Tag Archives: tennis

Carlos Silva, CEO of World Team Tennis (WTT)

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Rick talks tennis with the CEO of World Team Tennis, Carlos Silva this week. Recorded at the Racquet Sports Expo in Orlando.

Silva is planning big things for the summer, World Team Tennis season.

Silva took over the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2019.

Prior to joining WTT, Silva served for four years as League President of the Professional Fighters League (PFL), and CEO of World Series of Fighting (WSOF). He was the architect of the turnaround at PFL with the creation of the first MMA League Format and subsequent rebrand following the sale of WSOF to a new ownership group led by Donn Davis.

“Tennis has been a cornerstone throughout my life and I look forward to working hand-in-hand with the tremendously talented men and woman at WTT to achieve our common goal of linear and digital growth and promoting WTT‘s fantastic format in 2019 and beyond,“ said Silva.

Silva launched and served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and President of NBCU‘s Universal Sports Network, and Senior Vice President (SVP) with AOL Time Warner. While at AOL he was responsible for developing AOL Sports, News, and Money into top premier digital destinations. Silva also remains as a Board Advisor for PARK LANE, the premier sports investment bank in Los Angeles, where he previously served as Partner.

His production expertise includes hundreds of live major sporting events, including a wide variety of Olympic and International Events. He holds a BS from Boston College and a MS from George Washington University. Carlos also has a passion for tennis and played for Boston College before playing on the pro tennis satellite tour.

Have a listen to Rick and Carlos.

Danielle Lao, Professional Tennis Player and Writer

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Rick is joined on this special Thanksgiving week episode of ‘Tech of Sports’ by his co-author of The Invaluable Experience, and WTA tennis pro, Danielle Lao.

Danielle, a former USC All-American is wrapping up the 2019 tear on the WTA Tour and is now in the off-season until she heads to Australia to start out 2020.

Rick and Danielle talk her tennis and her favorite gadgets and tech. She candidly answers some rapid-fire questions and talks about her love of podcasts and blogging. Danielle gives great insight what it;s like to be a top-200 player on the WTA Tour.

Good luck to Danielle and enjoy this episode.

Danielle gives and honest recap of her 2019 in here blog here.

As an Author:

Danielle Lao, a two-time All American tennis player at USC explains why playing college tennis was a time in her life she will never forget and why playing college sports is an “Invaluable Experience.” .

As a Player:

Danielle has played at all four Grad Slam tournaments, has has success on the ITF Pro Circuit and currently has a WTA ranking of No.196.

 

Joshua Jacobs, CEO, Founder of TGA Premier Sports

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Rick is joined by one of the most innovative minds in sports, Joshua Jacobs.

Jacobs is the CEO and founder of TGA Premier Sports.

TGA Premier Sports is the leading introductory “delivery system” for kids’ in-school and community-based golf programs. They just added their eighth youth sports golf franchise in the New York/New Jersey market and the 53rd nationwide.

Founded in 2003 and driven by an innovative curriculum that combines golf skills development with STEAM education modules and life lessons, TGA has had over 750,000 youth go through its golf programs and is on-pace to enroll its ONE-MILLIONTH student in youth sports programs by 2020. In schools and communities all across the country, TGA is driving growth in golf participation in powerful and sustainable ways.

Jacobs has made tremendous inroads, founding TGA Premier Junior Golf in 2003. Joshua was named by Golf Magazine and Sports Illustrated in 2010 as one of the Top 40 most influential people in golf under 40 and in 2013 was recognized as one of golf’s “Innovators” by Golf Inc. Joshua created the first scalable business model for school based golf programs in 2003 in the Los Angeles area and franchised the youth development and business concept in 2006. In 2010, he created the TGA Sports Foundation, dedicated to Developing Youth through Athletics. In 2011, Joshua orchestrated TGA’s horizontal move into the tennis industry by franchising TGA’s school based business model and facilitating a National Partnership with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) in the same year.

In addition to TGA, Joshua co-founded a social golf network called GLinks and has been serving his community since 9th grade coaching youth sports programs in Los Angeles and Atlanta. He currently serves on the PGA Golf 2.0’s National Building Blocks Committee, TGA Sports Foundation’s Board of Directors, the Southern California PGA’s Foundation Advisory Committee and the Southern California PGA’s Growth of the Game Committee.

Joshua Graduated from Emory University with a degree in Economics and Business and a minor in History. His passion for golf began at three years old and tennis at six. From those early years, Joshua’s love and respect for sports continues to drive him to break down barriers and open doors for all students ages 3-13 to have the opportunity to learn golf and tennis.

Jacobs is never short on opinions, especially when it comes to tennis. He discusses some of them with Rick!

Danielle Lao, Pro Tennis Player and Writer

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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.

You can also follow Danielle’s WordPress blog here: https://thelittlegiantblog.wordpress.com/

Richard Spurling, Founder and Executive Director of Aceing Autism

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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.

Enjoy Rick’s talk with Richard!

Richard Spurling of Aceing Autism

Juan Carlos Báguena, Former ATP Tour Tennis Player for Sportco

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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.

Juan Carlos Baguena