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Why I Joined The LeagueApps Hoops Partnership Team

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By LeagueApps
October 10, 2017
3 min

Hey guys, my name is Wellington Smith, and I just joined the LeagueApps Hoops team as its Enterprise Partnership Director. Here’s a little about me.

I grew up in Summit, NJ and, unlike what you see today, I played high school basketball at a public school for four years. Unfortunately, I was 180 lbs once I graduated Summit High School and had the maturity of a two year old, so I thought it would be best if I did a post graduate year at a boarding school. I decided to attend Blair Academy where I bulked up and became a student rather than a just a jock. Crazy what time away from mom and dad will do.

Once I left Blair Academy, and after being recruited by Wake Forest, Rutgers, Seton Hall, South Florida, UVA and others, I decided to attend West Virginia University. I fell in love with the school, Coach Beilien and playing in the Big East. During my four years at WVU, we were able to win an NIT Championship, Big East Championship, debut in a Final Four and play in a Sweet 16. Being a part of March Madness was crazy! Truly one of those experiences that I’ll never forget!

I graduated from WVU in 2010 with a Bachelors of Arts in Multidisciplinary Studies, with a focus in sociology, english, and communications. I went on to play professionally in Japan for the Oita Heat Devils. Funny because my teammate, DaSean Butler, got drafted by the Miami Heat. My professional basketball career was short lived. Unfortunately I fractured my foot at the beginning of the season. Once I was healthy enough to play, I went on to play in six games and then when I was going up for a layup, one of the opposing players landed on my foot and once again, I had fractured my foot for the second time. That injury ended my career.

I left Japan in January of 2011 and went right to work. I sold insurance for two years for MassMutual. The position as Financial Service Professional wasn’t okay, but I knew I needed to get back into basketball. So I formed my own company called, Wellington Smith Basketball Academy. I ran the business at its simplest form – trainings only. I soon left MassMutual and began working at GameChanger Media Inc. as Director of Basketball Marketing.

While at GameChanger I helped connect them with Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League, Under Armour’s Association, The Basketball Hall of Fame’s HoopHall Classic and more. While I was doing all of this, I was still running my own business with Wellington Smith Basketball Academy, but we went from only doing trainings to manning AAU teams and trainings. It got to the point that I was doing so well at this that I decided to leave GameChanger and rebrand WSBA into Unity Legends.

I am running the Unity Legends and, like most of the program directors that we work with here at LeagueApps Hoops, am running their programs. It involves putting together camps, clinics, teams, and tournaments. I love the space of youth sports. I found it a huge help for me to be a part of a program when I was younger so why not play if forward….like what I did there?

On, Monday, October 2nd, I joined the LeagueApps Hoops team hoping to help programs like mine help grow their business, save them some time, and streamline the administrative process so that I can spend more time with my wife and daughter. As a program director, I understand checking PayPal, my excel spreadsheets, and then cross checking that with the rosters I have on several pieces of paper to make sure I know who paid and who didn’t. Because of all of this, I understand how technology can help save time and streamline my administrative process.

I look forward to having future conversations with program organizers that want to build their programs and make their online experience more streamlined.

Connect with Wellington at wsmith@leagueapps.com.