July 9, 2026
Ever since Brock and Logan met playing sports together as kids, they’ve been good friends and natural teammates. In high school, they became business partners, launching Premier Umpires LLC to more easily staff youth sports games with local referees.
Today, through the Center for Entrepreneurship's New Venture Competition, the pair are pushing their partnership and their business aspirations even further.
“We got the chance to pitch a new company, Officiator,” Brock says. “It’s a software that builds on our experience with Premier Umpires to make staffing officials even easier for local sports communities.”
“We had this idea for an app that could alleviate problems we kept running into,” Logan adds. “Having this event to bring our idea to and get feedback made all the sense in the world for us.”
The New Venture Competition gives Husker entrepreneurs like Brock and Logan the opportunity to pitch their ideas in front of a panel of professionals from across the business world. And while the cash prizes are a big draw, Brock and Logan say the individualized feedback they received gave them a major boost.
“The judges really cared about helping our business and offering us advice,” says Logan. “They gave us genuine business insights — you could tell they cared about our idea in the long run, which I really appreciated.”
Brock and Logan took fourth place in the competition and were also awarded the Thomas G. Guy Startup Team Award for outstanding organization and collaboration. With their fresh knowledge and resources, Brock and Logan are now taking their business to the Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program, another entrepreneurial program at NU and one of the many reasons Nebraska’s risen to No. 35 globally for entrepreneurship.
“For us, the program isn’t just about the mentorship we’ll get,” says Brock. “Meeting other student entrepreneurs, even if they’re in a completely different industry, is so cool. It’s great to just bounce ideas off each other.”
Brock Anderson is a junior sports media and advertising and public relations major and Logan Hoffman is a junior political science major.