The 2018 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 students/participants competed in the event.

In 2019, GT Athletics contracted with 3 different student Hackathon teams to build out their ideas with GT’s corresponding NCAA teams.  The three projects include:

Team 1) Volleyball Hack – using concepts from the Hackathon winner, team Volleyball Hack is building an interactive interface that allows GT volleyball coaches to utilize data collected from myVERT wearable devices, which are worn by Georgia Tech volleyball student-athletes.  Performance data is pulled 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.

Team 2) Ace Analytics - uses technology to scrape NCAA databases and auto-build scouting reports for upcoming Softball games.  What used to take GT assistant coaches ~8 hours to build for each game, now takes just a few minutes.  Individual opponent players are analyzed and scouting reports are built to help with in-game strategy.  Ace Analytics and GT Softball will build additional analytics upon this initiative.

Team 3) A.I. Catcher - Uses real-time analytics and algorithms, and artificial intelligence to provide insights on pitching.  They are partnering with GT Softball.  Output includes which pitch to throw as well as which pitch will likely be thrown.

Next Hackathon projected for Spring 2020.  TBD

Georgia Tech Faculty/Staff lead:  Doug Allvine, Assistant Athletic Director Innovation