SportsTrace aims to help athletes by analyzing video of their movements

SportsTrace co-founder Max Montrey first heard of Cape Girardeau while researching where to relocate his business out of Seattle.

Montrey and co-founder Alex Gardner were brainstorming — how can they get a presence closer to the center of the U.S. where their customers are and where they could drive to places and talk to people?

It was almost in concert with that session when they came upon the 1ST50K competition and applied.

They traveled to Cape Girardeau for Codefi's 1ST50K presentations and, the next week were informed SportsTrace was selected as one of the winners of $50,000.

"The entire time, I was like, 'I can't believe this is going to happen.' I'm still a little bit in shock," Montrey said.

The SportsTrace app automatically analyzes either training or in-game video and provides personalized recommendations for athletes and coaches.Submitted

He drove to Cape Girardeau from Seattle in late August and started in his new office inside Codefi on Sept. 1.

SportsTrace, incorporated this year, is a technology startup company created and designed to help athletes win, using uploaded video to break down an athlete's movements in order to figure out what went wrong and what went right during a swing, pitch, etc.

The idea for SportsTrace began while Montrey was working for the Microsoft e-commerce store. He came across a camera for Xbox Kinect — a video-game system using motion-sensing technology — and took a day off to play around with it. Because of his history playing and coaching baseball and softball, he realized there was an opportunity to use the camera to figure out what a person's body was doing consistently or inconsistently, but it was cumbersome dragging around a computer, the camera and a bunch of power cords.

"So, for about the last year, I've been trying to figure out if it would work with a regular camera. Fun fact: It does," Montrey said.

Since then, they've been working on product-market fit.

The idea of finding product-market fit for Montrey and Gardner was to actually obtain a customer, which meant talking to sports teams. They were successful with Rice University's baseball team.

The SportsTrace app delivers athletes information about their most important asset, their bodies, using video captured on a cellular phone, all within 5 minutes of the time SportsTrace gets the video.Submitted

How it works

SportsTrace automatically analyzes either training or in-game video and provides personalized recommendations for athletes and coaches. The app delivers athletes information about their most important asset — their body — using video captured on a cellphone, all within 5 minutes of the time SportsTrace gets the video.

Once the video is uploaded, it's broken down into pieces. For example, a user uploads a video of 10 tennis serves. SportsTrace breaks it into the 10 serves, each one individually, and in order. The software is able to identify it was tennis, and it was tennis serving, specifically.

From there, sports measurements are taken in reference to the duration of each individual serve and of all the serves taken, and of all the athlete's movements. The software knows what matters, such as arm angle, point of contact, the moment the athlete starts moving and other factors.

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Once measurements are taken, SportsTrace can see what's consistent and what's inconsistent, in order to provide recommendations. And those recommendations are based on experience, research and talking to lots of coaches and industry experts spanning beyond sports to physiotherapy, as well.

The company goal is to become the leader in sports analytics, starting with sports training, but looking to venture into streaming/broadcast sports and then beyond.

Montrey said they're talking with some professional baseball teams and their minor league affiliates, as well as with an English premier league soccer team.

"We've talked to folks in soccer, baseball, softball, tennis, golf and cricket right now," Montrey said. "Those are really good sports for us in terms of isolated scenarios."

Since being in Cape Girardeau, SportsTrace has signed its first three teams, totaling about 100 users.

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"I just had a conversation with a woman who plays professional basketball in Italy, which is fun. We're trying to figure out if there is something there. Truth be told, I don't know," Montrey said.

Montrey and Gardner are headquartered in Cape Girardeau, and they've hired an additional employee since relocating.

Starting the company during a year when a pandemic struck has had its challenges, such as not having live sports.

"I guess the good news is that, because we operate on any kind of video, it was pretty easy for us to actually get videos from athletes, usually from some they had stored," Montrey added.

Montrey said he prefers to see the challenge as an opportunity.

"I've had the chance to network with people around the world since the beginning of April — like 500 different conversations," he said. "It's given us the ability to explore different kinds of partnerships."

The co-founders, who both worked for Microsoft, are enjoying life in Cape Girardeau and meeting members of the community.

"Being mentored by some of the great business people here in town has been awesome. Being able to do that in person, even better," Montrey said.

James Stapleton, founder of Codefi said, “Max and Alex are great examples of tech founders who could have kept their jobs at Microsoft, excellent jobs, but wanted to do more. More for themselves and more for their customers while they use their skills to enhance the opportunities for others who love sports. What a pleasure to have them in Cape.”