LJWorld.com

Rick Perko thinks his 1-year-old company can revolutionize the sports instruction industry and create some high-tech jobs for Lawrence in the process.

His North Carolina-based Immersion Media recently signed a deal with Dick's Sporting Goods to display its sports instruction products in the national retailer's 50 largest stores.

The company produces two products that give computer users interactive soccer and baseball instruction. About three weeks ago, the company began selling the products -- Virtual Baseball Academy and Virtual Soccer Academy -- in Dick's Sporting Goods.

Perko, a former Lawrence resident and the company president, said the deal represented the first step in introducing the public to a new way of learning about sports.

"What we're really trying to do is change the nature of how sports instruction is done," Perko said from the company's Fayetteville, N.C., headquarters. "What is out there now is videotapes, and without trying to disparage anybody, that's the same technology they were using in the 1970s. We want to try to take the industry to a different level."

Perko's products, designed for children ages 6 to 13, use video game technology and animation.

"We've talked to education experts and they tell us this is more effective than a video because it is much more hands-on," Perko said. "It is interactive and people learn better that way."

The Dick's Sporting Goods deal, which includes the chain's Olathe store, marks the first widespread retailing of Immersion's product. For the past year the company has sold the product directly to various sporting leagues, including major-league baseball, which distributes it at youth league events.

Perko thinks the retail deal will help the company become a major player in the instruction industry.

"Our projections over the next five years call for us to have revenues well over a couple million dollars a year," he said. "It will just depend on how well we push the buttons."

Growth like that could spell new jobs for Lawrence, which is where the company's three production and computer animation employees are based.

Mickey Delfelder has created CDs that teach youngsters the rules and fundamentals of baseball and soccer. Immersion Media, a North Carolina-based company, hired Delfelder to help create the virtual CD product line, which will be sold in Dick's Sporting Goods.

Though Perko runs the business from North Carolina, he doesn't anticipate moving the company's production offices from Lawrence.

"I think and believe very strongly that Lawrence is our future production home," Perko said. "The people I have there are just great, and I'm very loyal to them and they want to be in Lawrence and I want them to be in Lawrence.

"I'd like to add employees there, but we'll do it carefully. If the next year goes well, it would be nice to add a couple more people in the next couple of years. If we are able to hit our projections, it could be more than that."

The company has Lawrence ties because Perko and his wife, Amy, lived in Lawrence for four years. Amy Perko was an associate athletics director for Kansas University while Rick Perko served as vice president of business development for the Lawrence start-up company Coach's Edge, which also was in the instruction business.

Coach's Edge later was sold to Sportvision, which ultimately closed the company's Lawrence-area offices. The Perkos moved to Fayetteville when Amy Perko took a job as president of the city's NBA development league team.

Sportvision, in the meantime, decided to not pursue plans to create a sports instruction business. That's when Perko decided to start his own sports instruction business, convincing three former Coach's Edge employees to join the company.

In 2003, the company plans to introduce products providing instruction for golf, football and basketball. Perko plans to capitalize on his KU ties as he develops new products. For example, he said former KU basketball player Jerod Haase was working with the company as a consultant for the basketball program.

"That's another reason we like Lawrence," Perko said. "We're fortunate to have lots of relationships with people in Lawrence who know sports very well and teach it every day."