What is SPARQ?
SPARQ stands for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, and Quickness. SPARQ (Nike owned company) is committed to helping athletes improves these five aspects of their athletic ability in order to take their game to that next level.
What is the SPARQ Rating?
The SPARQ Rating is a battery of sport-specific athleticism tests. Created with the help of nationally-recognized trainers and coaches, and designed to captures the key aspects of athleticism in each sport. The SPARQ Rating combines results of individual tests into a single number representing an athlete’s overall athletic ability.
The are currently SPARQ Ratings for Baseball, Football, Basketball, Fastpitch, and Hockey.
Describe the SPARQ Baseball Rating?
The SPARQ Rating for Baseball is acquired from the following tests: (Softball is the same except, we test the 20yd dash not the 30yd dash, in addition, a 2Kg powerball is used for the rotational powerball throw.)
| Tests | Measurement | In Game Attribute |
| 30 Yard Dash | Speed | Basepath Speed (Home to 1st) |
| 20 Yard Shuttle (5-10-5) | Agility & Quickness | Ability to Change Directions |
| Vertical Jump | Explosive Power & Speed | Dynamic Speed & Reaction |
| Rotational PB Throw | Core Strength & Power | Bat Speed & Rotational Power |
Who has been SPARQ (Baseball) Tested?
SPARQ has already tested over 100,000 baseball players from professional to college to elite high school athletes and younger. In the beginning, in 2006, SPARQ began by testing 8,000 baseball players at elite camps and showcases such as the Area Code Games, Perfect Game National Showcase, Top Prospects, and Baseball Northwest events.
Over the past five years, SPARQ has been testing with several MLB teams’ farm systems, which include rookie, A, AA, and AAA baseball teams. These teams include the Rockies, Tigers, Mariners, and Brewers.
The NCAA College World Series Champions, Oregon State University are big believers in SPARQ testing for their current athletes and in using the SPARQ Rating to evaluate recruits. SPARQ regularly tests the University of Southern California athletes, and they have also tested the University of North Carolina Baseball team among several other college baseball teams (Stanford, Wichita St, Costal Carolina).
Why should you SPARQ Test your baseball team?
While professional and collegiate baseball scouts have a standardized 5-tool system for rating and analyzing baseball talent. SPARQ is quickly becoming the standard for rating and analyzing pure athleticism.
A key value of the SPARQ Rating is that it provides an organization with an additional tool for analyzing a player’s overall athletic ability. You can also compare them to other players across the country whom have SPARQ tested. SPARQ will provide you with a comprehensive break down of how each and every player has performed on the individual baseball tests in the battery, and a statistical comparison to our national SPARQ Baseball database, at the end of your teams testing session.
This testing also gives you insight into the competitive nature of each player. Players get instantaneous feedback as they compete in each test of athleticism. You can see which players get frustrated and which players stay focused and use the competition to drive them.