NTangible Aims to Score How Athletes Handle Pressure

NTangible, co-founded and led by former professional baseball player Dan Connerty, is selling a psychological test to help coaches and front offices judge how athletes handle pressure in recruiting. TechCrunch The company outlined its approach on Oct. 14, 2026, after selection as one of TechCrunch's 2026 Startup Battlefield Top 20. TechCrunch

Connerty developed the test with psychologist Dr. Ed Levine, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida. The product, called Clutch Factor, builds on the Thematic Apperception Test, a method in which people create stories about ambiguous images to reveal thinking patterns. NTangible uses structured sports prompts in that tradition to infer traits tied to behavior in high-pressure moments.

Scoring is norm-based, from 0 to 1000. The company defines the measure as capacity to perform in the highest-leverage moments of a game. It covers nine sports. The test takes about 15 minutes on any device, which makes it a pre-screen rather than a lab test.

Connerty states that athletes scoring over 750 are twice as likely to commit to a Division I school. The company positions Clutch Factor alongside film, physical measurements and in-person evaluation, as added input to sort large prospect pools and set follow-up priorities.

NTangible pairs the screen with two related products. NTerpret asks how athletes respond to coaching and feedback, to give teams data on how players process instruction. The company also worked with former MLB sports psychologist Howie Schwartz to create exercises to improve mental performance, pairing testing with training.

Early use centers on youth and amateur pipelines. NTangible was named Official Mental Performance Partner of Alliance Fastpitch. FITT Insider Fastpitch softball, like baseball, centers on discrete, high-pressure plays where routine execution and pressure execution can differ. On June 24, 2026, Sports Business Journal covered the effort under the headline NTangible's pursuit to make clutch a measurable attribute. Sports Business Journal

The broader context here is calibration for teams already steeped in tracking data and video. Pressure performance is a hidden trait that no box score captures directly. Story-based tests can catch patterns that direct self-report surveys miss, much as game film shows habits that stats miss, but they bring scorer differences and shifts across sports and ages.

In my view, the credibility test will be longitudinal. A link to Division I commitment is a useful commercial signal. Coaches will want test-retest stability, false-positive rates, and whether scores predict game execution after accounting for physical talent and experience.

Over the longer arc, if the measurement holds across samples, the gain is practical. Fifteen-minute testing on any device lowers the cost of adding mental performance to recruiting. Smaller programs could triage prospects more cheaply, while larger ones gain a common language now left to gut feel. We have seen this pattern before with pitch tracking and workload management. Measuring stress response is a logical next step, if handled with care.