PITTSBURGH — Sleep is a precious commodity these days for Samantha Weber.

The Freeport High graduate and senior at Grove City College is busy balancing a varsity sport, school work and launching a new business venture.

In preparation for the first live test of ProfilePasser, an application she developed with the help of Pittsburgh-based AlphaLab to link high school soccer players with college coaches, Weber got very little shuteye.

“I slept 14 hours in a three-day period,” Weber said. “Not every week is like that. It’s not a pace anyone can maintain long-term.”

To Weber, though, giving up some sleep is a small price to pay to get her company off the ground.

ProfilePasser was unleashed at the Discovery Cup in Germantown, Md., Oct 12-14 and it was met with excitement from players, coaches and tournament organizers alike.

“The reaction was incredible,” Weber said. “We made some other big connections there. Five other tournament directors loved what we were doing.

“The whole weekend was exciting to watch and it was all about getting validation,” Weber added.

But the Discovery Cup almost didn’t happen.

Heavy rain in the days leading up to the weekend nearly forced the cancelation of the tournament.

Weber, who already was wringing her hands about the launch, was in full scramble mode.

“(Oct. 11) I was making a lot of phone calls,” Weber said. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be a disaster.’”

It was anything but.

The Discovery Cup was still held and Former University of Pittsburgh women’s soccer coach Sue-Moy Chin was at the showcase introducing ProfilePasser to players and coaches.

Chin, who now works for Apple as the president of Susnia, Inc., said the application was a big hit.

“I think she’s really on to something,” Chin said. “There was excitement on both sides. Coaches, players and even people working the event were excited. We got some players and coaches to sign up on the spot.”

Chin said ProfilePasser is a perfect tool for the tech-savvy high school players and coaches these days.

“All the kids now have iPhones or some other smartphone,” Chin said. “It seems very natural for them to use. They all found it very user-friendly.”

Chin remembered her days as a coach, receiving hundreds of emails from players imploring her to watch them play at showcases.

She also recalled leafing through programs at those events and thinking how inefficient the system was.

“I wish I had a tool at my disposal like this when I was coaching,” said Chin, who spent nine years as the Panthers’ coach before leaving the program after the 2011 season. “It’s so much better than searching through a 300-page book to find a player. It was so time consuming. This is a great resource.”

That was what Weber had in mind when she created the application.

Weber once was one of those names lost in a 300-page program and fell through the recruiting cracks.

She’s happy with where she ended up, but wanted to create a much more intuitive and streamlined process for players and coaches to connect at showcase tournaments.

And ProfilePasser was born.

Wednesday will be the biggest day yet for Weber and her company. She will do an eight-minute presentation in front of media and investors at AlphaLab Demo Day.

It will be the culmination of 20 weeks of work. It may also be the day Weber gets the investment capital she needs.

“I feel like we’ve been meeting all the milestones we’ve set for ourselves,” she said.

“This has been the most nerve-wracking experience of my life,” Weber added. “A lot is riding on it.”