A Black Woman Invented A Device That Could Revolutionize Time Preservation In Sporting Events

This invention represents a potentially dynamic evolution in sports officiating technology.

Written By Curtis Bunn

The Frustration Behind the Innovation

As a youth girls’ basketball coach in New Jersey, Maria Carthon recalls the difficulty of getting a referee’s attention to call a timeout as one of the frustrations she consistently faced. Stoppages often came too late or not at all.

As a sports fan, Carthon saw other coaches at multiple levels struggle with the same issue. It puzzled her that in today’s technologically advanced world—where innovations like instant replay have minimized human error in some college and professional sports—no foolproof method existed to preserve time, especially during a game’s pivotal moments.

After a particularly upsetting experience in 2011, when a referee dismissed her complaint about not being granted a timeout by telling her, “Next time, jump up and down and yell,” Carthon decided to do something about the pervasive issue.

“Sports have invested billions of dollars in technologies that determine whether a player’s foot touched an out-of-bounds line or the three-point line,” Carthon said. “Time is a part of the game’s most strategic moments, and it should not come down to whether a coach can shout over crowd noise. If no one else was going to solve it, I decided I would.”

The Path to Product Development and Business Strategy

As Associate Director of Programs in the Office of Enrollment Management at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Carthon researched inventions and learned about product development, intellectual property, and business strategy. She returned to college and earned a Master’s in Business Law, strengthening her ability to turn innovation into business.

Introducing T.O.S.S.: How the Wireless Timeout System Works

The results of her commitment produced the Time Out Synchronized System (T.O.S.S.), a wireless tool that allows coaches to communicate instantly with referees when desiring a stoppage of play by depressing a button on a device to gain an official’s attention from afar or over crowd noise.

This invention represents a potentially dynamic evolution in sports officiating technology, focusing on preventing game-management concerns that could affect the outcome of competition.

Her 2023 creation, which continues to evolve, is a two-step process: Coaches press a small handheld device to request a timeout. An instant signal from the device sends an immediate wireless alert through a vibration to the apparatus referees wear on their wrists. Officials know then to grant a timeout no matter where they are on the court or playing field.

Hers is an innovation that Carthon and others who have tried it believe could, should, and eventually will be a standard part of most sporting events.

Endorsements from Pro Athletes and Industry Experts

“Sports has been an industry where change is hard,” said former NFL player Ryan McNeil, who tested T.O.S.S. “The conventional thinking has always been: ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ But Marie’s product sits in the efficiency and strategy box. There are so many scenarios delaying or preventing a coach from calling a timeout in a game. With T.O.S.S., you’re taking away a lot of the chaos, a lot of uncertainty. It’s such a solid product.”

Others who have been introduced to the creation, like former NBA player Willie Anderson, concur. Anderson, who played for four teams during his nine-year professional basketball career, tested T.O.S.S. and called it: “A game-changer. That device will help referees and coaches because at the end of the game is when it gets crazy loud. With T.O.S.S., the referees can just totally focus on the play and not worry about watching the bench as much because they will feel the vibration when the button is pushed. It would take a lot of pressure off of referees.”

Anderson recalled coaching an AAU game a few years ago when he was desperate to stop play and convene with his team but couldn’t get the referees’ attention. “It was wild and crazy in the stands, and the other team had the ball, and they missed the shot,” he said. “I was trying to call a timeout, but the ref was focused on all the activity on the floor. By the time I got the timeout, we had lost about six seconds on the clock. Six seconds is a lot of time and would have pretty much given us a chance to win the game. Instead, we had no time to set up a play. T.O.S.S. would have prevented that, which is saying a lot.”

Grassroots Deployment and Real-World League Testing

But while the endorsements validating T.O.S.S. are plentiful, it has been challenging to gain access to officials in the high-level sports world who evaluate and approve new technologies for league-wide implementation. And so, about six months ago, Carthon said she pivoted.

“We shifted and adopted a bottom-up approach, focusing first on recreational leagues and high school athletics,” she said. “What is especially exciting is that this next phase is no longer just about developing the technology; we have real-world testing.”
That strategy has already produced solid results. Recently, TOSS was successfully piloted in the Henry and DeKalb counties in metro Atlanta and the Georgia Parks and Recreation basketball leagues.

“Several leagues have expressed interest in piloting T.O.S.S.,” Carthon said.

Capital Investment and Venture Mentorship

With the aid of her fiancé, Cliff Ochemba, and brother, Carthon has invested $100,000 into her invention so far, and projects she needs another $200,000 to $250,000 “to take the technology to the next level and develop a more robust, league-ready product. That funding would support engineering and product design, development of the next-generation prototype, testing, and a small pre-production run.”

To reach this stage, Carthon sought mentorship through the American Technology Venture Lab (ATVL). Under the tutelage of Dennis C. Hayes, an inventor of the Hayes PC modem that helped build the internet, Carthon strengthened the business strategy behind T.O.S.S., gaining invaluable insight into intellectual property commercialization, entrepreneurship, technology ventures, and scaling innovation from concept to marketplace.

Looking to the Future of Sports Technology

Anderson said: “That technology will make it. But she has to be careful. Once the NBA gets wind of this device, they may find a way to get it themselves.”

Carthon, a mother of two grown children, seems less worried about that—her product is patented—than continually upgrading the innovation so it will stand up to any critique leagues may have about T.O.S.S.’ functionality.

“It’s exciting. We have made great strides,” Carthon said. “But there are more strides to be made.”