“We take data and create solutions that make more efficient processes for sports teams,” said Hurst, who currently serves as an owner and board member for Telemetry. “We automate their scouting, research and development, and their day-to-day processes and provide additional insights that they could not do on their own.”
Telemetry Sports utilizes computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to provide a wealth of team and player analytics at coaches’ fingertips, tailoring the product to each team’s specific needs. Their goal is to drill overwhelming amounts of data to “three bullet points on a whiteboard” to help coaches and teams make informed decisions about their upcoming games and recruitment.
“We’ve had coaches say when they come in Monday morning, they’re so well-prepped that it feels like it’s Tuesday,” said Hochstedler, Telemetry’s CEO, of the post-game insights the software provides. It is a need he has experienced firsthand; while coaching baseball at Manchester University, Hochstedler utilized MATLAB skills learned at Rose-Hulman to develop his own sports analytics software. Encouraged first by former Rose-Hulman Assistant Baseball Coach Sean Bendel and later former Rose-Hulman Vice President of Business and Finance Tom Mason, Hochstedler and Hurst launched Diamond Charts to expand the product to a commercial market.
As what would become Telemetry Sports grew, they brought in another Rose-Hulman alumnus, Paul Gagnon (SE, 2006), to scale their vision, and shortly thereafter, the team shifted to focus on football, leveraging real-time data collected by RFID chips in players’ shoulder pads.
It was not the first time that Gagnon and Hochstedler had fueled their competitive drives toward a shared goal; they had lived on the same floor in Speed Hall during their first year at Rose-Hulman, where they had dominated intramural tournaments.
“Still having a connection there 23 years later that has been able to create positive impact has just been really cool,” said Gagnon.
Gagnon, one of Telemetry’s product managers, credits his years in residence life at Rose-Hulman with his ability to address nimbly the concerns of the people with whom he is working. Gagnon served a year as a sophomore advisor in Baur-Sames-Bogart (BSB) Hall and two years as an upperclassman resident assistant in Apartments East.
“That’s what I’ve always tried to do in my role – provide the support to clients and customers to make sure their experience is as positive as possible,” he said. “In many ways, serving those residents was a unique experience to servicing customers and clients.”
Campus has continued to be a conduit for connections for the Telemetry team’s growth. Jordan Chipka, PhD, a 2013 mechanical engineering graduate, started running his own sports analytics for teams his brothers coached during the pandemic. After Chipka participated in the Big Data Bowl, Coach Bendel introduced him to Hochstedler and Telemetry, which proved to be a winning drive for all.
“One of our big sayings here is ‘FIO: figure it out,'” said Hochstedler. “Rose engineers and computer scientists are really adept at being able to figure things out on their own and don’t need a whole lot of guidance to solve a problem.”
Now, over half of the team are Rose-Hulman alumni and students, including both full-time employees and summer interns.
“Interns are doing real things with direct impact,” said Gagnon. “They’re going to ship something to production that’s going to serve an NFL client the first week they’re here.”
Telemetry’s products have guided those NFL clients to Super Bowl victories and strategic drafting decisions, and their impact will soon be felt even further. The startup was recently acquired by the North Carolina-based Teamworks, a larger company providing even more in-depth data insights to teams and athletes. The acquisition will enable the Telemetry Sports team to leverage Teamworks’ greater resources and industry contacts to reach more teams and further their mission. Teamworks has announced a strategic partnership with ESPN to enhance the network’s college football coverage utilizing the Telemetry suite of tools.
“Software doesn’t exist just for the point of software. Software exists to solve somebody’s problem,” said Gagnon. “Our goal is to help [coaches] get the answers they need faster and with fewer manual steps so they can do the stuff that really excites them.”
For sports savants and ardent analysts, it is a dream come true. The team has presented at the NFL Scouting Combine, where coaches have gone out of their way to comment on the impact of the product.
“As a lifelong football and NFL fan, being in the room with a lot of these coaches and front-office personnel that you idolize from the fan standpoint and showcasing a product and seeing their eyes light up with the ‘wow factor’ was just indescribable,” said Hurst.
Chipka agreed, noting, “What I like most about the job is that I can see the immediate impact I have through the product on our clients. The fact that it was in sports, an industry I love, was the icing on the cake.”
As they kick off both their busiest season and their partnership with Teamworks, the team continues to drive innovation in the worlds of sports, coaching, and recruiting. When millions of Americans flock to the football field, the Rose-Hulman alumni will be behind-the-scenes, living every sports fan’s dream and changing the outcome of the game.
