they’re doing for in general — yeah, that’s how we partner up. If I believe in it wholeheartedly, then I’m going to go with them. There’s people that we’ve gotten offers from, and I said I don’t agree with what they’re doing, or I don’t get what they their motives are. So I will not represent them.
On being on co-headlining with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson…
Obviously the fans wanted this fight. I believe I won the first fight. So it was really easy when my team came up to me and said, ’It’s going to be on Netflix in a big stadium for 80,000.’ I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We gave an iconic first fight, headlining Madison Square Garden, selling it out. And I think we’re just going to do a better fight this time. And I think we’re both deserving of this platform to go out there and represent for the women in the sport.
It’s truly an honor. I’m super proud. I have an amazing team that even thought of me to put this fight on. I can’t wait. I know I’m going to put on a show. I’m ready. I know Katie’s ready. And you’re going to witness women’s boxing at its finest.
On her training methods…
I’m old school. I have an old school trainer. We’ve been doing it for 16 years this way. It’s been working for me for 16 years. I’m one of the most accomplished female fighters in the world, and that’s only [after] having nine amateur fights. I have 50 pro fights. And if it ain’t broke, why fix it? But we definitely train smarter this camp. I train hard for all my fights. So I’d be lying if I you that I trained harder. No, we just trained smarter. I’m ready to become undisputed champion at 140.
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On how she’s evolved…
I never really, in the beginning of my career, thought of recovery as part of training, but that was definitely a plus for this fight. As you get older, your body gets a little more wear and tear, so you definitely have to concentrate on that and just eating good and just going out there and performing, making sure you’re training hard and running the miles you have to run, putting in the work, and you’ll do good at fight time.
On her team…
My team is very small. It has been my brother-in-law [who is] my manager and my trainer, which is Jordan Maldonado; and my sister [Cindy]. We’ve been together. It’s been us three. I do have a pad coach, but he does what my main coach, Jordan, tells him to do. I had a nutritionist, and I learned things from him. So I moved it over to this fight. I try and cook for myself, but I’m I don’t like too much. I don’t like an entourage. I don’t like too many people around me. So it’s been my small team, and I’m happy. They just bring the best out of me.
On what she learned about fighting Katie Taylor…
Katie is definitely a warrior. She’s tough as they come. She’s not going to go down easily, and she’s going to fight every minute, every round, and that’s what I I learned. I gained more confidence after that first fight. I know I hurt her. I’m capable of hurting her again this fight. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.
On the growth of women’s boxing…
It’s been a long journey. Definitely people had their doubts in us, but now that they’ve seen that champions are fighting champions, we’re putting in on great shows — I’m not the type to brag, but when I do express how much money I’m making in my fights, that’s to motivate these young girls and show them, inspire them. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, like ‘I can make this type of money if I continue to fight, work hard.’ Now, with this type of money, women are coming into the sport more. They’re putting on shows. They’re fighting, they’re getting in shape, and we have amazing talent, amazing champions, and I think it’s only getting better.
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.
Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar of German champions Bayer Leverkusen is joined by Yael Averbuch West of Gotham City and Kitman Labs’ Stephen Smith to discuss the power of a data-informed performance strategy.
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They demonstrated to Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Leverkusen’s Head of Medical, the optimal range of player availability to top the table during a meet in Dublin, four or five years before Die Werkself actually won the title.
“I kept this data; and last year we did it,” Dr Dittmar told the Kitman Labs podcast with evident pride. It turns out the data scanned almost perfectly across the numbers posted by the club during their unbeaten title-winning campaign.
“They found out what we need from the medical point of view, from player availability, and it was perfect – the data predicted what would happen in the future.”
It demonstrated the value of clean, consistent datasets – something that has given Leverkusen an edge over more celebrated rivals – and something that Yael Averbuch West is trying to build in her role as GM at 2023 NWSL champions Gotham City.
“We’re still in the data collection stage in the women’s game,” she tells the podcast, while also explaining that the work to bridge that gap is well underway in this corner of New York City.
In the third and final episode of this series, West and Dr Dittmar are joined by Kitman Labs Founder Stephen Smith to discuss how data strategies can help teams in their quest for greatness.
Elsewhere, the trio discuss a range of topics, including why learnings tend to emerge as data collection grows ever more sophisticated [17:30]; the importance of a centralised system for consistency [24:15]; the balance between using data to unearth ‘hidden gems’ and jumping on something misleading [33:00].
