102: David Willoughby: The Intersection Of Technology And High School Sports

Title: David Willoughby: The Intersection Of Technology And High School Sports

Guest: David Willoughby

Peter: Today, my guest is David Willoughby. He is with a organization called Play On Sports. They have several sub brands. He’s an advertising specialist and photography lead in the state of Washington. They are a leader in digital technology solutions for school athletic.

David, thank you for joining me today.

David: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Peter: David and I have worked together, I don’t know, three or four years. I was introduced to David through one of our clients. Dental practice happens to be owned by my brother-in-law and they like to support their local high school sports. And David’s company facilitates advertising and sponsorship type opportunities related to the sports there at these schools. So that’s how we initially met each other.

Unless I’ve got that wrong. Is that your recollection, David?

David: Yeah, that is You were a cold call. I knew that you had been with us at some point in time, I just, I reached out to you and here we are three years later.

Peter: Great. David has been involved with high school athletic and the programs since 2000. Where did you grow up? What, where’d you go to college? What’s your background?

David: A little bit of a Navy brat through, through fourth grade. My dad was stationed, I was born in Key West and stationed in Rota, Spain for a couple of years, but my dad retired out here when I was 10. And I started elementary school out here and went through high school out here. Did my college, two years in the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I finished up my Bachelor in Arts in Graphic Design Photography in three here at Western Washington University, I also, where I met my wife.

Peter: So Western up in Bellingham, of course, that’s compared to where I’m at. That’s, I don’t know, what is that? 85 miles north of me or something like that.

David: An hour drive.

Peter: Yeah. So let’s talk about school sports and what it is that you are doing. Let’s use that kind of as our jumping off point for the conversations. What exactly are you providing to the client?

David: We actually have, when you think about it, we actually have a couple of clients. Our primary client really actually is high schools and middle schools here in the State of Washington. They’ve been relying on our technology to set their schedules, build their schedules, publish their schedules, change their schedules, and keep that vital information to their community reported in a digital platform. Photography is just one part of that, but those digital platforms gather a lot of eyeballs on a regular basis, a lot of engaged decision making eyeballs on a regular basis. And we figured we could monetize those sites either by charging schools a lot of money, taking the advertising opportunity to businesses across the state and across the country where their display ads get seen in a brand awareness sort of fashion.

And they can use that, they can use their connection the schools in their conversations with their client base. We do return some revenue to our schools as well as a profit share. It’s not a big chunk, but we do all the work for them, and they just get a little bit of money each year.

Peter: Got it. So, if I’m a grandparent, I’m not, but neither am I,

David: but I’m old enough.

Peter: Can I use the sites that you all host and the assets that you guys create to follow along? Am I just going to see box scores or what sorts of things can I see?

David: Every school is different across the country, Jeff Frant, but our suite of products, you can use our products to view their games through the NFHS network. You can jump

Peter: on- Like a video, like a real time video or, a taped or a recorded version or? Both. On demand.

David: On demand games that have been published. It’s up to our schools to do that work. If you want to buy a ticket to the game, you can go through many of our schools are switching over to our GoFan digital ticketing. You can jump onto an app, buy a ticket, send that ticket to anybody, show up, walk in, touchless, and get into the game. Oh, I wish

Peter: you guys have been around, like, when my kids were in high school because I remember going to the games, you always had to have cash in your pocket. Yeah. I never had cash to go watch them play basketball.

David: And for schools it’s great because-

Peter: And then grandparents would show up and they’d want to, hang on, let me run to the cash machine.

David: Yeah. This is also great for schools because they’re able to not carry tens and thousands of dollars of cash. If it’s all just digitally, they get paid the next day. And then of course, all of our schools use our league websites and our school websites to report their information. They can create stories.

They can you can see their schedules, their standings. It’s definitely we’re working on making it one stop shop for everything.

Peter: And it’s focused on athletics?

David: Focused on athletics and activities to a lesser greater degree. We some schools that include their choir and their plays and different things that could do all their activities.

