By DSU student Hailey Entze and Seth Moerkerke
A guy who has been a key member of the Ben C. Frank Human Performance Center since day one is Pete Leno. The center was added in 2000 and since then has really lifted the Blue Hawks in the athletic realm to a whole new level. The man behind the scenes of the acceleration program is Leno.
Originally from Kennedy, MN, Leno ended up in North Dakota at Valley City State University to play football. He later received his master’s degree from North Dakota State University where he also coached before moving to Dickinson in 1991. He accepted a position at Dickinson State to teach in the Department of Health and Physical Education and be the offensive line coach of the football team.
In 2001, Leno started working with what would become known as AccuPower Solutions, a software that helps to assess jumps, landings, and balance. The first configuration of the software was more like a stationary forward leg press whereas the newest version is comprised of scale like force plates that measure 40 inches squared and stay in a fixed spot. With this newest version providing more free space it has become possible to evaluate an athlete’s body control.
Force plates have a few different applications. The biggest thing is trying to establish a baseline performance of an athlete. From there it is possible to look at how an athlete changes over time. The three most common applications from the software are injury risk assessment, readiness recovery, and training efficiency. Though interest is expanding to more skill-related applications.
Leno has been an owner of the company since 2014 when the group he was working for decided to sell the software. Since then, Leno and his partner have continued to refine the product to make it more convenient for the users. According to Leno, “The sport technology is a wild, wild west landscape, but what’s needed most is a way to translate what seems complicated into something simple and useful.”
Leno and his partner even take AccuPower on the road to professional athlete combines. Some of those relationships have come from the previous owners and others have blossomed from Leno’s own relationships with strength coaches who are primarily responsible to run the NHL Combine. They’ve now taken their equipment to the NHL Combine for the past three years and plan to make an appearance again in 2019 along with presenting it at the NBA Combine as well. They mostly use these appearances to present the equipment, show others how to use it, and then hopefully make some sales. “Some people want to predict things, but with the human body you can’t predict. You can only assess risk,” Leno said. “The sky is not the limit in terms of what [force plates] can evaluate and what you can determine from them, but there is a lot of use and value to them.”
While he now presents AccuPower to future professional athletes and their counterparts, Leno said that he incorporated the concepts in his classroom long before he ever took it to the outside world. His students are given a whole semester to work with the product and create projects to help student-athletes on campus. Their interaction with the concepts of the equipment in turn gives Leno a way to learn how to make it better and more intuitive. A few lucky past Blue Hawks have even gotten to see AccuPower in action when they accompanied Leno to the Army All-American Combine in San Antonio, Texas. “I know our kids are getting a master’s level biomechanics education just because we have access to that kind of technology,” stated Leno.
It’s because of his passion for AccuPower that his 28 years of teaching at DSU has become more than just a job to him. He said throughout all of the changes at DSU over the years, the bond between the people who have walked up its hill are what make it so special. “DSU is the people. The people that I’ve met. The people I’ve been lucky enough to hopefully influence, and the people that have influenced me too,” Leno explained.
Leno has gotten to know and influence a lot of lives, which are some of his favorite memories from his time here. His favorite part of being a coach is watching a new group of young men come together each year to bond for a common goal. They end up creating friendships that will last for the rest of their lives.
It is probably because of those people and the bonds created over that time that made Leno want to give back to the school by donating an AccuPower Solutions license for the next 10 years. Blue Hawk students and athletes can now use the equipment to grow from and learn, something that will be an influence on them for their rest of their lifetime. According to him, “[Dickinson State University] is a collection of people I have been lucky enough to be involved with…when I look back on all the people I’ve been lucky enough to have interacted with that’s pretty special.”
