Haslam College of Business - Tennessee Student Athlete Establishes Coaching Organization

In October 2025, Amayah Doyle faced the kind of day that breaks people. The Lady Vol softball player from Cartersville, Illinois, lost her beloved grandmother and learned her labrum was completely torn. The sport she loved and the person who supported her most were both gone.

Doyle, a sophomore majoring in management at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business, wasn’t sure how to go on.

Discovering a Gap

“My world stopped,” she says. What followed was grief and uncertainty about who she was without her grandmother and softball.

Amid the loss and confusion, something new began to take shape. Doyle realized the tools she needed to survive her worst season went beyond physical training. Conditioning programs are everywhere, but mental and spiritual ones rooted in identity beyond the scoreboard are not. That gap became her calling.

Supporting the Person, Not Just the Athlete

To fill that gap, Doyle founded Play4One Academy, a faith-based organization to help student-athletes grow mentally, spiritually and physically. The program pairs one-on-one coaching with mental and physical strength training in an encouraging community and offers access to counselors alongside high-performance athletic development.

The numbers behind Doyle’s work are sobering. Suicide among student athletes has doubled over the past two decades. This population is trained in physical toughness but rarely equipped for the internal weight of competition, identity and transition. Play4One Academy’s market targets nearly four million female high school and collegiate athletes in the U.S.

Play4One Academy is an athlete development platform that supports growth in mind, body and faith. Memberships are available at different levels, and each package includes personalized nutrition plans, performance workouts, virtual mentorship and faith-based devotional content. Play4One is designed for athletes with varying goals and levels of commitment. It focuses on long-term transformation through regular coaching, accountability check-ins and tailored support.

What sets the academy apart from elite training programs is its organizing principle: love before performance. Where typical programs measure success by speed, power or rank, Doyle’s model centers the whole athlete, pushing them to ask themselves who they are when the game is over. Revenue comes from coaching and counseling services, building a sustainable model around transformation rather than transactions.

According to Play4One volunteer Avi Tomas, the academy’s mission is also rewarding to coaches.

“I truly enjoyed being part of the Play4One Academy camp; the positive energy was amazing,” says Tomas. “It meant a lot to me to help the younger girls, give them encouragement and watch them grow. Offering positive feedback and supporting their self-improvement made the experience so rewarding.”

Play4One’s tagline — “When you play for one, you live for more.” — is a testament to purpose built not in a boardroom, but in the wake of her hardest day, shaped into something she hopes will spare other athletes from experiencing that kind of pain alone.

Terica, Doyle’s mother, is proud of the work her daughter has found a unique way to support others.

“My heart is so full seeing what Play4One Academy has become,” she says. “What started as a love for softball and a calling from God has grown into something so much bigger, a place where young women are built up mentally, physically and spiritually, with Christ, encouragement and purpose woven into every moment, creating an experience not found elsewhere.”

With the success she has found so far, Doyle hopes to grow Play4One Academy. She is taking the organization to the SEC Startup, a pitch competition for student-athlete entrepreneurs, with the support of the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and startup coaches Lia Winter (HCB, ’19) and Mark Huber (UT, ’97).

About the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The Anderson Center, housed in the Haslam, is the front door to entrepreneurship at UT. It connects Volunteers with the expertise, resources and collaborators at UT and across the regional ecosystem to advance ideas, tackle bold challenges and turn entrepreneurial ambition into results. At the Anderson Center, Volunteers are empowered to identify opportunities and take bold action to create value through new ventures.

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Author:

Allison Kelly, Anderson Center director of marketing, akelly9@utk.edu

Contact:

Leah McAmis, senior editor, leah@utk.edu