Peter: Got it. So not necessarily just 100% focused on

David: We provide the template. They do the work.

Peter: Now, one thing that you were telling me before we got started is you’re also involved in sports photography. You’ve got a network. What’s going on there?

David: That all started how I got involved with what I do now was I love taking high school sports, sports photographs. Love going to a football game, taking pictures. I did a lot of that for local newspapers, and that kind of work dried up. And so I’d look for an outlet. Digital cameras came along, so I started photographing some high school sports, and that’s how I met the guy that built our websites.

And I said, hey. We should bring this to a network of photographers that I’m getting to know, and let’s get them all involved and photograph every sport at every school at least one time. And I’ve grown that network to about 80 photographers in the last thirteen years.

Peter: Wow. And that’s so you’ve got a around around the state or where

David: are Predominantly around the state, predominantly on in Western Washington, but we have photographers on the East Side of the state. So if anybody listening is over in Eufreida and they need to want a game covered, I’ll work hard to try to find someone over there to get over to a game. But we do have a handful of photographers that are also outside of the state. I’m working to grow this network with the support of my company at some point in time here.

Peter: That’s great. So what was what was your early inspirations? What drew you to graphic design and graphic arts and photography?

David: Out of out of high school, I took a graphic design visual communications class in high school. And they all part of it was a photography component and part of it was a design and even production component. And I had fun with it, but I never really thought about it as a potential career. Went off to college, got an email or a note or letter. I got a letter, a real letter from my high school teacher and he talked about Western Washington University being a place to go for graphic design.

And at that time I was planning on going into computers, computer programming, and realized that I wanted to do something art based. And I started doing drawing and photography in college and got published and it turned into a passion. So I started freelancing and interning and just had this passion for photography. And I’m sorry. That’s twenty years compacted in about two minutes.

My first job out of college was running a printing press. I knew I could get employed. I was the the I was in charge of our student print shop at Western where I I trained six or seven other printers to run a printing press and all the processes before and after that. And so I had this background in production of graphic arts and went straight into working for local printer here in Bellingham and just ended up doing it for twenty years.

Peter: Got it. So what what was the transition like over to out of the print side and what was your first stop?

David: So when I was I started in 2003, 2004 taking pictures, Linden High School’s football games. A couple of the ladies they worked with had kids that played. And I was looking for that outlet again that I wasn’t getting from the Bellingham Herald or other local publications. I looked for that outlet, and I went out and photographed some games, put them on a website. And I did that for two or three years, and people really loved it.

And the guy that built WPA network, his kids play baseball for Linden High School, and he approached me and said, you you need to come do come take a look at what I’m doing. And and I connected with him and just started to build that photographer’s network. After five years time, asked me to step in and sell some ads and said no. I said no three times, but I really believed in what he was doing and how good it was for schools. And he needed somebody to do the work, so I took a little risk.

I left the printing industry that I knew I could do, and just dove in feet first to this sales thing, And I still to this day call myself the drunken toddler. I don’t have a method. I just talk to people.

Peter: I know the feeling. I’m the same way. I don’t really sell anything. I feel like I’m just more of an educator and making people aware of the opportunities.

David: Absolutely. I like that.

Peter: And that it seems with respect to the high schools and the schools, and of course with digital now, just digital media makes it so much easier to, and websites obviously makes it a lot. Yeah. In our

David: Everything’s on a phone. Yeah.

Peter: David just held up his phone.

David: Makes so much Our mobile traffic is 60% of our traffic comes from mobile devices.

Peter: Oh, I’m not surprised. Yeah. So it really changes the equation. It makes it a bigger opportunity with respect to high school sports. It used to be the high school photographer would go out and then they would publish some pictures maybe in their weekly newspaper, if they had one, and then maybe get it in the yearbook.

Right?

David: Or they show up with a notebook full of eight by tens that they printed off and try to sell them on-site. I also look at this. There’s a lot of people out there that are photographers that are looking for an assignment driven outlet. I was an assignment driven kind of photographer. I didn’t take pictures just for my own, but if somebody said, hey, can you go take pictures?

