FA Play

NEW YORK, June 10 /PRNewswire/ — As the weather warms and schools break for the summer months, young people all over the nation are suiting up to compete in their favorite sports. Parents also face a challenge as they take on the roles of coach, supporter and teacher. When it’s 15 minutes before soccer practice and mom is supposed to teach her daughter’s team some new soccer drills, she realizes the only problem is — she doesn’t know any soccer drills. Or maybe dad played basketball as a kid, but his 10-year-old son wants some pointers about how to play baseball before the Little League game. What’s a caring, but overworked parent to do?
Doug Donaldson often found himself in these situations, so he created PlaySportsTV, a new website dedicated to providing parents and kids with easy- to-use video tips that demonstrate soccer drills, baseball drills, basketball drills and more. Donaldson, a New Jersey father of two launched PlaySportsTV to help kids become better players and parents better coaches. In addition to the instructional video content, the website features a national network of coaches, sports parenting experts, and professional athletes who share their knowledge with parents.
“I wanted to create a website that helps kids learn how to play the game,” says Donaldson. “That game could be baseball, football, softball, lacrosse — or any other sport kids play. Though there’s been an explosion in the popularity of youth sports leagues across the country — 58 million U.S. children play in organized leagues every year — we may have lost the ‘fun factor.’ That goes for youth players and their parents. Playing sports is not always about winning and losing. It’s also about participating to the best of your abilities, creating positive experiences, and practicing good sportsmanship.”
PlaySportsTV is also about making meaningful connections between parents and their children. “PlaySportsTV is for the busy working mom or dad who has just become the coach of their child’s soccer team,” says Donaldson. “They can quickly go to the website and find what they need to teach kids how to play soccer, for example.
With the rise in childhood obesity and the incredible popularity of indoor video games, the site supports and encourages teamwork, physical fitness and sportsmanship. In fact, PlaySportsTV was named a “Great Web Site for Kids” by the American Library Association’s Association for Library Service to Children.
PlaySportsTV content is organized to give visitors multiple ways to find the exact information they seek. The site has hundreds of sports videos for kids at all age and playing levels, including sport-specific “PSTV Playbooks,” which focus on developing advanced skills for players and coaches.
Donaldson sums it all up: “If you’re a youth athlete, come to PlaySportsTV to learn how to play the game. If you’re a coach, come to learn how to teach the game. And if you’re a parent, come to see how you and your child can get the most out of their sports experiences.”
Recognizing the website’s current rich content resources as well as its future potential, Westlake Investment Group has recently contributed sizable funding to PlaySportsTV. Westlake invests strategically in professional sports, media and entertainment, and emerging technologies entities and is headed by Chairman William Chang, who is the Co-Managing Partner of Major League Soccer’s D.C. United and a Principal Partner of the San Francisco Giants.
Contact:
Bonita Lynch
347-306-2774

PlaySportsTV