This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Attendee ticket prices for the Buying Sandlot Summit (April 14-15 in Philly) increase tomorrow. If you’ve been waiting, now is the time.
Join over 160 leading tech executives, investors from some of the largest private equity firms in the space, service providers, club owners, tournament organizers, and startup founders in Philly for a 2-day event that will set the bar for the industry.
Oh, and we’re hosting a pickleball tournament in partnership with our BIG NAME sponsor (sponsor announcements next week) at the evening networking event at the amazing Ballers (in the same spot the Eagles collected their Super Bowl rings last year, I might add):
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
🧠 An Inside Look At Koomba
The professionalization of youth sports has many byproducts.
An undeniable one: Young athletes today deal with more pressure than previous generations. But the mental health and general wellness space has not emerged as one of the industry’s boom areas.
Koomba aims to fill that gap and bring pro sports-standard health and wellness support to youth athletes. The digital platform, which also works with college athletes, connects clients to dietitians, sports psychologists and mental performance coaches.
“We really see youth sports as this incredible and untapped community health platform,” CEO Greg Milharik told Buying Sandlot. “Sports has always been about education and building life skills, resilience and emotional capacity. I think the last 5, 10 years it has somewhat gone away from that. We are really focused on building health and performance infrastructure to support not only the athlete identity with performance coaching, nutrition and sports psychology, but also the families and coaches that surround our young people.”
Over 150 providers; all are vetted and have accreditations, certifications
All work is digital; subscription model
FSA/HSA eligible
Content mapped to American Developmental Model
Current focus on lacrosse, soccer, volleyball players
Plans to expand to flag football
Koomba recently launched a strategic partnership with True Sports Group, which has over 30K athletes under its umbrella. Milharik said the platform reaches about 50K athletes currently.
The platform also has heavy hitters behind it. Dr. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s former chief medical officer, is an advisor; Dr. Jamie Shapiro, who runs the University of Denver’s sports psychology masters program, also advises. And Koomba was previously part of a startup accelerator program funded by Melinda Gates' Pivotal Ventures.
Milharik said Koomba spent several months speaking to youth athletes and their families and found their top priority was “the desire to talk to someone who looks like them, sounds like them and fundamentally understands the athlete identity.”
Subs start at $100 a month. The bulk of Koomba’s business is done with individual athletes and families connected through a partnership like the one with True Sports. But some colleges and clubs secure enterprise-wide access. All Koomba providers are contractors.
“We think sports, and youth sports in particular, is this incredible wedge into community health more broadly,” Milharik said. “It’s one of the last places where you have families and young people showing up in person, present, without phones, to really engage in what is inherently an emotional activity. We are leveraging sport as this front door to youth health and development.”
We’ve mentioned before how athlete health and safety would be a big focus for the industry in 2026— as both a trend and business opportunity. I would extend that to include mental health and wellness, especially at the elite level.
Listen to any great athlete speak and they often talk more about their focus or mindset than physical preparation. The latter is often a given, but the former separates good from great. This was on center stage during the women’s Olympic figure skating program last week, as just one example.
Mental health is often considered as having to do with fixing a problem. But there’s a proactive, performance-driven component to it as well. In youth sports, more money, more opportunities, and more focus on the details that give you an edge means mental health becomes a priority.
🏟️ Buying Sandlot Summit Session Details: Tech Heavy Hitters
Day 1 of the event will start off with a bang as we bring together leaders from TeamSnap, GameChanger, Hudl and LeagueApps to discuss the state of the industry and where things go from here.
You don’t want to miss this one.
🏈 4 Notable College Sports Items
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland called for federal legislation to protect Olympic and women’s sports at the collegiate level.
The Big Ten and SEC — the nation’s richest conferences — put out a white paper urging Congress not to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act and allow college football leagues to pool their media rights. That proposal has been pushed by billionaire Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell as a cure that would increase revenues for all leagues and protect women’s and Olympic sports.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is also now seeking public comments on the fragmentation of sports broadcasting rights in the streaming age.
President Trump will hold a college sports roundtable next Friday at the White House. Among the dozens of reported invited guests: Campbell, Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, Condoleeza Rice, Adam Silver, Tim Tebow, Tiger Woods, several FBS commissioners and Unrivaled Sports co-founder David Blitzer.
🧱 Youth Sports Facilities Trends That Keep Popping Up
Both of these examples are proposed complexes that face hurdles to come to fruition, but they still signal big current themes.
Trend No. 1: A group is trying to turn a decommissioned World War II-era Navy airplane hangar in Seattle into a 144K-square-foot youth sports complex. It’s a long shot given the city’s budget woes and an estimated cost in the “tens of millions,” but a former Seahawk is part of the effort and fundraising has begun.
The project would be the latest example of an abandoned facility with a massive footprint being converted for youth sports. And it wouldn’t be the first time a former military base is utilized — officials in New York’s Oneida County are moving forward with a complex at a decommissioned Air Force base centered around a 400K-square-foot hangar.
Trend No. 2: Ocean City, Maryland, has been trying to build a big complex — 10 multipurpose fields, 12 basketball courts, 24 volleyball courts — for years. A proposed site was just scrapped due to significant community pushback. But the mayor said the city remains committed to getting it done because it believes it is critical to drawing regional events that buttress the local economy outside of summer tourism season.
This is a strategy we have seen proposed elsewhere — Branson, Missouri, comes to mind, as does Rapid City, South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore.
👷♀️ More Youth Sports Facilities News
Corpus Christi, Texas: City Council approved $7.1M in renovations for several youth baseball fields in town as the mayor pushes to build a major complex in town to compete with the facilities in nearby Portland.
Grimes, Iowa: A facility in the Des Moines has abruptly closed, leaving families in a lurch and seemingly out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The facility operated several club sports programs; the operators have ghosted coaches, parents and the local media.
Lawton, Oklahoma: Officials will break ground on a $40M indoor facility next month. Plans call for a $60M indoor-outdoor complex, but work will be done in phases; funding beyond the indoor component was said to be up in the air last year. Lawton is an hour from Oklahoma City and three from Dallas.
Stratford, Ontario, Canada: A private group is bidding to buy a former Scotiabank data center campus and turn it into a national sports development complex. Plans center around a 5K-person stadium for rugby and soccer and other training infrastructure; 10% of core facility hours would be dedicated to local youth sports.
🏢 SFC Roster Moves
The Sports Facilities Companies has added two new venues to its portfolio.
It will manage the Gadsden (Alabama) Sports Center for the city, handling operations prior to the 161K-square-foot indoor facility’s 2027 launch and then for at least five years after that.
SFC has also been tabbed to manage Chisenhall Fields — a 16-field baseball and softball complex in the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson, Texas.
Also: SFC’s Sprowls Horizon Sports Park in Pinellas Park, Florida, will have its grand opening celebration tomorrow and Sunday.
🤦♂️ Parents Behaving Badly, Off-Duty Cop Edition
In Warren, Michigan: An officer in the Detroit suburb is on administrative leave after he allegedly injured two brothers in the parking lot outside a youth basketball game. One of the men was said to have been hospitalized as a result of the altercation, which was caught on tape. The brothers plan to sue and said they previously had a run-in with the cop. Police claim there may be a second video that refutes the brothers’ narrative.
In San Antonio: A 31-year veteran officer in the city put an opposing coach in a headlock and then fought at least one other parent at his daughter’s 10U CYO hoops game. The man was coaching his kid’s team when he was ejected for a dustup with the other coach; things then escalated in the hallway and outside the church gymnasium; there is video and investigations are underway.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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