When collegiate sports programs recruit athletes, they can measure concrete metrics like a player’s sprint speed, throwing velocity, and physical strength. But there has never been a clear way to quantify the mental aspects of sports — how well will this athlete perform in high-pressure situations? Will they stay calm, focus, and give it their best shot? Or will they panic in the spotlight and mess up?

NTangible co-founder and CEO Dan Connerty thinks he’s unlocked the secret to measuring if a player will execute in the most important moments.

“We really wanted to hyper focus on this idea of clutch performance,” Connerty, a professional baseball player turned sports-tech entrepreneur, told TechCrunch. “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 psychologist Dr. Ed Levine, a professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, Connerty developed a psychological assessment that he says can predict how likely an athlete is to perform under pressure. The Clutch Factor assessment is inspired by the Thematic Apperception Test, a psychological examination in which people are presented with photos of ambiguous situations and describe what they see happening, who they imagine themselves to be in the scene, and what they think might happen next.

“There’s no right or wrong answers,” Connerty said.

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