WHAT IS SPARQ? SPARQ (Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, Quickness), is a sports equipment and media company founded by "Rudy" Chapa, a Mexican-American businessman who had a successful school career as a runner. During high school Chapa was part of a trio of runners from his school that all broke 9:00 minutes in the two mile run in 1975. No other American high school before or since then has matched that feat. In 1976, Chapa gained fame as one of the U.S.A.'s great distance runners, setting the still-standing national high school 10,000 meter record, in 28:321. Chapa went on to gain fame in cross country at the University of Oregon and was inducted into the University of Oregon athletics Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. After his athletic career, Chapa first served as the global director of sports marketing at Nike, Inc. He left NIKE in 1999 to start SPARQ. In 2004 Andy Bark, a former Cal wide receiver and president of Student Sports Inc., joined with Chapa, to create a training program for football players, a dynamic training method used at the NIKE Football Training Camps. Bark and Chapa also devised the SPARQ Rating system to evaluate athletic performance. |
WHAT IS A SPARQ RATING? The SPARQ Rating is a number that identifies overall athletic ability and is used by top coaches and trainers around the nation as an initial indicator of an athletes potential on the field. While the conventional wisdom is that athletes are born 'fast' or 'slow,' science has shown that a training program focused on retraining muscle fibers and neurons to react more quickly and accurately can greatly increase an athlete's speed, agility, and explosiveness. The key value of the SPARQ Rating is that it provides athletes with an invaluable tool for staying motivated, measuring results, focusing training, and maximizing their success on the playing field. Speed 101 is now a member of the SPARQ Training Network, authorized to give each athlete a SPARQ rating that can be used to compare and contrast with other athletes around the nation. Not only does the athlete get hands on training from the Speed 101 staff, but also the ability get a rating that is recognized as a standard measurement of overall athletic ability. |
