Measuring 40-yard dash times should be straightforward—an athlete starts running and then crosses the finish line—but little is clear-cut in the murky world of college recruiting. Disparate methods, such as manually using a stopwatch or electronically timing it with technology, can create significant discrepancies in performance data.
Enter Zybek Sports, a Colorado-based company that has powered the timing mechanism at the NFL Combine for the last nine years. Zybek has struck a new partnership with D1 Training to offer its Standardized Athlete Test (SAT) at franchises across the country. The formalized process will create verifiable results using laser-timing equipment and an automatic data collection system. Beyond informing college recruiters, the times can be compared to a large database and put your performance in context among your peers. The results can even help parents manage expectations too.
THERE IT IS: Whoop Answers Mark Cuban’s Call for Injury-Prevention Data With ‘Risk Index’
“All they know how to compare their times to are NFL times,” says Mathew Kite, D1 Training’s director of education. “They don’t know if Johnny running a 5.7 right now is any good. They’re like, ‘Man, you’re already washed up, and you’re only in eighth grade.’ ”
D1 Training was founded by former University of Tennessee fullback Will Bartholomew, who played on the 1998 national championship team and captained the Volunteers in 2001. His former college teammate, legendary NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, is an early investor and franchise owner. While D1 works with a wide swath of age groups, its target demographic is the scholastic athlete seeking to improve skills for high school and college sports.
“They don’t know if Johnny running a 5.7 right now is any good,” says Mathew Kite, D1 Training’s director of education. “They’re like, ‘Man, you’re already washed up, and you’re only in eighth grade.’ ”
There are currently 25 D1 Training locations in operation, with more than 100 franchises sold in other markets. That rapid expansion is partly fueling its desire for a standardized test. “That way we’re really giving the athlete something tangible—goals he should be setting,” says Zybek founder Mike Weinstein. “That’s where D1 Training comes in, because not only can they provide the test but training for that athlete to get better.”
The SAT, which is also offered by major college football programs such as Michigan, includes a 40-yard dash, shuttle run, vertical jump and broad jump. The results of the 40-yard dash include split times in 10-yard intervals, which can guide training programs to focus on early explosion, acceleration, or top speed. Zybek can also measure other sport-specific metrics, such as the 60-yard dash or catcher pop time for baseball.
INSTINCTS VS. DATA: How the Portland Timbers Are Embracing Sports Science
Zybek has been organizing regional combines to administer the SAT to interested athletes, but the burden on athletes to travel to events and then wait in lines proved onerous. Having the equipment permanently installed will make it more accessible. Zybek hopes to have more than 100 testing sites operational by the end of 2020, with D1 Training serving as its primary partner.
Kite says other laser-timing systems tend to require human coaches to input all the data whereas Zybek automatically records that info and compiles it in a normative database. In addition to the raw metrics, Weinstein says his company has developed a few proprietary metrics such as a power index that combines results with height and weight to generate a measurement of athleticism.
The data collection can help, for instance, an aspiring running back know what percentile his times are as a high school freshman and what goals he needs to set to be an average Division I talent by the time he’s a senior.
SIMPLE GAME: You See the Ball, You Hit the Ball, You Got It?
For even younger athletes, the SAT can simply provide a carrot to work harder.
“For our younger kids, it’s a tool that they get to use that’s the exact same tool they see the NFL guys using on TV during the combine,” Kite says. “So it’s a little bit of a validator for them, they’re like, ‘This is awesome.’ It’s motivating. They get inspired to train.”
In team sports, there aren’t many skills that can isolated, which is why the combine remains a key tool for evaluation. These physical attributes are largely in the control of the athlete, which is why Zybek’s mantra is, “It’s on you.”
Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at talkback@sporttechie.com