By All Means

Huck Sorock was a hockey player who worked as a referee during high school to make some money. But it didn’t take long for the entrepreneurial juices to get get going when he saw the inefficiencies of the system hockey leagues used to assign referees to games—no way to swap games online; a lot of the organizing done on paper—and this was just a few years ago, Sorock is only 24. His experience led to the idea for  insight led to Refr Sports, a management tool used by leagues around the country for assigning officials, payments, invoicing, team websites and more. Refr raised a $535,000 pre-seed round in 2024, led by Groove Capital. Sorock and his co-founder Wyatt Gustafson also participated in a Techstars accelerator sponsored by the Minnesota Twins; they also won the student division of the MN Cup statewide startup competition in 2022. Like many entrepreneurs in the sports tech space, Sorock and Gustafson held up SportsEngine as their inspiration. Also started by college athletes turned founders back in 2008