So I was event driven, and that’s the thing I run into is I’ve a photographer base that starts from beginning, intermediate, volunteer kind of photographers, all the way up to a professional level, and I find that it’s just the passion for a reason to go out and photograph a football game. And I love coaching up photographers and getting them to that passion that I once had really strong, that was driving me.

Peter: So what, when you’re shooting a football game, for example, what are you looking for?

David: In focus, high end moment, but also a really good representative picture of every single kid competing because just because he’s on the bench or just because he’s on the line doesn’t mean he’s less and more less important than the quarterback or the running back.

Peter: Mhmm.

David: So I wanna cover the entire event. People in the stands that are cheering. I love capturing that. Or cheerleaders or the trainer that goes out there to help out a kid. I want to cover the entire event.

Or my, I want my photographer base to do that as well.

Peter: So you’ve been doing this a while. Is your work archived or do you ever have somebody come up like twenty years later and say, Hey, have you got any?

David: Yeah, do have quite actually, I had a you hope you never have to fulfill this kind of a request. And I never I can never rightfully profit off this kind of request. I had grandparent reach out to me through my old email address and she said, Hey, screen capture. And many photographers are like, Don’t screen capture my work. You’re stealing my work.

But she had a And she said, this is from like 2000 this is the only picture I have, we really would love to buy some copies of this picture. This young man lost his life recently. Yeah. And it was very, I don’t know, morbidly rewarding, don’t know, to go into my archives and pull every picture that I could find of him. I met her to review that I could send it to her, she actually made a purchase.

I immediately refunded her money. But the fact that we were there able to capture that memory, it didn’t seem like it had much importance to them at that time, but it’s amazing how much more important it is five years later.

Peter: Wow. Yeah. That’s that’s cool that you were able to help them out

David: and Happened probably once a year for the last thirteen plus years. There’s always somebody looking for something. Sometimes it’s for some of those really tough reasons.

Peter: Yeah. So the, so you started with, was that a statewide organization or is that just local?

David: WPA network was a statewide organization. We we had 30 plus leagues and 300, 300 plus schools in our, in our network in the state of Washington. We had a photography module on there where people could go to get their scores and schedules, but at the meet all at the same time, they could get pictures from a game if it was photographed.

Peter: Got it. And then that organization was sold or merged, or I think you were mentioning that there’s been like several different iterations of the company, and now you’re part of this national organization. Play on.

David: Yeah. Our penetration in the state of Washington with the WPA network was complete and thorough. And the organization that I still actually am branded right now with VNN purchased WPA network in the spring of or the 2020 while we didn’t have any sports. And because they they couldn’t get into the state of Washington. So I always say in business, if you can’t beat them, you buy them.

Peter: Oh, and so this was during COVID.

David: This was also during COVID.

Peter: Where there was nothing happening.

David: There was nothing happening. They purchased us then, which was the reason why we had to sell was because Mark didn’t know what we were going to do in Vienna and had a little bit of body to them, we didn’t want to lose traction with our schools with what we were providing they needed. And so this provided that outlet to keep it going, we rebuilt some sites, and now we’ve gone through a couple more buyouts in that three years time.

Peter: So is PlayOnSports the biggest national sort of high school sports network?

David: I would say that, we probably have penetration with one of our services and products in over 75% of the schools in the country. I think we’re at like 14,000. Some of it is we sold them something once, but a lot of it is they’re using our products and services on a daily basis.

Peter: So is there anything that exists? This is Bob Top. Is there anything like an ESPN for high school sports?

David: It’s funny that you said that because I have actually referred to what we do as like, if ESPN and Costco had a high school baby. It’s funny Yeah, that you because Costco’s, they always say Costco’s the one stop shop for everything. You can go there and And get so that’s what PlayOnSports is hoping to do is make this a one stop shop for everything you would need high school sport related, high school athletic and activity related. You can go come here to get your athlete registered, pay his dues, look at his game, look at her buy tickets to her volleyball match, all of it in one place because it’s fundraising. Yeah, we do a lot of fun.

