VP Joe Francis explains to Joe Kazmar at the County Record Newspaper how AllSportsRating.com can help get prep athletes noticed. RECORD PHOTO: Chris Gunn

Local male and female athletes now have a way to search out that next level of competition they are seeking by having their own worldwide website that can be designed right here in Orange, Texas. And the best news about this new website is that the service is FREE!!!

This premium free feature-rich profile website will enable a male or female athlete to showcase their personal photo, personal information, statistics and offers a personal messaging system, personal photo gallery, three five-minute videos, a personal resume page, personal URL and printable trading cards.

This sounds almost too good to be true, but it’s for real thanks to local entrepreneur Joe Francis and his partner, international attorney Aime Pelatan, who resides in a Mediterranean village in southern France.

These two gentlemen met at a Lamar wrestling game of all places about six years ago. The conversation topic swung to high school athletes who don’t get a chance to play at the next level even though they may have attained that talent level as they grew older and more mature.

Pelatan, who is considered a mathematics genius, said he had visited with professional coaches and agents in various sports who agreed that a rating system was needed to find athletes without having to travel all over the country to scout all of them.

After years of study, calculation, testing, consultation with coaches and continual refinement Pelatan devised a formula to rate and rank team athletes and tested it in Europe.

His formula opens up so many more opportunities for the unknown athletes who want to be known and also gives college recruiters and coaches a good idea of the level of play at which these athletes are likely to be successful.

His formula seemed to work well there so he wanted to bring it to the United States. Francis said he was very eager to assist him and the two men spent nearly six years developing the program into a website that was marketable.

Francis, who owned several Bargain Carpet Warehouse stores in Southeast Texas including one near the old traffic circle in Orange, sold his businesses 12 years ago. “I couldn’t stand not doing anything after being on the go most of my life” Francis confessed. “Getting involved with Aime was just what I needed.”

Pelatan and Francis formed AllSportRating (ASR) that provides a search tool with a database of athletes from all over the world. ASR represents 35 sports including cheerleading, band, rodeo, field hockey and wheelchair-bound athletes.

This search tool allows coaches, teams and schools to search geographically by sport, position, weight, height, speed, arm strength, birth date, statistics, awards, and even SAT and ACT scores that have to be verified and checked out.

ASR provides the male or female athlete with a peer rating that ranges from one to five stars and depends not only on the personal statistics, but also is influenced directly by peer ratings. This further solidifies recognition of their abilities and performance.

This new service will help athletes increase their awareness of key people in the sports industry by providing athletes with their own free feature-rich website.

This website is a great way for athletes to promote themselves and network with other athletes in different parts of the country or even in foreign countries to share common goals or monitor training techniques.

ASR also provides teams and schools with their own free website to manage their team and showcase all their athletes. Teams can do fundraisers and run events through their website because ASR has created fundraising/sponsor packages to help the teams, athletes and sponsors.

Southeast Texas area businesses interested in showing your support by helping fund athletic, band, cheerleading and other programs at your local school or club to give local athletes a better opportunity to earn a college scholarship can do so while advertising your business in your community by being an ASR sponsor.

Your ads will appear on every athlete you sponsor as well as their team profile. In addition to all the other exposure, your logo and link will also appear on the Sponsor/Partner page on the front of the AllSportRating homepage.

Those businesses interested in becoming sponsors and having your own website can read about the Sponsor pack at http://AllSportRating.com and click on Sponsor.

ASR already has the fastest-growing database of athletes in the world despite being in its infancy stages. And it all can be attributed as the brainchild of Aime Pelatan and Orange’s own Joe Francis.

Anyone wanting more information about AllSportRating can contact Joe D. Francis, vice-president, at (409)-883-8807 (office) or (409)-988-1816.