Wright’s service hopes to cut through the clutter

Another recruiting and scouting service. Just what the world needs, right?

But this is different, says Matt Wright.

If it works out the way he hopes, maybe even the opposite. Something that helps cut through all the clutter.

The goal of his new company, Sportstage.com, is to help college coaches and student-athletes and their families navigate the recruiting process more smoothly.

“When I was a head coach (at Saint Louis School) I saw a problem,” said Wright, a former ‘Iolani and University of Hawaii linebacker. “Parents who could barely afford tuition were committing to these services and scouts, with the promise of getting them scholarships. The problem is that promise didn’t always come through.

“As for coaches, I’d ask if these services were helping them, and they’d say they don’t even listen to them. ‘They bombard us, we just turn it off.’ I saw a need for something.”

Sportstage, of which Wright is founder and CEO, was granted NCAA approval as a recruiting/scouting service last week. That’s a huge step that allows Wright’s company to legally match schools and student-athletes. But he doesn’t consider “recruiting/scouting service” an accurate label of the venture.

“One of the key points is that we’re not a recruiting service. We’re a technological bridge between players and coaches,” he said. “We want to eliminate the middle man and give the access and control that players, parents and coaches need rather than relying on someone else doing it.”

Services like hudl.com help prospects develop highlight reels. But then what?

“I look at us as the next step. Once you create this video, we can step in and help you market it in an organized fashion,” Wright said. “What we do is give you the ability to centralize and organize all the content you have. Create a program to put the best you forward. Deliver it in a neat package to the coaches.”

And a lot of it, Wright says, will be done at no charge. Players can access up to five of 46,000 available coaches for free, he said. For $9.99 per month, they can submit information to up to 50 coaches a month. Wright is confident the company will succeed financially with volume, and possible ad revenue in the future.

Another key to its potential success is Sportstage’s partnership with IBM Watson, Wright said.

The NBA uses IBM Watson to scout college players, but “we’re the only ones that entered into a developmental partnership, the first to bring this type of tech to the general market,” Wright said. “With IBM Watson, we’re basically taking artificial intelligence and creating tools for college coaches to analyze these athletes at a deeper level.”

That includes using social media to develop personality profiles. That especially can help smaller schools with smaller budgets, Wright said. (Coaches have free access to Sportstage.)

“We’ve got the film, we’ve got all these things, but what kind of person is he? A lot of times coaches are learning on the fly when they meet them,” Wright said. “What we’re able to do with this is take natural language learning; we’ll take what the kid has posted (on social media) and it gives a snapshot of the individual.

“The big schools have teams of individuals that scroll through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts,” he said. “For smaller schools, mid-majors, junior colleges, they need this. They’ve got limited resources, and they can’t go to all these camps. There needs to be something that bridges that gap. We’re hoping this technological bridge can do that.”

Wright said he met face to face with more than 150 athletic directors and coaches in researching how his company could simplify and streamline recruiting.

What he first thought would take about six to eight months of work and a few thousand dollars turned into much more of an investment, but he’s happy with the result.

“In the end, we’ve produced something we’re really proud of that no one else is doing, and I think we can come into the market and provide a service that will help a lot of people,” said Wright, whose team includes chief technical officer Andy Arakaki of Mixed Plate Media.

“The heart behind it is to help kids, not to guarantee a scholarship but to showcase them,” Wright said. “If we really want to help people, let’s create a community people can use, create a platform that allows any kid from anywhere in the world who can hop on and get their info in front of coaches.”

Setanta O’Hailpin, a football coach in Australia, is already a fan of the concept.

“There are scouting programs here where you have to pay $10,000 to $15,000 for them to find you a college to play sports at in the U.S.,” he said. “This is a tool that’s really needed. Not just in America, but all over the world.”

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.