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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2026 Β· THE FACEOFF Β· VOL X
Watch or listen to Episode 4: YouTube Β· Spotify Β· Apple Podcasts Β· thecoachsboard.com
This week's FACEOFF π€Ό puts our fourth guest in the chair, and our first in person. James KellyΒ grew up in Brooklyn, taught middle school in Brownsville, and left the classroom to build LitZone, a sports app for kids in third through eighth grade that sneaks daily reading and math practice into kid-friendly sports news and fantasy football. Twenty-five minutes with him, recorded courtside at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Five takeaways below; the full conversation is one tap away above.
Five takeaways from Episode 4
The problem in the classroom wasn't biology. It was reading.Β Teaching eighth graders in Brownsville, James watched kids check out at βmitochondria,β not because the science was hard but because the word was. Everything in LitZone traces back to that.
Broccoli on the pizza. The reading and the math are the broccoli; the Knicks, a fantasy draft and Josh Allen's completion numbers are the pizza. The sportiest boys, the ones no fantasy novel ever reached, were already reading ESPN every day. LitZone meets them there.
Same game, leveled by grade. A third grader gets a 200-word story and βeight completions out of sixteen, what fraction is that?β An eighth grader gets a 500-word recap and pre-algebra on yards per reception. All of it maps to the standards teachers already use, which is why schools can run it free from 7 a.m. to noon.
Kid-safe sports content is an open lane, and it's paying. No ads, no chat, nothing scandal-driven; the closest thing out there is a magazine that shows up every two months. LitZone passed 5,000 users this fall, almost all from fantasy football, with schools, families and after-school programs all paying. For club directors and after-school operators, that's a ready-made way to turn the sport kids already love into reading time.
For founders: slow, slow, then all at once, and talk to your users, not experts. Backed by Blue Ridge Labs and Camelback Ventures and nearly three years in, James still calls it climbing a mountain without a rope; then 1,400 sign-ups landed on one Monday in September. This summer the team built a whole story layer and the kids clicked right past it to draft their teams. Ask βwhich of these three?β, never βdo you like this?β
That's the short version. The full twenty-five minutes, with the Brooklyn origin story, the three revenue bets that all paid off, a first capital raise on the horizon and a rapid-fire round that ends with a LeBron-to-Miami yellow-cab story, is on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and every episode of THE FACEOFF lives at thecoachsboard.com/podcast.
Find James and LitZone: litzonesports.com Β· Instagram Β· X Β· James on LinkedIn
Follow The Coach's Board: YouTube Β· Instagram Β· X Β· TikTok Β· thecoachsboard.com
LOOKING AHEAD βοΈ
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THE FACEOFF π€Ό is going to two a week. More founders, more operators, more conversations on the record. The next one lands just in time for the World Series: a doubleheader, with two guests in the chair for the first time. Chris Hayes and John Rosen, the co-founders of 6Tool, the quiz-and-video platform that shows coaches what their players actually know about situations, strategy and rules. Nine seasons in the minors with a fastball in the seventies and a laptop in the clubhouse. What the showcase circuit leaves out of a kid's development. And the sixth tool: five get you noticed, the brain wins games. Pull up a seat before first pitch.
Know an operator, founder or coach we should feature? Just hit reply.
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October 22, 2026