Rally Around Us is our fundraising component. We like to partner with a lot of companies. We like to build our services up in that manner. It just makes it easier for schools rather than sending them to nine different places if they can go to one place and it’s their school athletics website to get everything that they need.

Peter: Yeah. And they obviously, they, given the fact that there’s different school districts, leagues, leagues, at least here in the state of Washington, go across school districts.

David: Yep. We’re really unique in the state of Washington because we start at the school level, and the school level transfers to the league level. We actually have a league website that has all kinds of opportunities. From the league, we go into the district they all feed into the districts and from the district we go into the state. We just completed a complete rebuild of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association website, and everything while we don’t own that platform, it’s all built on our the schools today or our VNM platform, and it all talks to itself back and forth.

Peter: Oh, So WIAA, which is what they’re the organizing body in the state of Washington.

David: The governing body. Yeah. And so their main, their main goal is to set standards for schools and athletes to be able to compete at the district, regional, and playoff level. Schools have to be a member of the WIAA, So not all schools in the state of Washington, I think ninety ninety eight, 99% of them are. But if you wanna compete at the state level with your school, you have to be a WIAA member, and you have to follow their guidelines.

Peter: Got it.

David: We have mat classic coming up this weekend. WIA does. 24 wrestling matches wrestling mats, six divisions, more than a 100 competitors, all under one roof. Probably the largest single high school sporting event in the entire country. And it’s in Washington.

Peter: Where where does that take place? Is that down in Tacoma or?

David: Tacoma Dome. Yeah. Tacoma Dome. Yeah. So you’re, you can watch 24 wrestling matches going simultaneously.

Peter: Oh my gosh. Wow. And you all are keeping track of everything? Who’s doing what?

David: Well, that’s all the WIA.

Peter: Oh, I got it. Right.

David: Of course. We feed into that. We feed into the that event. I believe in our

Peter: tools, and then they keep track of the actual Yeah.

David: They use our software platform and they rebuilt their, they customized their website using our software platform and our support to build their new website that launched this fall. And if you head over to wia.com, you’ll be able to check out what, what that looks like.

Peter: You’ve been involved with middle school, high school athletics for quite a while. What are the trends you see or what are things, what does the future look like for high school sports from your vantage point? You obviously have a pretty unique view.

David: Necessarily being an expert and really truly understanding it, but L is a real big thing going through a now name, image, likeness, high school collegiate athletes can sell their name, image, likeness. They can’t necessarily profit off of their activity, but there’s a lot of talk about that and where the ethics of it and this, that, and the other, which you’re seeing the collegiate level of collegiate athletes being able to

Peter: So is that impacting high school in any way?

David: Absolutely. Absolutely. Is that happening? The competitiveness of high school is so high, more so now than it was thirty or forty years ago, twenty or thirty years ago, in that in order for me to go to college and have college paid for, it’s my duty as a parent to invest in my child and get them out to all these tournaments and get them seen, get them signed, and get them to scholarships. Now it’s not just scholarships, now I can as a collegiate athlete, I can go to Coca Cola and sell my likeness to Coca Cola.

Yeah. Get paid to play.

Peter: So it really depends on the sport though, because I think football in particular is really a school based sport. But then you take a sport like baseball, for example, there’s so many club teams and competitive teams where it’s not necessarily directly related to the school anymore.

David: It’s both. You you see in soccer, you see it all the time in soccer where I play for select soccer, I play softball, I play for Stomach County Crush, I think it is a is an elite where they pull players from all over the side of the state. Yeah. But a lot of those players still play their school ball, and they use school ball to help elevate their attractiveness to a school. And at all sports at all levels because schools need to fill college needs to fill a scholarship not just for football, but because of as a title nine, I need to have the same number of men’s sports and women’s sports.

So I’ve gotta give scholarships to female tennis players, male soccer players, female softball players, and Go on. Fastest players. Absolutely. Yep.

Peter: Yeah. So do you see, just for, again, just from your vantage point, do you see participation in sports or do you even, can you even tell if it’s going up or down from a student perspective?

