After the 2021-22 school year, I walked away from my teaching job. I didn't really know what was next, other than that I would stay heavily involved in high school football.
A year earlier, we had won a state championship at Clay-Chalkville, and I had begun to wonder what came after that. I had spent twelve years coaching, two in Tennessee and ten in Alabama, and teaching science along the way. Football was the one thing I was sure of.
What I kept coming back to was something every coach knows. A staff never has enough time. We needed a better way to gather our own stats and see what story they told about our own team, and every hour spent chasing them was an hour not spent on next week's opponent.
Starting a business was an entirely new world, but I dove in headfirst. For three years, I built XO Stats full time and worked part time at UPS to keep it going. I worked alongside Mountain Brook football and used it, season after season, as our proving ground. Coaching friends in other states pitched in too, testing the app, giving feedback, and letting their programs be XO Stats pilot programs.
In 2026, it finally became real after a lot of prayer, faithfulness and early mornings. We launched, and in this first season more than 20 teams in 7 states are tracking their games with us every week.
I still look at all of this like a coach. Staffs deserve an honest look at their own team without giving up their week to get it. Players deserve to have their work seen. And high school football deserves the coverage fans want, built on real numbers that come straight from the team.
Our mission is to give high school sports an effective, quality platform they can trust, one that knows every community, big and small, and how important high school sports are to that community. We're looking forward to seeing where this journey takes us.
Klint Starling
Founder, XO Stats