When collegiate sports programs recruit athletes, they can measure concrete metrics like a player’s sprint speed, throwing velocity, and physical strength. However, quantifying the mental aspects of sports—how well an athlete performs in high-pressure situations—has remained elusive.
Unlocking Clutch Performance
Dan Connerty, co-founder and CEO of NTangible, believes he has found a way to measure an athlete's ability to perform under pressure. Connerty, a former professional baseball player turned sports-tech entrepreneur, stated,
“"We really wanted to hyper focus on this idea of clutch performance. Cognitive [science] itself is just this black box that nobody’s wanted to touch, because nobody’s had the ability to measure it accurately prior."
Alongside Dr. Ed Levine, a psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, Connerty developed the Clutch Factor assessment. This psychological evaluation is inspired by the Thematic Apperception Test, where individuals describe ambiguous images, revealing their thought processes and emotional responses.
How the Clutch Factor Works
The assessment scores athletes on a scale from 0 to 1000. Connerty claims that athletes scoring over 750 are twice as likely to commit to a Division I school. He explained,
“"What we’ve been able to do is leverage this analysis, where we can show the predictive ability. This number can be heavily used in rankings, leaderboards, recruiting conversations, NIL conversations, and scholarship conversations."
