WCC Entrepreneurship club travels to Atlanta, Georgia for the Future Bound by Junior Achievement event. Chief Executive Officer Norman Martin (left), Chief Strategy Officer Roman Karas, Chief Legal Officer Quinn Lowen and Group Advisor and WCC Communications Faculty Claire Sparklin stand with their 3rd place trophy that they won for an app they created called Athletassist. Photo courtesy of Claire Sparklin
Henry Sincic
Contributor
A group of four WTMC students recently took third place honors at a national competition for social innovation. This came after months of work on an app called Athletassist, which is designed to help make it easier for student athletes to overcome problems stemming from injuries.
The Social Innovation Challenge was one of multiple that were held by Future Bound by Junior Achievement, a non-profit youth organization with over 100 locations across the country, including in southeast Michigan. Nearly 300 students competed across all competition categories in the finals that were held in Atlanta, Georgia, on the Georgia State University campus, from June 8-12.
The award capped off the end of many months of work from the team, both in the development of the app and in the development of the pitch for the app, something that was conducted across multiple presentations in front of multiple audiences, including a panel of judges. The group’s participation in the Junior Achievement national competition marked the first time a team from Michigan made it to nationals, let alone to place.
The idea for Athletassist hatched in late 2024 in the mind of WTMC student Roman Karas, who wanted to help underserved student athletes. Being a lifelong student athlete himself, Karas hated seeing his teammates get injured, and he noticed that it was his underserved teammates that were more likely to play through their injuries in the hopes of reaping big rewards, such as scholarships. With Karas acting as a would-be Chief Strategy Officer, he began searching for the group of people who would help bring his idea to fruition.
“I assembled our team with individuals that I thought would work well, and each had unique perspectives and abilities,” said Karas.
One of the students Karas reached out to was fellow student athlete and WTMC senior, Chief Legal Officer Quinn Lowen, whose job was to oversee that the app was compliant with youth protection laws. Chief Executive Officer Norman Martin and Chief Technology Officer Justus Hibbler aided the technical sides of the project, with Martin contributing a knowledge of programming while Hibbler built the project’s website.
The students partnered with the Richard W. Bailey Library on the WCC campus, working with librarian Molly Ledermann to research the problems that student athletes are facing.
“We found that student athletes of lower socioeconomic status (were) 100% more likely to get injured, and (that) students in urban and rural locations had less access to healthcare,” said Karas.
Karas’ mother, WCC communications faculty member Claire Sparklin, joined the project as an advisor.
“The majority of the work was probably just polishing it (Athletassist) in a way that was presentable and that people would be excited about,” Karas said.
In the course of working on Athletassist, the four students started the current iteration of the WCC entrepreneurship club, with WCC communications professor Claire Sparklin serving as an adviser to the club and project.
“We had started with the idea of a social enterprise to help protect student athletes,” said Lowen. “Throughout that process…we decided to start the Entrepreneurship Club to help other students in the community who have their own ideas/companies that they’re passionate about.”
The top placers in the competition were announced at an awards ceremony at a large banquet with what seemed to be at least 1000 people. The announcement that the Athletassist group had come in third came very suddenly, and was met with great enthusiasm from the group.
“We kind of jumped up and down, and we were just like, ‘we did it,’” said Lowen. “Our goal was to place somewhere in the top three. We did that, and it was super fun.”
As the group’s advisor, Sparklin, seemed especially proud.
“This is the kind of team any educator dreams of,” Sparklin said. “Every single time, these students chose to try to exceed the requirement in as significant a way of a way that they could dream of.”
