Great to sit down with Danielle Lao@TheLittleGiant, this week as she makes a return appearance on Tech of Sports. Lao has been rising up the WTA ranking and ending her 2018 campaign strongly. Rick sits down with Danielle at the 80K USTA Pro Circuit event in Macon, Ga.
Lao talks about her year, travel and keeping everything in perspective.
Lao is a former USC All-American and has qualified for the last two US Open main draws.
She also loves to write and is an author of an Amazon best-seller, The Invaluable Experience. She explains why playing college tennis was a time in her life she will never forget and why playing college sports is an “Invaluable Experience.”
A must read for anyone interested in playing college sports and for those that have had that “Invaluable Experience,” it’s a chance to relive one of the greatest times in their lives.
The book was written in 2013, and Lao gives advice based on her own experiences and gives a glimpse into life on the pro tour.
Great to be joined by Aceing Autism’s Richard Spurling this week.
He’s doing fantastic work with putting tennis racquets in the hands of people who have never experienced tennis and success on the tennis court.
Richard attended Florida Atlantic University where he played Division I tennis and achieved his degree in International Business. Following graduation, Richard went on to teach tennis while maintaining his own pro status on the tour, including managing various high profile tennis programs in Florida, Boston and Cape Cod.
Richard earned his MBA in 2008 from Babson College where he focused on entrepreneurship. Richard lives in Los Angeles with his wife Shafali Jeste and their two children Nischal and Kiran.
Here is the vision of Aceing Autism:
With our organization now firmly established and with our program delivery model now proven to achieve meaningful benefits, for the foreseeable future we intend to grow the number of participants on an annual basis across the U.S. to 4,500 by the end of 2021. In so doing, we plan to be overseeing 80-90 program sites throughout the U.S. together with establishing the necessary operating and support infrastructure to successfully fund, maintain and improve our activities. Beyond the number of children served, we intend to enhance our program offerings, so as to achieve ever-improving service delivery outcomes for the children and families being served, volunteer training and engagement, as well as all other stakeholders. At the same time, we expect to improve our organization capacity so as to be positioned to serve a significantly larger population of participants thereafter. As we embark on this vision, we believe a variety of additional opportunities will emerge that will enable us to enhance our organization and the benefits delivered to our stakeholders in a variety of new and exciting ways.
Sportco is looking to change the way fans experience their favorite sports.
How is the Spanish tennis player going to change the lives of all sports fans?
Rick is joined by former Spanish ATP Tour player, Juan Carlos Báguena, this week.
A surprising move, linking sport and technology, is designed to change people’s news consumption and upgrade the status of sports fans in the media
The former ATP tennis player, Báguena, will act as a Sports Advisor in a new venture. Báguena, reached the semi-finals in Hypo Group Tennis International at Bari, Italy, in 1988. He made the second round of the men’s doubles in the 1989 French Open (Roland Garros) in Paris. His career highlight happened in 1990 when Báguena teamed up with Omar Camporese (Ranked 18 in his prime) to win the Madrid Grand Prix Trophy. The Spaniard made his best performance of the year in Florence, where he and Carlos Costa, one of the leading clay court players in the early 1990s, were doubles runners-up.
Báguena chose to partner with Sportco – a site which gathers sports fans discourse, using an innovative technology which will reward readers for any involvement on the site. The fascinating tech project seeks to unite all sports fans under one umbrella brand and change the way sports fans will play a role in the future of sports media.
Sportco recently announced to its 500k readers, in a statement published on their websites, that an algorithm will measure their readers’ involvement and reward them with sports tickets and merchandises for any action they perform on the site, whether it’s content writing, sharing, etc. Sportco currently possesses sports fans community platforms (websites, apps, social media channels) such as Cricwizz, Sportswizz, SportsQwizz, Sportswizzleague and more.
Báguena expressed his support in an announcement on the Sportco’s website: “Sports is an industry that is motivated by passion, by both players and fans, and Sportco’s platform takes it to the next step. The project was aided by brilliant technology that reached maturity, and I was very sympathized with the idea that in essence put the sports fans in the center. I see the project as great potential and real news in the field of communications and sports”.
Báguena remained close to sports after retiring and currently coaches the future generation of Tennis at the Barcelona Tennis Training Center.
