Johns Creek Student Creates App that Intersects Sport and Science
At Fulton County Schools, innovation isn’t confined to the classroom - it’s happening on the soccer field, too. Jarek Jimenez, a junior at Johns Creek High School, may be a manager by title for the school's soccer team, but he contributes much more than his skill for retrieving a loose soccer ball. Jarek has created a custom computer application that generates player ratings for his teammates, blending his passion for technology with his commitment to his team.
Jarek says his work on the ratings program started as an idea last December. He knew he wouldn’t get a lot of playing time, so he found another way to be useful. Jarek says he began building the program in January. To get started, he had to think of how to organize a player’s game-day performance in a way that a computer could understand as easily as possible. He then had to confront the most complicated part of the process.
“I had to characterize aspects of the player’s game into specific categories, in order to input a string of characters based on how the players performed, to generate a rating,” Jarek explained. “I just spent some time making formulas myself. I’d plug in this amount of shots, or this amount of passes, and this amount of times they lost the ball, goals, any stat, and then I just tweaked a formula by myself. When I got it mostly right, as correct as possible, I translated that into code.”
After multiple tests and tweaks, Jarek’s program became a powerful tool for the team to track player statistics, evaluate performance patterns, and help inform coaching decisions. It was the design phase that would prove to be most challenging for Jarek, but it was a challenge for which he was well-equipped. His growth has been supported by a school environment that nurtures curiosity and real-world applications. A key influence has been his CTAE computer science teacher, Dr. Raymond Schenk. Through project-based learning and access to cutting-edge technology, Dr. Schenk encouraged Jarek to apply his coding skills to authentic challenges.
“His coding needed a place to grow,” Dr. Schenk explains. “I was not even slightly surprised to learn that he had started a project for his soccer team. Jarek embodies all of this teaching and sets the model for his peers.”
Jarek’s peers were his main motivation for designing the ratings system, and it has become a hit among his teammates, but Jarek says he didn’t create it for the recognition. Instead, he built it because he saw a need and wanted to make a difference for his team.
“If I can’t contribute in the way that I am one of the best players on the team, I just wanted to find a way to contribute to help everyone with self-improvement,” Jarek says. “Just seeing how they performed during a game really boosts people’s confidence if they performed well and it shows on the ratings after the game.”
Perhaps, though, what stands out most about Jarek is not simply his technical ability, but his character.
“His blend of creativity, problem-solving ability, and genuine service-oriented mindset reflects a student who is not only academically gifted but also deeply grounded in purpose,” says Johns Creek High School Assistant Principal Valeria Moyer. “Jarek represents the best of what student innovation can look like, and he exemplifies what students here at the Creek do!”
Originally, Jarek sent the ratings in a group message to his teammates. He now posts them on a website that is connected to the program on Jarek’s personal computer, so the results aren’t currently available on a public platform. That could all change in the future, though. The possibilities are endless, but Jarek says for now he will focus on ways that his program can continue helping his teammates improve their game. He eventually wants to enter college and obtain a computer science degree.
