By John Streit
Even though the calendar reads July, the Chesapeake-based Velocity Sports Performance is set to stoke the competitive fires of Hampton Road's high school athletes with its first Best of the 757 Athlete Showcase.
The week-long event - which will test athletes in football, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, softball and basketball - pits individual athletes and teams against each other within the Nike/Sparq system of testing speed, power, agility, reaction and quickness.
According to Velocity owner John Cunningham, the event was concocted to provide a competitive outlet for area high school athletes during the offseason while celebrating the tradition of elite athletes that hail from Hampton Roads.
"It's going to be exciting and cool to see how the different sports match up with each other," Cunningham said of the Nike/Sparq system's ability to produce overall athleticism grades for each athlete. Those scores can be entered into a national online database that ranks individuals against every other athlete that has completed the combine, regardless of their sports specialization.
"There's also a great rivalry between the Peninsula and South Hampton Roads schools, not to mention all of the city and district rivalries," Cunningham added. "We really want to tape into these athletes' competitiveness, which we know is already there."
Top male and female athletes and teams will be awarded a $500 donation to their schools' athletic department while the top five athletes in each sport will receive a championship T-shirt. The event will split into five days of competition between athletes of individual or similar sports at locations across Hampton Roads, including Virginia Beach's U.S. Field Hockey National Training Center and Hampton's Boo Williams Sportsplex.
"We picked these different locations throughout Hampton Roads to make it accessible to the athletes," Cunningham said. "But it also profiles and gives exposure of the cities' facilities."
Velocity's center director Dustin West said the competition is "a rare opportunity for athletes from private schools to compete against their counterparts from the public schools, which will be interesting to see."
Cunningham said he has high hopes for the event taking off in its first year.
"I think the uniqueness of the event and what we're offering to the athletes should be a great draw," Cunningham said.
Velocity will also contribute 25 percent of the event's net proceeds to the YMCA's Youth Obesity Initiative.
The Virginian-Pilot - Beacon - Thursday 07.24.08