Episode one is available here and episode two is available here.
Further listening:
Kitman Labs Podcast: ‘Women Players Need to Feel Safe and they Need to Have Access to Support’
Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.
Former NFL star Greg Olsen discusses the second season of his show with Michael Gervais, Youth Inc., and the apps helping young athletes with their mental health.
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.
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Former NFL TE Greg Olsen has stayed busy since retiring from the league after the 2020 season. He made a fresh name for himself as Fox Sports’ lead NFL color commentator over multiple years, and now anchors the network’s No. 2 booth following its addition of Tom Brady. In 2022, he partnered with former Panthers teammate Ryan Kalil, actor Vince Vaughn and LA-based venture firm Powerhouse Capital to launch podcast production house Audiorama, which has since spun off youth-sports-focused interview show Youth Inc. into a media company that is adding a digital commerce platform in 2025 and raised $4.5M earlier this year. On top of it all, he is also a dad and youth football, basketball and baseball coach.
“It’s hard,” Olsen said of juggling those responsibilities in a recent interview. “I try to coach one season per kid.”
The first episode of season two of Olsen’s Youth Inc. Podcast releases today with a new co-host in sports psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais. Earlier this week, SBJ Tech caught up with Olsen to discuss Youth Inc., working with Brady and sports technology trends that interest him.
On what to expect from season two of the Youth Inc. Podcast…
Season one was really almost testing the market. When we approached season one, our plan was, let’s cast a wide net, let’s have a big variety of conversations with all different aspects of the youth sports experience – whether it’s parents, coaches, Olympians, professional athletes, college, sports psychologists, performance coaches. Every aspect of what the landscape looks like, let’s have surface-level conversations, cast a wide net, and let’s test the interest level, let’s test which areas of the system people most gravitate to and respond well to.
It became very evident through those 40-some-odd episodes that there were certain areas that people had strong interest in. Season two is going to be a lot more of hyper-focused episodes that are more of a deep dive into different conversation with guests, but all have the same storylines.
For example, me and Dr. Michael Gervais, who’s one of the leading sports psychologists in sports from the youth level all the way up through professional athletes and Olympians – I met him when I played for the Seahawks and have gotten to know him – we sat down with a bunch of different guests. And while the conversations all covered different sports, different ages, different levels, different detail, they all had common threads around mental health, sports performance anxiety, best practices of parenting youth athletes, best practices for being a youth or college or professional athlete.
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On how technology is changing youth sports…
It’s a great question, and obviously [with Youth Inc.’s digital commerce platform] we’re trying to tackle one of the big areas, which is a very complicated and fragmented e-commerce experience. We spend all week very much on our phones or on our computers with the ability to process buying in a seamless one-touch, whether it’s Fanatics, or Amazon, and all these big e-commerce platforms that we’ve all become very accustomed to. And then when it comes to, you know, buying a hoodie for your kid’s middle school football team, it seems like you’re jumping through hoops.
With sports performance and mental health, there’s a lot of good apps and programs that people are investing in that are right on kids’ phones, take them step by step through performance anxiety, best steps to handling pressure, the best steps of handling failure – and they’re almost bringing a mobile sports psychologist into the palm of their hands. There’s scheduling apps that best process how to pick the best baseball tournaments and best volleyball tournaments. [The technologies are] all geared towards – yes, capitalizing on a big market, capitalizing on a big opportunity financially – but more so just trying to make the experience better.
On working with Tom Brady at Fox…
It’s been great. We’ve had a good relationship, and obviously we’ve had a lot of conversations as he’s transitioned to this role. He’s been really good to work with, super humble and open-minded to asking questions and wanting to learn and realizing that when you start anything new – it’s no different than when I first started – you don’t know what you don’t know. I give him a lot of credit. He’s been very upfront and humble and honest about wanting to learn and wanting to get advice from other people. And you’re talking about the best guy who’s ever played the sport. So, it’s a credit to him. I’m sure if you asked him, he feels a lot better now than he did in Week 1, and he’ll feel a lot better in five weeks than he did yesterday, and that process just continues to get more and more comfortable the longer you do it. No different than how it was when we all first came in the [NFL] as players. There is a learning curve and there is a process of getting comfortable as time goes on.