David: I think it’s a little bit of both because you see some sports are on the rise that aren’t necessarily in the state of Washington. Lacrosse is heavily on the rise, but it’s not an officially sanctioned school sport in the state of Washington. We are seeing football go down in participation because parents are worried about kids getting injured.

Peter: Safety concerns.

David: No matter what activity a kid is involved in, whether it be athletics or choir or band or any kind of activity, always going to be an improvement for the kid and everything that they do. Because it’s just being involved in something other than just I hear AD say it all the time: activity failure in an activity is a safe place to learn how to fail.

Peter: Right.

David: Whether you fail on a football field dropping a pass losing a game or you’re not able to sing properly in the choir performance or you have a rock, it’s a safe place to fail, it connects with a lot of people outside of just reading, writing, and rhythm taking.

Peter: Yeah, I found that for my family I didn’t do any high school sports personally but for my kids, their, some of their closest friends were their athlete friends on and off the field. Were, and they’re still friends and the parents are my friends. So it’s got a, for us in particular, created an opportunity to bond with kind of like minded folks and folks from different backgrounds as well. So it’s, it’s makes for a more rich experience in school. And there’s obviously all the team aspects

David: and Absolutely. Absolutely.

Peter: And that seems to be pretty important. You’ve let’s say you’ve got somebody who wants to be involved in athletics, aspiring professionals, they’re interested in being involved at the high school ish level. Any any words of advice on what they could do or be looking for? What kind of opportunities they could be looking for?

David: I’m not sure I totally understand your question. Are you talking about getting their kids involved in athletics out of school?

Peter: I’m thinking more about if you are somebody just out of college wants to be involved in, they want to make a difference in the field of sports, technology education, somewhat in the space you’re in right now. You’re, you’re a professional working in high school athletics.

David: Find something you’re passionate about, whether it be a football or soccer

Peter: or

David: baseball or sports in general, and just surround yourself with it. Go to games. That’s the easiest way to get started is just go to games and experience the trials and tribulations of winning and losing as a spectator and volunteer with your school to help out with the booster club or help out with coaching. Even if you don’t know the sport, there’s always roles that can be filled by volunteers and just getting involved and surrounding yourself. And it’s really rewarding to do that as well, because you get to build relationships and meet people.

And the most rewarding for me on the photography side, or even on the ad sales side is somebody saying, you did made a little difference in our life today, this month, this week, this year, the entire career. Those are all great things to hear.

Peter: Got it. So if somebody is interested in a business wants to sponsor or involve with what you all are doing, what are the opportunities, what are some of the opportunities available to them that you would, let’s say a small business, like a dental practice or a roofing company or a CPA, what do you tell businesses in terms of what the opportunity looks like and just what sort of investment they could expect, maybe It what they could expect in

David: can be a multi pronged approach. One of the things that I communicate with a lot of my clients that wanna be featured on an athletics website or on a digital ticket or a streamer or any number of the properties that we have, what I a lot of times what I tell them says, you have a budget of a thousand dollars and what I’m selling is a thousand dollars in the school, could use a thousand dollars. Go donate a thousand bucks to the school. Go walk into that school and support them and help them directly. Right.

Yeah. If you’re looking for that’s just one thing you do. Go volunteer. Go they’re always schools are always looking for somebody that’s willing to go to the concession stand and stand behind the concession stand and sell hot dogs and pizza, take tickets. So those are all great ways to get involved.

But if you want to leverage it and help grow your business, do multiple things. I tell my, when I have a sponsor that just wants to buy some advertising, like if they were going buy advertising on a radio, we’ll buy it on a school website. But I tell people, Hey, if you want to get really involved, leverage this and get connected. Say, Hey, I’m really excited. I just bought an ad on goldbakerathletics.com.

Is there anything else I can do with the Brewster Club? Show up to a game and get to know those people. I’ve seen more success, more return from clients that do those kinds of things as opposed to the ones that show up to the school and say, I just bought an ad. What else can you do for me? I just did this, so you should do this for me, or my kid needs to be moved to the top of the ladder for being played.

