SPRINGDALE -- Wayne Stehlik held the device close to his ear. The voice at the other end was describing the action from a high school football game miles away.
Stehlik, the Springdale Public Schools' Athletic Director, tuned into the broadcast of the Springdale High Bulldogs at Bixby, Okla., that Friday night as he sat in the new Springdale Har-Ber football stadium, almost 200 miles away.
Profile
Tim Lee
Company: Sideline Access smartphone app
Notable: Sideline Access is a Springdale-based company that has created smart phone apps for high school sports. … The firm has partnered with Rogers and Springdale Public Schools and their apps are available for all four high schools. … Sideline has also partnered with the NIAAA and will launch a program in October to make the apps available to all 9,500 member schools. … Lee graduated from Prairie Grove and the University of Arkansas. He lives in Springdale.
Fans listening to sporting events on small transistor radios has been around for decades. But Stehlik wasn't listening to a crackled, sometimes barely audible voice on a radio. Instead he heard a crystal-clear broadcast through his smart phone thanks to a new phone app created by Springdale-based Sideline Access.
Tim Lee, who grew up in Prairie Grove and graduated from the University of Arkansas, has launched this new phone app that will soon be available to high schools across the country who are members of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association -- around 9,500 schools. Locally, both Rogers and Springdale high schools are on board and their apps are available now.
For Stehlik and Rogers Athletic Director Mark Holderbaum, the new app can connect them to the multiple schools they oversee.
"I can be watching one of my teams and listen to the other every Friday night, which is pretty exciting for me," Stehlik said. "You can sit at a game and might hear scores of another game. You might be a at a volleyball match and hear scores of a JV football game."
The apps are compatible with both iPhone and Android smart phones, Lee said.
"Really, cell phones are not good phones, but what they are are content delivery devices," Lee said. "It helps people stay connected and informed. People want information first and they want it fast. The smart phone provides that information."
The apps will include tabs like schedules and team rosters, which are handy during athletic events.
"How many times have you sat in the stands and said, 'who's that number 22?' You can take this app and pull it up and say, 'oh, that's John,'" Lee said.
The app is in its early stages of development and Lee has grand plans for where it may eventually lead, like students doing their own broadcast of games through the app, or students writing their own sports content and uploading them to their school's app.
Holderbaum said the app has been everything he thought it would be.
"I think as we get it fully launched it will be great," he said. "We're tickled to death with it and our coaches are pretty excited about it."
Lee first became involved in building phone apps years ago when he created iHog. He told a story of playing golf with some friends at Pebble Beach on an autumn Saturday.
"We're on the tee box and they pull out their cell phones and they are getting the Hogs' game in stereo," Lee said. "They made the comment like, 'can you believe Tim created this?' I got no respect from my buddies."
He's getting plenty of respect now, and more is sure to come when Sideline Access launches phase two of this project through the NIAAA next month.
Lee, who has two sons, said his family's involvement with sports and the community led to his idea to create Sideline Access for high schools and later, possibly junior highs and youth sports.
"Our sons are 10 and 7 and I'm at a baseball field, soccer field or some time of arena it seems like seven days a week," he said. "We're very active. We're active in sports, we're active in the community. And for me, the ability to give back to high schools, to give them that college or pro quality that they could never afford on a mass basis. There are schools out there that could do it, but with this, every school in the country has the ability to do it."
And it's not just for sports. His company has also worked with law enforcement to create phone apps that send out push notifications for those wanted for crimes. He told a story of a woman in New York who was as a gas station when a push notification popped up on her smart phone on a person wanted by the police. The suspect was getting gas at the same place. She quickly reported this to the police.
"They had the guy in handcuffs in like 8 minutes," Lee said.
He hopes to one day use the app to help find missing children, he said.
"The day that app leads to the discovery of a missing child, is the day I'll be very, very proud," he said.
Sports on 09/26/2014