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On the keys to his transition from player to broadcaster…
Early on for me, what I tried to remind myself is: there was no learning curve for football. I knew football. The learning curve came through the technical part. The learning curve came through communicating on live broadcasts and communicating with producers in your ear and understanding replay sequencing and all the specific things to a broadcast were where I had to do a bunch of my learning.
To this day, I don’t know exactly all the camera angles, official names. When I ask for a replay, I’m probably calling it the wrong name, but they by now know what I’m talking about… At the end of the day, when you get your 20-second sound bite to get in there, talk about what you know. We’ve lived this sport our whole lives. We know it. We see it. Describe it to someone at home in a way that keeps it interesting, keeps it informative. The complexity of football is what makes it so special. But also you can’t talk like you’re in the locker room. You can’t talk like you’re talking to another 20-year veteran at the position. So, there is a little balance.
To sum it up, keep the football part. That’s the part you know. Don’t let the transition of the technical broadcast component paralyze you. At the end of the day, you’re talking football. Don’t complicate it. Talk what you know. Talk what you see. You can figure out the mechanics of a broadcast, figure out the mechanics of television along the way.
On the NFL’s in-game authorization of Guardian Caps in 2024…
I think anything that can continue to improve the health and safety of players while keeping the game the game is something worth looking into. So, I’ll always be a supporter of any of that.
I think helmet technology has come such a long way. I mean, I look back, I had my rookie year Chicago Bears helmet and when I look on the inside, let alone when I look back at what I wore in high school compared to what I wore at the end of my career, you talk about the technology growing and getting better with time. And then you factor in what the Guardian Caps are able to do and the extra layer. I know everybody wears them in practice. And I’m sure there’s some adjustment getting used to it. But I think everybody has the decision, what helmet they wear, whether they wear the Guardian Cap in practice or also in the games.
I don’t know if I would wear one. Obviously, I’m probably on the older side. By the time it was introduced I was like that ‘can’t teach and old dog new tricks’ kind of person. But for guys who wear it, I’m sure there’s a level of comfort, a level of protection. I wouldn’t be shocked if some of that technology Guardian is developing gets incorporated into some of the helmet design, and one day you get the combination of both things all wrapped up in one.
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.
The former NBA small forward talks to SBJ Tech his new tool, which helps players to shot and offers instant feedback.
Main photo courtesy of Form
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.
* * * * *
Even though he was an above-average shooter — Hayward hit 1,111 career three-pointers at a .370 rate, and his .950 playoff free-throw percentage is No. 1 in NBA history — he kept seeking new ways to improve, which led him to an entrepreneur named Charlie Wallace. Hayward, 34, and his former Butler teammate, Emerson Kampen, acquired most of Wallace’s company, redesigned a few things and rebranded it as Form, which they launched this month.
Form makes a basketball shooting aid. The product is a flat-sided cube whose shape helps encourage proper shooting form and the development of muscle memory. The pro ambassadors for Form are nine-time NBA All-Star Paul George and the WNBA’s Lexie Hull, who’s currently a starter for the Indiana Fever.
On how he got involved with Form . . .
The creator of Form was this guy named Charlie Wallace, who created what was called Qube. I’m somebody that’s kind of a perfectionist, and I was scouring the internet looking for something for hand placement on a basketball and where to position it. And I came across Charlie’s YouTube and saw this device, saw him shooting it, and thought, ‘I might as well try it out.’ So I ordered one for myself. He came across on his sheets that Gordon Hayward bought one, so he messaged, asking if it was the real Gordon Hayward — it was.
I got the product. Then he sent me his number. We talked and chatted about it. Then we decided — my partner and I, Emerson Kampen — that we wanted to push forward with it and rebrand and relaunch the company. We designed a few different things about it and changed some stuff a little bit, and here it is now.
On the target demo for the product…
It was something that I loved using during the last couple years of my career, and I felt like this was a product that could really help a lot of young kids, especially. It’s really a tool that’s geared more towards younger kids that are just [wondering], How do you learn how to shoot? How do you shoot a basketball? You would start with a tool like this. I have young kids myself and felt like it was something that could really help them.
On what interested him originally…
For one, I saw Charlie, who’s this unassuming, middle-aged guy just draining jump shots from almost half-court. And it was like, ‘What is he doing?’ Shooting it straight every time. The ball is rolling back to him.