That doesn’t work. But what works is just saying, I just want to be involved. How can I be involved?

Peter: Yeah. And one thing that I see is that the fan base can be pretty loyal, right?

David: Absolutely. Passive.

Peter: If they know, if the fan base knows that a particular business organization is supporting the school and the athletes in some way.

David: VNN did some research years ago, and I don’t know how this applies to today, but I do believe this is a true statement. 91% of parents say they will switch to brands to support their local schools. If they’re given a

Peter: choice That’s pretty powerful.

David: If they’re given a choice and they’ve seen a business with a banner on the side of the field or an ad on the athletics website or shows up to give away some t shirts or pizza or all of the above, they’re going to remember that when it comes time to use that person’s brand. I do tell a lot of my businesses it’s not going to be like Chick fil A on lunchtime if you buy an ad today, but you’re raising yourself to the top of the bucket just by being involved with your school.

Peter: Yeah, I know the clients that I work with that are involved with the high school athletics through your organization, they have a lot of, like the dental practice has a lot of patients that go to the particular high schools near their practice. And they just wanted to be affiliated with the athletics of those schools. Going through your organization made it really easy to be, to do that. And they see the patients come in and the patients mentioned to them, Oh, I saw you guys have an ad on our thing.

David: It may not have been the reason why they came in. I get this comment all the time from I’ll just use a specific example. So Stacy Faas, a Windermere agent over in Eufreida, Washington. She was the two time state cross country champion for Eufreida High School, Eufreida High School, and she is a I believe she’s the Booster Club president or has been the Booster Club president. First brought her on when I when we the VNN thing happened.

She came on for a year, and then the next year, she actually committed to three years. And I said, Stacy, why do you do this? And she said, Dave, I don’t think I’ve sold a house because of it, but people tell me they saw me on the website all the time. She’s directly connected with the school, so people are gonna say they saw her picture. Yeah.

People see the ads. And when it comes time for them to sell a house, they’re going to choose Stacy for many reasons, not just this one, but everything she does strengthens it. And that’s not the only time I’ve heard that. That’s the most common response I get from people that say, I want to keep doing this.

Peter: Yeah. And there’s obviously based on that, there’s probably secondhand, thirdhand referrals as well.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And in our case, we only allow one business on our platform in an industry, so there’s some exclusivity that’s really nice and that’s why she enjoys it because she should be the one there. She is an afraid of tiger through and through. She bleeds orange and black, and if I put a competitor on her school site, she’d be pissed. And I’ve had that conversation.

I have had people get mad at me that they didn’t get the opportunity. Their kid is the quarterback. Why they didn’t get so there’s a lot of fire that comes from being on a high school athletics website too. This is my space, not yours.

Peter: So there’s a bit of scarcity there with your exclusivity model. It automatically creates a little scarcity and that’s a good problem to have as long as I’m not sure that the the, as long as my kid’s the quarterback, I want to, that should be me. Cause as soon as the kid graduates, the guy.

David: And that’s okay. It’s giving somebody else the opportunity. It’s funny. Granite Falls is a real good example of a school that doesn’t use their athletics website. And I’ve talked people out of buying an ad on that site all day long.

And I tried talking a realtor out of it once. Couldn’t talk him out of it. So he he took the site. And I had an email from a parent that was a competitor, and he had nothing to do with the school other than that he wanted to be on that site. And the competitor was absolutely livid.

I said, it’s not worth being on this site. She goes, I don’t care. My son goes to that school. I do a ton in that community. I belong, this is years ago, but I belong on

Peter: this site.

David: I hate having those kinds of conversations.

Peter: I if you know somebody love it. It’s nice to see a little Competitive. Yeah. I like to see a little passion. Of course, there’s no passion in high school sports, right?

David: Especially

Peter: with the parents.

David: And don’t get me wrong. I’ve got some schools in the state of Washington that are absolutely stellar advertising opportunities. I’ve got schools that do 400 or 500,000 page views on an annual basis for iSchool Athletics website.

