Jr Tennis What's Next Ep3

Summary

Morgan Stone — Lisa Stone’s son, former Atlanta junior tennis player and two-year college player (Boise State), now CEO of Root Troop, an NFT/Web3 company — joins his mother for the third installment of their “Jr Tennis What’s Next” series. The episode covers Morgan’s career trajectory after leaving college tennis: from marketing to inside tech sales to co-founding Root Troop, an NFT project built around endangered tree kangaroos that has raised enough through NFT sales to donate $30,000 toward land conservation in Australia’s Daintree Rainforest. The company’s primary product in development is the first on-chain job marketplace for Web3 positions — filling a gap where traditional job boards (Indeed, Glassdoor) don’t list blockchain and crypto-native roles. Morgan was preparing to speak at NFT NYC (the world’s largest NFT conference) and to move to Auckland, New Zealand. The tennis relevance is primarily the post-athletic trajectory: what happens after junior/college tennis ends for a player with competitive ambition that doesn’t translate to a professional tennis career.

Guest Background

Morgan Stone grew up playing junior tennis in the Southern section (Atlanta), where he trained at competitive levels and his mother’s ParentingAces platform was born from navigating his development. He played two years of college tennis at Boise State University before leaving tennis altogether to complete his degree and enter the workforce. His college roommate and teammate at Boise State is Jack Hesley, a New Zealander who eventually influenced Morgan’s decision to relocate to Auckland. After college, Morgan worked in marketing, then inside tech sales at a tech company, then pivoted into music production (playing events for five years, reaching lineup spots with DJs he admired), then into the NFT/Web3 space. He co-founded Root Troop with a former COO and built it into an NFT community of 5,500 unique token holders with a bounty hub that had posted 325 jobs and placed 75 people in Web3 roles at time of recording. He was 5.5 weeks from moving to Auckland, New Zealand.

Key Findings

1. The Post-Tennis Career Arc as a Recurring Theme

This is the third episode in the “Jr Tennis What’s Next” series — Lisa Stone’s deliberate effort to show the ParentingAces audience what happens to tennis players after their competitive careers end. Morgan’s trajectory illustrates one path: from competitive junior → two years of college tennis → departure from the sport → career exploration across multiple industries → entrepreneurship. The lesson for junior tennis families: athletic participation builds character, resilience, and competitive mindset that transfers to non-athletic domains — but the path is rarely linear.

2. Competitive Skills Transfer: From Doubles Partner to Co-Founder

Morgan explicitly connects the skills learned from team sports — communication, accountability, competitive drive, trust in a partner — to the co-founder relationship in early-stage company building. His college teammate Jack Hesley became his best friend and the pull for his New Zealand relocation; his Root Troop co-founder (former COO) was found through the NFT community. The pattern: the competitive networking habits formed through tennis (finding partners, building trust under pressure, competing together) translated directly to entrepreneurial co-founder dynamics.

3. The College-Level Departure Decision

Morgan left tennis after two years at Boise State. He doesn’t describe this as a failure — it was a deliberate decision to redirect energy. This story is rare in the ParentingAces context (most episodes address the path toward elite college and professional tennis) and serves the audience by normalizing the possibility that the right decision for a player’s wellbeing may be to leave the sport rather than persist toward an unreachable professional level.

4. NFT/Web3 as a Career Entry Point for the Post-Athletic Generation

Morgan describes Web3 as the emerging career space most accessible to people with non-traditional backgrounds — creative, community-oriented, and rewarding visible effort over credential pedigree. His advice for young people wanting to enter Web3 mirrors athletic development advice: show up, contribute value before asking for value, build relationships through consistent engagement. Discord moderation as an entry-level position mirrors tournament ball-hopping or stringing — it’s the lowest-rung access point that rewards those who take it seriously.

5. Root Troop’s Conservation Mission

Root Troop’s NFT theme — endangered tree kangaroos in Australia’s Daintree Rainforest (approximately 2,500 remaining) — connected NFT community building with a tangible conservation outcome: $30,000 donated to purchase the largest unprotected land plot in the Daintree, creating a connected passageway for tree kangaroos between previously isolated protected plots. For the first time in history, tree kangaroos have a safe passage from the lowest to highest elevation in the Daintree Rainforest. The model parallels Lavie Sak’s Cambodia tennis philanthropy — using business success to fund targeted conservation outcomes with traceable impact.

6. On-Chain Job Marketplace as the Core Product

Root Troop’s flagship product (in development at time of recording) is the first blockchain-based job marketplace specifically for Web3 roles — positions that don’t appear on traditional job boards (Solidity developers, Discord community managers, NFT project founders, crypto marketing specialists). The bounty hub precursor (325 jobs posted, 75 people placed) proved demand on both sides. The on-chain marketplace would be accessible beyond Root Troop holders — a general-purpose infrastructure play for the entire Web3 employment ecosystem.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Use “Jr Tennis What’s Next” episodes as conversation starters with junior players about what success looks like beyond the sport — Morgan’s trajectory shows that leaving tennis is not failure, and the skills built through competitive sport are genuinely transferable
• The Web3 job market is accessible to young people with non-traditional backgrounds who are willing to build credibility through community contribution before seeking paid employment — this mirrors the junior tennis development model more than traditional credential-based hiring
• For players who leave college tennis, the connection to teammates and college roommates (Morgan → Jack Hesley, New Zealand) often provides the next significant life opportunity — the relationship capital built through competitive team sports has long-term ROI beyond athletic results

INTENNSE Relevance

• Post-athlete story pipeline: Morgan Stone’s trajectory — competitive junior → brief college tennis → multi-career exploration → entrepreneurship → relocation — is exactly the kind of post-athletic life narrative that INTENNSE’s broadcast should document; showing what happens after competitive tennis ends builds a richer player profile than result-only coverage
• Web3 and sports fandom infrastructure: Morgan’s expertise in building NFT-based communities with governance, access, and holder perks maps directly to emerging sports team ownership and fandom models; INTENNSE’s community building strategy should track how Web3 tools are being applied to sports fan engagement
• Atlanta junior tennis lineage: Morgan Stone is Lisa Stone’s son, grew up in Atlanta (INTENNSE’s primary market), and played junior tennis in the Southern section — his experience is a data point in the Atlanta tennis pipeline that INTENNSE is cultivating
• Player identity beyond sport: Morgan’s story validates the INTENNSE philosophy that players are whole people with identities beyond tennis; the league’s player profile content should explore what players are building, creating, and contributing beyond the court

Notable Quotes

“A big reason a lot of my past jobs didn’t work out was because I just hated the fact that I was crushing it in my position and making other people millions when I wasn’t getting recognized for it.”

“Provide value before asking for value — the easiest way to do that is to just buy into the project. Once you’re in, people are more likely to talk to you.”

“In Web3, traditional marketing does not work. The community is too smart to fall for that crap. You need something funny, something that can get over that hump.”

“We were able to come in and purchase the biggest plot of land in the Daintree that was unprotected — connecting several different plots they had already bought back. For the first time in history, tree kangaroos have a safe passage from the lowest point to the highest point of the Daintree.”

“It keeps you from really ever truly committing, when you love money and have big financial goals but also have big creative goals. But I haven’t really denied either one — I try to pursue both.”