Rose-Hulman Ventures helps elevate athletic training with technology.

Americans often learn basketball by playing, whether on the school playground or in the driveway or at neighborhood pickup games. Serious players eventually tap into formal training, working on exercises designed to improve their shooting and hone their ball handling.

Paul Swartz is there to help players develop those technical skills, as a coach and the CEO of the Hoosier Shooting Academy in Indianapolis. But the best players not only have those technical skills down—they also can instinctively “read” their opponents and the competitive situation, and instantly know which moves to make.

Swartz wanted to up his training game with new drills that would teach players to read opponents and then execute the best move. He had a technological concept in mind to facilitate the new drills—but to go for that win, he needed more technology expertise on his team. So he called Rose-Hulman Ventures.

His idea was to upgrade the cones that are often found on practice courts. Trainees are accustomed to ball-handling drills involving cones— for example, “cross over, through the legs, behind the back,” Swartz says. But those drills are premeditated, in that players know in advance what move they’ll have to execute when they approach a cone.

In a game, on the other hand, they have to read an opponent they’re approaching, weave around and determine moves on the fly.
“What if that cone gave you some feedback, something you had to make a move on, instead of coming in and knowing what you are doing?” Swartz wondered. What if, he thought, the cone had different colored lights that would flash as players approach? Red, for example, could signal a behind-the-back move, blue means between the legs, and green is a cross-over.

“You would approach the cone and make a read on the cone, like you would have to make a read in the game,” he explains.

He was talking to a parent about his idea, and the parent recommended calling Rose-Hulman Ventures to help bring the idea to life. “I told them the idea. They heard it out and they said it is doable, we’re willing to help you and get you from A to B,” he says. “Now we are training with a light system that makes you make reads.”

Swartz says the invention has been well received, “with very rave reviews.” His young players have found the added element a bit challenging, and some have liked that fact better than others. But the skills it reinforces are vital, he maintains. “It’s reads you’re going to have to make all your life. Kids who are talented are very for it.”

He sees plenty of use for the technology beyond his own basketball courts. “I can see this technology in every NBA practice facility and NCAA practice court,” he says.

And, he adds, being able to read and respond to competitive situations is vital in all sports, not just basketball. “Everybody who makes a read can use this technology. In football you make a read. Swimming and baseball are reacting, you could use it in hockey, you can use it in soccer.”

Though Swartz had this particular skill-building concept in his head, he says making it a reality required skillsets that he doesn’t have. “I just coach games and teach games. I’m not worried about physics and dynamics.”

That’s what made tapping into Rose-Hulman Ventures so valuable. “They put me in touch with some very smart people. They ask solid questions about things I’ve never thought about.”

He also liked the fact that the collaboration provided learning opportunities for students in Terre Haute. “It has been refreshing and enlightening to interact with the students,” he says.

The student interns don’t all live and breathe basketball the way he does, and he says that was a plus that helped him better focus on the technology requirements. “It has been good trying to explain to somebody else that doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I love the process, and going through that has been phenomenal.”

The fact that his project provided a different kind of learning opportunity for engineering students really resonated with him, too, since his life’s work as a basketball coach is all about teaching. “I go back to my mission statement as a company—I’m here to help people. If I am helping a student, it’s a win for me and a win for them. It’s a no-brainer.”