Creating an ‘OpenTable for athletic facilities'

Three alumni student athletes are working to bring the youth sports industry into the 21st century.

These days, you can book almost anything online—whether it’s a car ride, a restaurant reservation, or an apartment for your next weekend getaway—but as Sean Flaherty ’12 found out soon after graduation, athletic facilities are one massive exception.

Flaherty, a former long snapper on the Boston College football team, was trying to host a training camp for local youth, but couldn’t find a field to play on. He ended up holding the camp in a parking lot.

“At the time I was in a tech job so I thought, why isn’t there a better way?” he recalled recently. “Why isn’t there an Airbnb or an OpenTable to book athletic space?”

Flaherty wasn’t alone in his frustrations—his friends and fellow student-athletes Kerri Shields ’13 (basketball) and Ryan Quigley ’12 (football) had encountered similar stumbling blocks trying to organize shooting camps and clinics for kids. In 2015, the trio started swapping ideas for potential solutions, and three years later, they launched one.

Flaherty describes Playeasy as the first online platform to connect event organizers and owners of athletic facilities in a way that’s both simple and mutually beneficial. Coaches or coordinators of leagues and summer camps can browse information about facilities available in their area, and then book and pay for them online. Schools and community centers can create free rental listings for their athletic spaces—turning empty pools and baseball diamonds into much-needed profits.