Sports, and math, and business — oh my!
Rising high-school senior teaches middle-schoolers economics through big-league situations
The Jewish value of tikkun olam — improving the world — can be put into practice in infinite ways. For some, it’s expressed through community volunteering. For others, it’s about raising money for worthy causes.
For Brayden White of Scarsdale, who just finished his junior year at the Frisch School, an Orthodox yeshiva high school in Paramus, tikkun olam has taken a different form: sparking the interest of middle-schoolers in learning economic principles and skills through the world of sports business.
“Judaism has allowed me to think more about how I can make the world better,” Brayden said. “The goal of my project, BOW Sports Capital, is teaching kids financial literacy to help them become contributing members of society. This relates back to the Jewish value of community.”
BOW are the initials of the founder: Brayden Okley White.
Brayden, 17, has always loved sports, math, business, and the intersection of all three. He’d like to be a sports agent someday. “Originally, I thought about creating a formula to track player analytics, but then I realized I wasn’t helping anyone that way. And I like to see people succeed,” he said.
After doing some research — including a chat with his eighth-grade brother, who confided that he finds math- and business-related classes boring — Brayden hit on the idea of enhancing the appeal of such topics by linking economics education to major league sports.
“Everything in the sports world is business concepts,” he pointed out.
Among these concepts are incentives, opportunity, cost, scarcity, market value, contracts, risk, salary caps, trades, ticket pricing, sponsorships, player value, franchise strategy, and free agency. He reasoned that many kids are sports fans and might be intrigued at the opportunity to gain an understanding of the intricate backend dealings that take place off the athletic field. He also knew they’d be intrigued only if the lessons were designed to be immersive and fun, rather than didactic.
Starting last July, Brayden spent six months developing interactive simulations with the assistance of such AI programs as Claude. “Teaching through slide shows would be boring,” he said. “For each lesson, I created activities that allow the kids to have an ‘aha’ moment connecting concepts to real players.”
In December, he started marketing the free course to middle-schoolers through personal visits and through the Westchester Jewish Basketball League, a synagogue-based league for kids in which he coaches.
He’s run two sessions of the six-week BOW Sports Capital course so far, on Zoom for 45 minutes per class; one session was for 15 fifth- and sixth-graders, the other for 15 seventh- and eighth-graders. While most registrants were boys, he had a couple of female students as well.
He labored over each simulation to ensure the kids would find it playfully engaging as well as educational. One activity dubbed “MLB Money Maker,” challenges them to try their hand at negotiating an $8 billion, eight-year media contract designed to keep players, owners, fans, and networks happy.
Another interactive activity, “NBA GM Crisis Manager,” puts kids into the shoes of an NBA general manager: “Your goal is to manage your team’s roster, balance the budget, and hit performance targets.”
A middle-schooler named Charlie confessed to Brayden in an interview about the course that he was much more excited about making time after school for BOW Sports Capital than he was about other extracurriculars, like piano lessons. Charlie said he especially appreciated that the free course presented him with “real-life scenarios that I like to do myself and be interactive with.”
Brayden keeps parents in the loop with weekly emails detailing what their kids accomplished the previous week. The feedback he received so far indicates that parents appreciate his well-organized approach to the venture.
The next session of BOW Sports Capital will begin in September; register here. Brayden plans to offer an in-person option in partnership with the Youth Passion Project, a nonprofit initiative he’s involved with that offers free classes taught by high-school volunteers on anything from songwriting to coding to baking. He’d also like to expand into Bergen County, the main catchment area for Frisch.
Brayden has an unusually long resume for a rising high-school senior. Among other activities, he is president of the Cougar Nation Network, a student-produced livestreaming network that manages broadcasting crews for Frisch Cougar JV and varsity basketball games. He has worked at various internships, including one in which he helped develop social media strategies for sports clubs.
This enterprising son of Jordana and Ian White put BOW Sports Capital together nearly singlehandedly.
“I have a college admissions consultant who helped me stay motivated and figure out the next steps,” he said. “And my dad, who coaches the basketball team with me, helped me figure out what kids like. But otherwise, it was all me.”
“It took hours every day, but I had a passion and I wanted to see it through.”