Copyright 2014 Academy League. www.academyleague.com.au - Page 20
PERFORMANCE
A meeting of brotherly minds saw the creation of our partners Sport Testing Inc and a revolution in analysis that Academy League is spreading globally.
Brothers Jamie and Jonathon Hollins had radically different skill sets, yet they found a way to marry them in a unique business that is thriving in the sports world.
Jamie had studied kinesiology and operated gyms where he trained elite athletes. Jonathon was in the software business, selling programs and hardware needed to run elections. They brought
their expertise together to form Sport Testing Inc., using what they call the world’s most accurate equipment to assess athletes fitness and sport-specific skills without bias. Now their growing business is testing athletes all over North America and expanding abroad. The Toronto entrepreneurs believe the data they provide could dramatically change the way talent is identified and developed.
This weekend alone, Sport Testing has been hired to run two large combines in Toronto, using features like sophisticated timing gates, live scoreboards with instantaneous results and online data
reporting. For the Ontario Hockey League, the brothers are testing 15 year old prospects on and off the ice. They are also assessing university aged hopefuls slated for the CFL draft. The information
generated not only helps detect talent, but also shows an athlete where he must improve.
The roster of clients has grown dramatically in the three plus years Sport Testing has been in business, largely because its hardware can be tweaked to measure nearly any athletic skill. Customers include Basketball Canada, the National Lacrosse League, teams in the NHL and minor hockey leagues, and stars in the NHL’s Top Prospects game. Sport Testing has been invited to Russia this spring to assess some of the nation’s emerging hockey stars.
The Hollinses started out evaluating large groups of young soccer players, developing soccer-specific tests with the help of experts like Craig Forrest. They didn’t settle for typical fitness testing but found ways to measure soccer skills like speed with and without the ball and shooting velocity. They showed coaches where their players could improve, and lessons there helped shape the business.
“They were finding tests that correlated to good players, and the information was valuable,” Jonathon Hollins said. “But we wanted to create better technology and a software solution. We wanted to provide report cards and a database of athlete results. Parents nowadays are often