The Crimson Tide's 'CAST' is cresting.

• Author: Jones, Adam
• Position: Athletic Arena

"The [University of Alabama's Integrative Center for Athletic and Sport Technology, or I-CAST] draws on expertise from the fields of engineering, exercise science, health science, athletic training, nutrition, and kinesiology, giving researchers access to top-notch athletes in varsity programs as well as the university's internationally-known Adapted Athletics."

A STIFF-ARM in a football game is a signature move, a classic technique for ballcarriers to use their momentum to bulldoze a tackier out of the way. It is so revered that it is enshrined as the pose for the figure atop college football's most iconic award, the Heisman Trophy--and, when a star player for the University of Alabama, with an injured arm, instinctively stiff-armed an opposing player in the 2015 Southeastern Conference Championship Game, he was able to do so thanks to doctors, athletic trainers, engineering students, professors, and a 3-D printer.

Kenyan Drake, a running back for the Crimson Tide, broke an arm in the second half of the season. However, the break was in the smaller of the two bones in his forearm, so recovery time was shorter. Incredibly, three weeks after the break, he was back on the field. On the first offensive play from scrimmage, Drake caught a pass, put the ball in his healthy arm, and stiff-armed, with the other, the approaching defender, gaining more yardage.

The play was the culmination of collaboration between Crimson Tide Athletics and the College of Engineering. Protecting the surgically-repaired bone was a carbon-fiber brace, 3-D printed off a scan of Drake's arm--the work done in a lab across campus from the football training facility. "When I saw him stiff-arm, I winced, but it worked," says Ken Fridley, a College of Engineering administrator who helped with the project.

Drake's brace is on a growing list of projects between athletics and academics at UA, joining top-shelf athletes--the Crimson Tide gridders have been to five National Championship Games since 2009, winning four times--with leading-edge researchers in mutually beneficial situations.

To make the relationship formal, trustees established the Integrative Center for Athletic and Sport Technology, or I-CAST, a research center devoted to the development of new technologies and the application of existing ones for the purposes of reducing injury, accelerating recovery from injury, enhancing human performance, and optimizing nutrition in performance and recovery.

"I-CAST opens the...