Weekly Newsletter, Sept. 2, 2026: Jack Went the Distance
GOOD MORNING.
Big week! Jack Wallace just posted the best finish of his paracanoe career in Poland, Emily Oberst and Team USA Women's Wheelchair Basketball leave for the IWBF World Championships in Ottawa, and LEAD Summit Houston opens its doors this Friday and we are booking events as far out as April 2027 already. I recommend an iced coffee this morning, because this is a hot one.
In today's newsletter, we'll also look at:
This week's personal story
LEAD Summit Houston opens Friday — our first-ever two-summit year
Cejih's Corner: why sponsors love a great photo
Our monthly business update
This week's biggest client news
Jack Wallace closed out the 2026 ICF Canoe Sprint & Paracanoe World Championships in Poznań, Poland this weekend with the best finish of his paracanoe career: 5th in the world in the 200m sprint.
Jack only got back into paddling in May after taking time off post-Milan, so making the final at all was a win — cracking the top ten on a short run-up to Worlds is another level. In his own words: "I am beyond thrilled and proud of this result. My goal this season was to potentially break into the top ten... This sport is so competitive but who knows what will be possible with some consistent training in the lead up to LA28."
Jack is chasing two different Paralympic berths in two different sports — Milano-Cortina 2026 in sled hockey and LA28 in paracanoe — and this result says the second one is very much a reality.
Emily Oberst heads to Wheelchair Basketball World Champs
Emily Oberst and the U.S. Women's Wheelchair Basketball National Team depart this week for the 2026 IWBF World Championships in Ottawa, Canada (September 5–19). Emily earned her spot after a starring role in Team USA's gold medal run at the 2025 IWBF Americas Cup, and she comes in with real momentum — she was named Tournament MVP after leading the WASA Marquette Eagles to the 2025 NWBA Division I National Championship, the first female athlete in that division's history to earn the honor. This is a big step on the road to LA28. Go get it, Emily.
How we use data to pitch athletes
Something we take real pride in at CG Sports — and something I don't think enough agencies actually do — is treating data like it's part of the roster, not just a slide we dust off once a quarter. Old-school sports representation still runs almost entirely on medal count: how many golds, how many world records, how many times an athlete's stood on a podium with a flag around their shoulders. That's still a great opener. It is not, on its own, a full pitch anymore — and any agent still selling exclusively off hardware is basically showing up to a gunfight with a participation trophy.
For context, some CG Sports history for ya. Before I was an agent, I was in tech and software sales, and if that world beats one thing into you, it's that a good visual backed by real data closes more deals than a great story told on its own. So when we built Brand Camp — the process every CG Sports athlete goes through when they sign — we built it around exactly that: a real, strategic athlete brand designed to do more than just look nice. It's built to funnel visitors toward actual business opportunities, and every bit of traffic it pulls in feeds our newsletter database and our outreach lists. It's a lot of unglamorous infrastructure to set up front-of-house, which is exactly why we run every athlete through it instead of leaving them to duct-tape together a page and a prayer.
McKenzie Siroky is the case study I keep coming back to this summer. She had a phenomenal U.S. Nationals — two golds — and then, a few weeks later, an even better Pan Pacs: gold in the 100 breast in a lifetime-best 1:05.32, a silver in the 50 breast, and a second gold on USA's winning medley relay. Every one of those results, and the interviews that came with them, sent a wave of people to Google her name and to her social. When they searched, they landed on a website we'd already built and a funnel waiting for them.
And here's the part that actually matters for the business: when an athlete gets that kind of volume, it almost never stays just traffic. Within days of that spike, real inquiries started coming in organically. And for a few conversations we'd already been having with brands, we handed over that exact data mid-conversation and let it do a lot of the convincing for us.
That's the whole point of Brand Camp — it takes genuinely tedious infrastructure work and turns it into something we can pull up in real time, at our fingertips, whenever a brand partner wants proof instead of a promise. Most of the sports and sponsorship world — agents especially — is still a little behind on this, which, selfishly, is great for us. It's also how we help athletes who aren't Olympians or Paralympians, and hopefuls who haven't had their moment yet, punch above their weight class in a genuinely crowded market.
Sometimes the story a brand needs isn't a gold medal. Sometimes it's a chart.
Our monthly business update
Since it's the first newsletter of September, here's where things stand across the CG Sports pipeline: We have several proposals out for review with various partners or event hosts, in total about $75k worth that we are waiting to hear on. August was a grind but we finally moved several big deals into the legal/contract review stage (a little north of $300k).
The number we're proudest of, though, isn't a dollar figure — it's the 100 girls who'll have come through a LEAD Summit by the time LEAD Houston wraps this weekend, a milestone three years in the making. Add in a brand-new Brand Camp signing this week (hint: ) and Kaleo Maclay picking up her first mic time outside the gym — a Mother in Sport Collective panel at Strava HQ next month — and it's shaping up to be a September with real momentum on both sides of the business.
CG Sports Client Events
September 4–7, 2026 (Rice University, Houston, TX): LEAD Summit Houston, featuring Lilly King, Anna Peplowski & Phoebe Bacon.
September 5–19, 2026 (Ottawa, Canada): IWBF World Championships, Emily Oberst.
September 6, 2026 (Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York, NY): US Open appearance as a guest of Ralph Lauren, Jack Wallace.
September 13, 2026 (Normal Community West High School, Normal, IL): Swim clinic, Lilly King.
September 19, 2026 (Rocky River High School, Rocky River, OH): Swim clinic, Lamar Taylor.
September 19, 2026 (Neptune Aquatic Center, Neptune City, NJ): Swim clinic, Lilly King.
September 26–27, 2026 (Framingham Lifetime, Framingham, MA): Swim clinic, Kieran Smith.
October 2–3, 2026 (Summit Area YMCA, Summit, NJ): Swim clinic, Phoebe Bacon.
October 3, 2026 (Arvada Aquatic Center, Arvada, CO): Swim clinic, Rebecca Soni.
October 27, 2026 (Walter T Bergen Middle School, Bloomingdale, NJ): Keynote speech, Jack Wallace.
October 27, 2026 (West Ridge Elementary School): Speaking engagement, Jack Wallace.
November 3–4, 2026 (USADA Athlete Panel): Speaking engagement, Jack Wallace.
November 14–15, 2026 (John Glenn High School, Bay City, MI): Swim clinic, McKenzie Siroky.
November 17, 2026 (Bryn Mawr School, Baltimore, MD): Speaking engagement, Emily Oberst.
December 3, 2026 (Wilton High School, Wilton, CT): Leadership keynote & Captain's Workshop, Elizabeth Beisel.
April 10, 2027 (Border Swimming LSC): Swim clinic, Phoebe Bacon.
That's the week. See you next Wednesday.
Cejih and The CG Sports Company
