For people who were going to be awake for 12 hours through the night, the “Legit Ballerz” seemed pretty relaxed. They had signed up for this, after all.

The team of Syracuse University freshmen came equipped with everything they thought they might need for a night of hard work — pillows, blankets and their computers. The team was participating in the MLB College Challenge, an all-night hackathon event in which students are given a real-world challenge and must apply the skills they’re learning in school to solve it. This year, the task was to create a product that would combat the recent decrease in ticket sales and get fans back into stadiums.

The competition was founded six years ago by SU School of Information Studies alumni Josh Frost, Joe Kanakaraj and Mike Hoffman — all of whom work at MLB Advanced Media — to give students a taste of what they could expect when working in the fields that they are studying in college.

The “Legit Ballerz” discussed creating an app that would award points for physically attending baseball games that also included other features like being able to order food and merchandise directly to their seats.

Brothers Aaron and Nate Whitman, Francisco Romero and Connor Peterson — all “Legit Ballerz” members — said they were excited about the experience, but didn’t really know what to expect.

The alumni created the competition after collaborating with Jeff Rubin, an associate professor of practice in the iSchool and CEO of SIDEARM Sports, and Julie Walas Huynh, director of academic advising and student development at the iSchool.

“I’d like to think that people who have done this event and go on to do this kind of work in the real world can go back and say, ‘Hey I did that and that’s really how it works,’” Frost said.

Hoffman, the vice president of software engineering at MLB.com, said the challenge is a great way to get students engaged and to learn real life lessons for the workforce. He added that this competition can serve as a recruiting pipeline.

Ben Romy, a Class of 2012 alumnus who works as a web developer for MLB.com, was on the challenge’s winning team in 2011. His participation in the competition led to an internship and eventually a job at MLB.com. He was also one of the judges and mentors for this year’s competition.

In the end, Kevin Spector, Josiah MacDonald and Adrian Hatch from the team “Ocean’s Three” won first place for their idea of a FitBit-like bracelet that tracks rewards, location services and spending capabilities. The band would be customized for a person’s favorite team and their home stadium.

As the winning team, “Ocean’s Three” will have the opportunity to travel to the MLB.com headquarters in New York City to re-pitch their idea to all of the MLB.com executives.

The other three finalists were “The Wildcats,” “The iScholars” and “SIXEN.” Both the “Wildcats” and the “iScholars” were teams of all freshmen.

“I was so excited for the freshmen finalists,” said Huynh. “It’s intimidating competing against seniors and grad students, and I’m so proud of them for even signing up. They dream so big and have so much confidence and enthusiasm.”

Published on November 15, 2015 at 8:39 pm

Contact Caroline: cbarthol@syr.edu