Revolutionizing Athletic Performance: Our Journey with SPARQ and Nike

In the early 2000s, a company set out to revolutionize athletic performance measurement by creating a universal testing system—a sort of SAT for athleticism. With the NFL Combine becoming a high-profile spectacle, they asked: Why not extend this model to sports like soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and basketball? That company was SPARQ, an acronym for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, and Quickness.

SPARQ began hosting mini-combines across the country for high school athletes. Their goal was ambitious: to collect enough data across various sports to quantify athleticism and create a standardized SPARQ Rating. Athletes performed a series of tests—jumping, sprinting, change of direction, medicine ball throws, and sometimes conditioning drills. These results fed into their proprietary formula to produce a single SPARQ Rating, offering athletes and coaches a benchmark for athletic ability.

When SPARQ came to Orlando, we became part of their network, assisting with large combine events and adopting their protocols to help our athletes improve and measure themselves against their peers. This partnership allowed us to play a critical role in SPARQ’s growth.

As SPARQ expanded, they certified 750 trainers nationwide, forming the SPARQ Training Network. By the end of 2007, our efforts paid off—we tested more female soccer players than any other network partner in the U.S. and achieved the third-highest number of SPARQ Ratings overall. SPARQ’s business model was gaining traction. By standardizing athletic performance metrics, college and professional recruiters could use SPARQ Ratings as a consistent, valuable tool for comparing athletes.

In 2009, Nike acquired SPARQ, propelling its impact to new heights. They streamlined the network to 500 trainers and elevated the brand as Nike SPARQ. We became deeply involved in Nike’s product testing initiatives, working on groundbreaking projects such as the Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobes, the Nike Fuel Band, and other innovative tools.

In 2012, Nike SPARQ invited SPECTRUM’S, Will Hitzelberger and Dan Schuck, to its inaugural Performance Summit at their world headquarters in Portland, Oregon—an exclusive event with only 50 participants globally. The summit was hosted by the Nike SPARQ Team, which included prominent figures like:

Ken Black (SPARQ General Manager), Paul Winsper (Performance Director), and Dr. Alan Reichow (Sensory Performance & Research Director). Renowned experts presented, including Dr. Marvin Chun from Yale, Gray Cook (co-founder of Functional Movement Systems), and high-performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais.

This summit cemented our role within Nike’s vision of elevating sports performance.

By 2013, Nike SPARQ shifted its focus further, centering on their methodology to “Discover the Athlete.” This evolution led to a second Performance Summit, where Hitzelberger and Schuck once again joined industry leaders—including Manchester United’s Head of Performance, the Atlanta Falcons’ Head of Strength and Conditioning, and the Seattle Seahawks’ sports psychologist—shared insights. The discussions bridged gaps between elite-level coaching and community-level training, aiming to unify language and methodologies to advance human performance globally.

Discovery begins with exploration, finding patterns, connections and ultimately meaning in what appears to be chaotic and random. With athletes soaring to super natural heights, and the pace of science and technology in the performance space approaching super-sonic, our challenge is to lead the exploration of human potential to unlock the promise within every athlete.

Following this, Nike leveraged its smaller, refined network, including us, for content creation, apparel and equipment development, and athlete outreach. SPECTRUM played an integral role in these initiatives, contributing to a new era of sports performance innovation.

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