5 Star Virtual brings ECU baseball’s facilities to life

Social distancing has sequestered most Americans in their homes, frozen all major sporting events around the country and forced everyone to rethink daily routines. At East Carolina University, as is the case nearly everywhere else, spring sports were canceled and employees were told to stay home as much as possible.

For student-athletes already on collegiate rosters, an extra year of eligibility will be afforded to them. For high schoolers and potential recruits, the COVID-19 pandemic has eliminated all in-person visits to prospective schools and greatly cut down the physical interaction between a college coach and recruit.

With everything taking place online in the form of teleworking and conference calls, ECU is ahead of the curve on something that could play a huge role in recruiting and fan engagement for the foreseeable future.

Mike Mullis with 5 Star Virtual has partnered with ECU and the athletics department to bring virtual reality mapping to their facilities.

“The world has definitely slowed down if not shut down so people are at home, have more free time on their hands,” ECU baseball head coach Cliff Godwin said. “It’s a way for people to virtually tour our facility without leaving their couch or kitchen table which is really neat when you have it basically in the palm of your hand.”

Kicked into motion in December, Mullis and his team have 3D mapped ECU baseball’s indoor hitting and pitching facilities as well as clubhouse and locker room areas. Using a scanner and camera to get the necessary pictures for the model, Mullis says it takes multiple trips to the facility to get the mapping to look just right.

On the surface, the mapping can give fans and recruits a look into ECU’s facilities without them actually having to step foot on campus. As Mullis demonstrated to Godwin and his staff, that is only the beginning to what the technology can offer.

“Until you see it, you don’t have a feel for what it really does for your specific project,” Mullis said. “We went and shot a rough over at East Carolina, we did the three facilities. I sent him (Associate Head Coach Jeff Palumbo) that rough final. They were at the ABCA coaches conference in Nashville and they’d go, ‘yeah this is great,’ and in my mind I’m like it truely is just a canvas. This is like the lowest it can be.”

At its best, virtual reality can include personalization that goes a long way in displaying the certain aspects of a project. Having built the baseball program on culture, that is exactly what Godwin and Palumbo wanted to showcase.

Manifested into videos that can be played as someone navigates the virtual facility, Godwin, Palumbo or another staff member can provide details to those on the tour that they otherwise would not have received from just looking at a wall or space. Archived video from past games at Clark-LeClair are also put into use to fully showcase the baseball program.

“The actual scan and the final product of the scan, what I call the canvas, is really the easy part,” Mullis said. “The difficult part is getting the personalization in there. That’s just countless hours of shooting video, shooting interviews, grabbing video from stuff that’s already available.”

Originally used for a construction application, Mullis, a former assistant baseball coach at Pitt Community College, quickly saw the practicality of using virtual reality as a recruiting tool.

Not solely geared toward recruits in its current application with ECU, Godwin and his staff wanted something that would also appeal to fans, alumni or anyone interested in the university.

“This wasn’t just for their recruits, this was for their fans, this was for alumni,” Mullis said. “Yeah, it’s a great recruiting tool but East Carolina athletics in general and East Carolina University in general is not just recruiting athletes. We’re recruiting holistically, we want new fans, we want new supporters of the institution.”

With the COVID-19 virus having shut down most person-to-person contact, ECU finds itself in a unique position to showcase their facilities and culture without someone having to physically visit Clark-LeClair Stadium or the Greenville area.

“Obviously we had no ability to predict COVID, we had no ability to see what our country is going through right now,” Mullis said. “What we do see is a great opportunity to continue being proactive in your recruiting and marketing effort and giving people as real an opportunity to visit your facility as possible.”

Still with so many unknowns surrounding this national emergency, collegiate athletic departments around the country are bracing for the possibility of decreased revenue stemming from the canceled spring schedule. If the virus persists, the college football season could be thrown into peril which would rob universities of their highest grossing sport.

That reality is still months away from being decided. With technology like virtual reality, however, ECU can gage the interest of an out-of-state student-athlete by sending them on a tour of Clark-LeClair without them ever having to leave their house.

“I think what this does is also helps to stretch that recruiting budget to get the last penny out of it,” Mullis said. “You’re not having to bring people to campus, but going back to the pre-screener concept, if they do come to campus after they see the scan, you should have a convertable student-athlete.”

Already in the works to expand his operation, Mullis says ECU’s football facilities are roughly 60% scanned. He is also garnering interest from some Athletic Coast Conference schools about bringing the technology to their campuses.

With an application for more than just athletic facilities, Mullis says he wants to eventually bring the academic side of ECU into the virtual reality world. According to him, each school and college within the university has different stories to tell, and he believes this technology would be beneficial in getting prospective students to check out ECU without having to travel to Greenville, North Carolina.

For right now, however, 5 Star Virtual is allowing prospective student-athletes, fans and anyone who finds the link on social media to tour the Pirates’ baseball facilities. Benefitting from near perfect timing, this partnership should allow ECU to gain an edge in recruiting over programs that can not offer recruits the same experience.

“There’s a lot of really cool interactions with people, which is recruiting,” Godwin said. “You’re recruiting all the time. Definitely has had a positive impact on our program.”

View the facilities in 3D below:

Clark-LeClair Stadium here

ECU Indoor Hitting Facility here

ECU Indoor Pitching Facility here