This past Monday, March 25, the Little Theater hosted Nathan Pierotti as a guest speaker alumni of City High.

“I met Principal Bacon through a friend, he said ‘I’d love to have you come and speak to the students.’ And it was something I [would] absolutely do,” Pierotti said.

Pierotti is currently studying engineering at the University of Iowa, and serves as the CEO and co-founder of Monarc Inc., which specializes in making machines that can pass and punt as a “robotic quarterback“ of sorts.

“I played football in high school and when I went to college I noticed the machines they used were still the same ones I had used,” Pierotti said.

These machines called the “Seekers” may not sound too impressive, but they’re changing the way players practice. The “Seeker” can track data from practice sessions so they can improve the way they play. Pierotti showed the students videos of the machine in action, then spent the rest of the time answering questions.

At thirty eight thousand dollars to buy and twelve thousand to rent per year, they’re “a little bit bit out of most high school’s price ranges,” Pierotti acknowledges. Pierotti also acknowledges in his speech how hard the machines are to get. He mentions how twelve machines have already been put on order by NFL teams like the Niners and the Chiefs but only five have been made because of how complex the machine parts and the machines themselves are.