Now, at this point in time, I obviously still was a good shooter, and it’s not like I wanted to change my shot at all, but certainly felt like I used my left thumb a little bit and wanted to perfect it even more. So I think that’s what initially sold me on it, and then once I got it, just [saw] how simple it was. I used it more shooting around the house than anything. I didn’t really shoot it on a goal. I would warm up with it on a goal, especially during my offseason workouts, but more than anything, it was something that, I could be on the couch and just shoot over and over and over. It just locks in your form.
You can’t be on the basketball court at all times. But you’re sitting around watching TV and you’re just shooting this thing up and down on the couch. If you’re thinking about basketball and thinking about your shot and thinking about your game, it’s something that you can do, like I said, not even on a court. And that was another thing: I know a lot of people don’t have access to courts all the time, and you can use this anywhere and everywhere.
On whether he always wanted to become an entrepreneur…
I honestly didn’t ever think about it. I wanted to be a basketball player, and I was blessed and lucky enough to be able to play in the NBA and have a long career in the NBA. And I was just thinking each year about how I could get better as a basketball player, and this kind of fell into my lap. As I got older and older, you do have to start thinking like, at some point in time, this is going to end. The NBA always has a lot of meetings about that, and they’re trying to help players because your career is usually a lot shorter than you think it will be. And so you’ve got to have something that you can do afterwards.
This was something that fell into my lap, but it’s something that we quickly became passionate about because it allows me to still be around the game and help young kids learn how to shoot and but it’s also the other side of it. It’s the business side of it, and that’s fun. Obviously business is competitive. It gives you a chance to compete.
On his other post-basketball business interests…
My portfolio, in general, I wanted to make sure it had a lot of variety in it. I just also released a movie — I was the producer of a movie. So that’s another thing, and it certainly has helped me. As preseason games get started, I’m kind of missing it a little bit, but this has helped me bridge that gap. They always say retired athletes start to get bored and all this, but this has helped me jump right into it.
On the first film from his production company, Whiskey Creek Productions…
We made the movie [Notice to Quit] in September of ’21, over the course of that year. I was obviously still playing, so I wasn’t extremely involved on a day-to-day standpoint, but as the producer, I was sent dailies. I was able to go to Skywalker Sound and do some editing there, and I think, moving forward in the future, I would love to get more involved with that as well.
On other shooting tech…
I used Noah when it first came out. My shot was actually pretty flat, and we used that for a little bit just to work on the arc of my shot. Noah is good because you want to be consistent in your shot more than anything, and it helps you just realize your arc is not as high as you think it is. And so I used that. We used the gun when I was in high school — the gun is just the thing where you’ve got the nets that go right around the goal, and when you shoot it, the balls drop down, and then it passes it back to you.
On how youth can learn to shoot…
Another thing I thought was really amazing about Form: There’s never been and there’s not really a tool that helps you learn how to shoot. A lot of tools these days are data-driven, and they’re showing you all the data about your shot, the arc, the rotation of the basketball, the depth, how far you’re shooting it. It counts your misses and your makes, and all that stuff is really good, but it doesn’t help you learn how to shoot. It doesn’t tell you about your form.
There’s so many tools in other sports, like golf and baseball, for example, that everyone’s all-in on and learning to do the fundamental part of whatever you’re trying to do. [Basketball tools] show you your data, but they can’t help you fix it. You would have to do that on your own. This, if you don’t shoot it the right way, it’s going to spin because it’s a cube. It’s not going to spin on that singular axis. And so if you do it correctly, you see its instant feedback. You see it right away. It spins beautifully, and if it’s not, it’s going to be wobbly.
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.
The Olympic gold medalist is sits down with the Athlete’s Voice to discuss her new venture with Always Alpha
Main photo: Always Alpha
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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.
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The Los Angeles native competed in the 100, 200 and 400 meters, with an individual gold at the 2012 London Games in the 200. Felix also won 21 medals in the world championships before retiring at the end of 2022.
Felix has been active across a wide range of interests in recent years, as an advocate for Black maternal health, as the Co-Founder of women’s footwear brand Saysh and, as of today, the Co-Founder of Always Alpha, the first talent management firm exclusively dedicated to women’s sports.
For Always Alpha, Felix partnered with her brother, Wes — a former elite runner who has served as his sister’s agent — as well as former Wasserman executive Cosette Chaput and Dolphin Entertainment CEO Bill O’Dowd. Always Alpha is a subsidiary of the NASDAQ-listed Dolphin and will work with women athletes across all sports and support them in a variety of ways, including brand partnerships, media production and entrepreneurship.