Peter: Wow.

David: I have many that average 15,000 to 20,000 page views a month. Solid, engaged eyeballs.

Peter: Yeah. The nice thing about it is, being in digital marketing, you would say, Oh, that’s a mirror. That’s a tiny number. But the targeting on that number is spot on, right? In terms of who and the audience they are local.

And that’s the beauty of taking advantage of the opportunity to advertise and sponsor on the local high school website and other related sites as well.

David: One of the, one of the things I’ll say that I’ve learned over the course of the last ten or twelve years is a lot of people recognize what you just said. They want to be associated with their school’s rights, especially if they’re involved in driving schools, orthodontists, apparel companies, all these different businesses. This is their target market. They are trying big companies, banks and large national companies try to get into a high school space. The problem is there’s 20,000 high schools across the country, and you have to contact each and every single one of those high schools.

I actually have the ability that if Reebok comes to me and says, we want to be associated with every single high school in the country, I can get them 75% of the way there in one contract. Wow. Nobody else can do that. Pretty powerful. Fragmented space.

Peter: Yeah. I think for the conversation today, obviously my interest is of the small business opportunity, local. That’s the- Mine too. That’s the, but I do get it though. That’s pretty amazing.

David: And that’s why I like it when the, when the mom that has a real estate business and her kids, the quarterback of the football team, they’re local. That’s who I want. That’s absolutely who I want myself, because if I go to my Athlete’s website and I see Tahiti company, some random national brand, it’s not going to be the same feel. It’s not going be part of my high school brand. So I love looking for local mom pops.

How

Peter: would I find a local site related to one of the local high schools?

David: So in your neck of the woods, we would be working on our, what we call WPA Vintage site. That would be wescoathletics.com. But I’ll put you up here to one of our really most active schools in the state, or most active leagues in the state, nwcaathletics.com, and any one of those schools is a really high performer, but Cedra Woolley, Mount Vernon, Anacortes, Linden are all really high performing active sites.

Peter: David, if folks want to get in touch with you to find out more about some of these opportunities, What’s the best way to do that?

David: I’m an old school guy. I love the phone as a phone. You get accomplished a whole lot, get to meet people. So give me a call, invite me to wherever you’re at. And if I, anywhere in the state of Washington, I’ll drive to, if you’re interested in getting involved.

Peter: And you have a phone number.

David: I do.

Peter: Yeah. Why don’t you give it to me and then I’ll put it in the notes of the show as well?

David: It’s a 360204451. Excellent. That also works as a text. And then my email address, do you want me to put it in chat or?

Peter: We’ll put it in the I’ll put it in the show notes.

David: Perfect. That’s another great Well,

Peter: it’ll be associated with this episode. I really appreciate it. Anything, anything we anything that you want to cover that we didn’t cover in today’s conversation?

David: First of all, just a heartfelt thank you for the opportunity to meet with you and chat. I’ve listened to your podcasts and I love all the different variety. Obviously I work for a company and it seems like variety is my choice of things to do. I’m doing a little of everything, but thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Peter: I’m thankful you’re with us today and gave us a kind of a peek behind the curtain of high school athletics and what it takes to help folks stay organized and let the fans see the information they want to see and businesses maybe have a little advertising opportunity as well. That’s exciting. Seems like you guys are in a real good spot there.

David: We’re definitely growing, there’s some transition, but the future is really bright for this company. We’ve got I didn’t mention that we actually have our investment program. A lot of your business minded people probably know who KKR is. They’re the second largest private equity firm, I think, in the world. They’ve bought companies like Nabisco, and they are the ones that are financing PlayOnSports.

They’re the ones that are the silent owner. So being involved now is the best time to get involved in any way, shape or form, even though we’re in transition too. A lot of transition this last six months.

Peter: That’s great. Cool. David, thanks again for today. And again, if you want to get in touch with David, you can give him a ring (360) 820-4451. We’ll have that number in the show notes and we’ll have David’s email address in there as well.

You have a great day, sir.

David: Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Tune in.