The Ohio State University first began using the Wicket platform for Express Entry into Ohio Stadium and Schottenstein Center, but quickly saw the potential benefits of the technology at their student athlete hub at the Schumaker Complex.
The first use case they identified was performance nutrition tracking at The NEST, where hundreds of student athletes eat their meals every week.
The university was looking for ways to streamline access to The NEST, the student athlete dining hub. Convenience is key, and asking the student athlete population to carry a card to access this dedicated space was a pain point. There was also a desire to better understand the number of meals athletes have, and when they are having them.
A simple yet flexible solution was put in place using Wicket that enabled student athletes to gain entry and see how many meals remained that day, and captured usage in a live dashboard that select staff could then use to analyze trends – such as whether athletes were eating before or after workouts. Staff made it easy for student athletes to enroll by sending email invites ahead of team meetings, and having fun with taking their selfies together.
Student athletes were impressed with how easy it was to enroll and use the technology, and staff were surprised with how easy it was to manage. Sports science staff created a custom tool using Wicket’s webhook that gave dietitians on the performance nutrition team better insights into meal times and daily activity of student athletes. Given the flexibility of the technology, the department is looking at using it in other areas within the Athletics District.
Student athletes are able to enroll in less than a minute after receiving their email invitation
The all-in cost of the program was much less than the university anticipated for such technology
The flexible nature of the Wicket platform makes it easy to expand to other use cases
Schumaker Complex
The university has enrolled over 800 student athletes into the program to use for access into the NEST with a goal of 100% adoption. Over 10,000 successful scans have been performed in 500 milliseconds on average, and the university is already looking at additional use cases that could benefit from the technology across their facilities.
At the end of the day we want to fuel our student athletes so they can perform at the highest level, and the data we get from this helps us achieve our goals. It checks all the boxes, and makes sense financially.
Ryan Berlin
Assistant Athletic Director, Food Service Operations at The Ohio State University
