Friday, January 05, 2018

On To 'Simulation' Reality

Dartmouth football was one of the early adopters of the STRIVR virtual reality system. (LINK)

Now a Dartmouth alum – who spent a little time in a Big Green uniform – is behind still another application of the technology designed to help football players safely and effectively prepare for games.

Matthew Barnett, listed in the 1989 Dartmouth media guide as a 6-foot-3, 260-pound offensive guard from Redmond, Ore., is the the chief operating officer and general counsel for Sports Virtual Training Systems, Inc., a Colorado Springs concern that it says, "has built proprietary technologies to take training of professional athletes beyond Virtual Reality (VR) and into a fully immersive, Simulation Reality."

Barnett is a co-founder of Sports VTS along with former Denver Broncos General Manager Ted Sundquist.

A Sports VTS press release describes its new technology this way:
QBSIM is the first product from Sports VTS, featuring its simulation platform to provide realistic game speed repetitions, and powered by over ten years of actual NFL game and player data. With QBSIM, quarterbacks can for the first time throw an actual football directly into a VR environment, rapidly developing the enhanced skills and in-game instincts required to succeed on the playing field. 
Learn more about SportsVTS on its website HERE and check out this video:


If you have one foot in the Dartmouth camp and one foot in the Penn State camp news out of last night's Under Armour All-American game is interesting.

From the Penn State point of view, defensive end Jayson Oweh's announcement that he's headed to Happy Valley says the Nittany Lions are recruiting a pretty good student. (Further down this graphic lists "offers" from Harvard, Princeton and Notre Dame among others.)

From the Dartmouth point of view, it says the Big Green is right in there recruiting some pretty good players. OK, this one got away but Dartmouth isn't shying away from offering some serious talent.
Dartmouth's loss is Notre Dame's gain as the Fighting Irish have hired away Chad Riley as their new men's soccer coach. Riley, who played at Notre Dame and coached in South Bend under the legendary Bobby Clark, led the Big Green to four consecutive Ivy League championships and a school-record 45 wins over the past four years. Find a Notre Dame release HERE. From that release:
“Chad Riley not only brings to Notre Dame a track record of winning titles and regularly qualifying for NCAA Championship play, but having both played and coached for Bobby Clark he already has a great understanding of the culture this program has built over the last two decades,” said Notre Dame vice president and James E. Rohr director of athletics Jack Swarbrick.
There's a story in The Dartmouth HERE.

Riley was a unanimous selection as Ivy League coach of the year this fall, the third time he was named the conference's top coach in five years in Hanover.

Riley replaced Jeff Cook, named this week as head coach at Penn State, in 2013 and after going 6-7-4 in his first year led Dartmouth to consecutive records of 12-5-2, 12-6-1, 9-5-5 and 12-3-2.

Green Alert Take: Knowing Bobby Clark and having had a chance to get to know Chad Riley the past few years, Notre Dame couldn't have made a better choice.