On the motivation to start Always Alpha…
What led to it really was my experience in my career. My brother managed me, and we really had to kind of piece things together. There wasn’t really a cohesive strategy starting out to bring all the things that I was interested in and make all the work seamless. And so we had missteps and struggles, and when other athletes would come to me and ask, ‘How did you do this or that?’ Or how to start a company, or if they were interested in writing a book — whatever the thing is — where do I point them where they can do all the things and show up as themselves?
That was the inspiration — that it didn’t exists — and especially something focused on women’s sports, obviously, with all the momentum that we have now, but I think there’s just a unique way that you show up for a woman, and so we are excited to do that at Always Alpha.
Photo: Always Alpha
On an example of the marketing challenges she faced…
It was an idea of always wanting to get outside of track and field and break through to the mainstream. That was always the big fight. I felt like, through my career, we learned so much, and I always told Wes, ‘I wish we could do it again.’ Now we have all the pieces, and we have the things to take advantage of, the relationships and all of that. That would have made that path so much easier, as I was interested in business, and it just wasn’t there.
Now that I understand things so much clearer, I feel like a big piece of this is this legacy and mentorship. And how do I give back? And I really see this as a vehicle, also, to be able to do that and to say, ‘Let me help you avoid some of the hardships that I went through.’
On connecting with Dolphin to launch Always Alpha…
Cosette and I met working on the LA bid in 2016. Then we met Bill from Dolphin [earlier this year], and he really just shared the vision. He understood that what we were trying to create didn’t exist and that we needed to have something fully focused on women.
It was just being aligned — Wes, myself, Cosette — and talking to Bill. He got it. And that doesn’t always happen. So to be able to bring this into the world at scale, and to be able to have amazing resources that Dolphin provides is a unique experience.
On Allyson’s daily role with the agency…
It’s really that piece of guidance and [having], conversations with athletes and coaches broadcasters about, not only my experience, but what are their goals and what would they like to achieve? Being that piece of it, but also on a personal level, being available, being an open book and transparent about my journey and how I can help others with theirs.
On the roots of her entrepreneurship…
It’s funny — growing up, Wes and I used to collect things around our house, and then we would create a store and actually sell back our family’s items to them. And so we’ve always had that bug. We had a lemonade stand — it was actually a Kool-Aid stand — on our lawn. So we always had that spirit in our family, but we also weren’t really exposed to it in a real way. We didn’t know people close to us who had done it, and so being two kids from the inner city of LA, it didn’t really ever seem like a real possibility.
It wasn’t until right before starting Saysh [that we found] the confidence. I struggled with imposter syndrome, all those things, but getting the courage to just go for it. Launching Saysh was like, ‘OK, we can do this.’ To me, this is the next step in that journey that I’m on, just to make things better for women and make it an easier path.
Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images for World Athletics
On preparing for a post-competition career…
It was such a natural progression with Saysh because it happened organically. At that point, I wasn’t really focused on what was the next thing. It was, ‘Well, I don’t have shoes, and I need them, and so we’ve got to build this thing.’ Throughout my career, Wes was always really hounding me on, ‘You need to make these connections and these relationships, and we don’t know what it’s for, but it could be useful later on.’ And so I was really heavy into that and into mentorship. I wasn’t sure what the thing was going to be, but I was constantly trying to prepare for my next move.
On her mentors…
Jackie Joyner-Kersee has been my athletic mentor, and she’s been incredible. Mary Erdoes has been someone who has been really just transparent — one of those relationships that I didn’t know where it was going, but she’s provided so much business advice to me through the years, but early on in sport, she’s just shown up for me.
Yesterday, I was speaking at the NASDAQ Forum, and Fawn Weaver was one of the other speakers. Fawn has also been incredible in my life, helping me with that confidence piece, as someone who’s built an incredible business with Uncle Nearest, but just showing up in my real life and being that sounding board for me. I’m huge into mentorship. I think that if you haven’t done something before, talk to someone who has.
On the tech that she and coach Bob Kersee used to help her training…
That’s another one of those ‘I wish that I was at my prime now’ because I think there’s so many more tools, but we used a lot of filming and models — overlaying a model on top of the film that we take. You can set those models to like a world-record pace, and you can look at all of your mechanics. You can learn so much and adjust your [joint] angles and different things from that. So that was a huge piece while I was training that was helpful.
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.
