Why Play Right
Sports Club?

Why

I grew up playing sports. Then I spent the next couple of decades coaching them — baseball, basketball, football, everything from tee-ball on a Saturday morning to high school kids playing for something real.

In all those seasons I learned from great coaches, great players, and great parents. I also learned from some not-so-great ones. Honestly, the not-so-great ones taught me just as much. The coach who buried a kid instead of building him. The parent who worked the ref from the third row. The team that treated an opponent like an obstacle instead of the reason the game meant anything. Every one of those moments taught me what the standard isn't — and made it easier to see when someone was living what it is.

Here's what I came to believe: the best people in youth sports aren't the ones who never get it wrong. They're the ones who keep working on it. Every practice, every game, every seat in the bleachers is another rep. Coaches get better. Players get better. Parents get better. Nobody's finished.

Why Now

Youth sports have never been louder. Rankings, highlights, exposure, recruiting content in your pocket before the postgame handshake is even done. None of that is evil — I want kids to compete for real things and I'm not going to pretend winning doesn't matter. It does. It should.

But the loudest version of youth sports keeps drowning out the part that actually shapes a kid: what happens when the whistle blows. The handshake line. The way you talk about the ref who missed the call. The car ride home. That's where character shows up — and almost nobody is building for it.

So that's the gap this club lives in. Not soft. Not trophy-for-showing-up. And not the other ditch either — not trash talk dressed up as toughness. Compete like the result is everything. Carry yourself like character is. Both. Always.

Who I Am

I'm a coach, a sports parent, and a marketer — in roughly that order of pride.

I've coached youth baseball, basketball, and football at just about every level a volunteer can, and I'm still at it — 2026 is my second season helping run the Stormrays program, where I handle communications, marketing, and logistics on top of coaching. My day job is Senior Director of Strategic Communications for the College of Education, Sport, and Human Sciences at Washington State University, and before that I spent decades in marketing and sports partnerships, including years at Microsoft working alongside professional sports organizations.

Which means I've seen both sides of this: what sports look like from the dugout, and what brands look like from the inside. Most youth sports "character" content is either wallpaper or a lecture. I started Play Right because I wanted the thing I could never find as a coach or a parent — a standard that respects kids enough to tell them the truth: respect isn't being nice. It's what you earn by competing all-out and clean, and it's owed in every direction. To your opponents. To the officials. To your teammates. To the game.

Where This Goes

The same rule that applies to every coach, player, and parent applies to this club: it's not finished either. The Standard will sharpen. The kits and tools will get better. New ideas and new voices will push this movement somewhere I can't build alone — and I want it that way.

If you've ever sat in your car after a game trying to find the right first sentence, or stood on a practice field wondering if you're building the right thing in these kids — you're who this is for. Come make it better with me.