KONTEK SCORE Game Analyzer

Back in the early 90s, one of the main things we did at KONTEK was sell and install VCRs (yes, actually) – and one of our clients was the Duke Women’s basketball team.

One day we visited their set-up, and there they were, sitting in a dark room, working to split game footage into Defense and Offense reels for the defensive and offensive coaches. I had this crazy idea that Dan [Sanville] and I could do something about that.

Back then, virtually all the equipment we sold was controlled by infrared. I thought we could make a system that would sequentially control three VCRs, so their camera operator could make edits in real time during the game, not after. One VCR for Offense, one VCR for Defense, and one VCR for the full game. We added foot pedals to the set-up to make it simple to switch between Record/Pause for each VCR (and to NOT turn off the full game VCR).

We gave it to Duke to test – and they were over the moon!

So we thought, well, maybe we have something here. Dan – the real sports buff in our operation – did a ton of research on other programs that might be interested, and on the trade shows we should attend to sell the system. This would be KONTEK’s first “product!” We even worked with a group of Duke Fuqua School of Business students to take our product to market and do it right.

That’s where this video comes from… but the whole thing was an epic failure! I think we sold one besides the one we made for Duke. I never did understand why it didn’t take off. But I learned a lot and we had a lot of fun making it. And it was one of the first times we ever programmed a control sequence for A/V equipment, anticipating a major focus of our business going forward.

It was a problem we wanted to solve – so we did.

–– Frank Konhaus, Founder of KONTEK.