Utah Youth Sports Giving Day launches during Salt Lake Bees Game
· KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Utah Youth Sports Giving Day hit its $1 million goal in 10 minutes.
- The initiative aims to reduce youth sports costs, with $3 million total support.
- Organizers emphasize the campaign's impact on accessibility and children's personal growth.
SOUTH JORDAN — An effort to make youth sports more accessible to Utah children reached its $1 million public fundraising goal within 10 minutes of launching Saturday night.
Utah Youth Sports Giving Day officially launched during the Salt Lake Bees game at America First Square, bringing together about 160 youth sports organizations from across the state.
The goal was to raise $1 million in public donations over a two-week period.
Organizers said the money will help participating organizations reduce one of the biggest barriers keeping some children from playing sports: cost.
For many youth sports organizations, those costs can be substantial.
"Rowing naturally is a pretty expensive sport. Our operating costs are pretty high," said Victoria Rojo, head coach of Utah Crew.
Registration fees, equipment, travel, and other expenses can quickly add up for families.
Rojo said financial assistance can give children a chance to participate in a sport they otherwise might never experience.
"Any opportunity that we have to make it so we can give scholarships or lower dues to everyone we need to, makes it so everyone has an opportunity to do a sport that has changed a lot of lives already," said Rojo.
Utah Crew was among dozens of organizations represented outside the ballpark Saturday evening, giving families a chance to learn about sports and programs available to children throughout the state.
For those organizations, simply making families aware of what is available can make a difference.
"The more people that know about us, the more families we can serve," said Ashley Guymon, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Arena.
Adaptive Arena provides sports opportunities for children with special needs.
However, specialized equipment can come with a significant price tag.
"We were lucky that in the beginning, we had eight chairs donated to us. Sports wheelchairs. But they cost between three to five thousand dollars and that was three years ago," said Guymon.
Helping organizations meet costs like those is one of the goals behind Utah Youth Sports Giving Day.
The effort is led by Miller Sports + Entertainment, the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation and the Daniels Fund.
Their goal was to raise $3 million in total support for Utah youth sports nonprofits, with at least $1.5 million in matching funds committed by campaign partners, including Utah 2034, to help those organizations allow for as many kids as possible without worrying about funding.
"That is the whole intention behind this, is to eliminate all of the barriers," said Michelle Smith, president of Miller Sports + Entertainment.
Smith said the original $1.5 million raised before Saturday night's public launch allowed donations made during the campaign to have an even greater impact.
"The beauty of how it's structured is that we were already able to fundraise a million and a half dollars. So, if you can do five, we can do 10," said Smith. "Every dollar matters."
The public portion of the campaign was scheduled to continue for two weeks, but the initial $1 million goal didn't take nearly that long to reach.
Within 10 minutes of Saturday night's launch, Utah Youth Sports Giving Day had reached the $1 million mark, according to organizers, with more donations continuing to come in.
"It shows how much we care about our kids in Utah," said Abby Osborne, the vice president of Impact for Utah 2034 Olympics and Paralympics Organizing Committee. "We love our kids. We want them involved in sports. And we want to give them access to sports."
While the campaign is about raising money, those involved say the larger goal is giving more Utah children the opportunity to experience what sports can offer, such as making friends, building confidence, and discovering abilities they may not have known they had.
"We see kids come at first and they are so shy. They won't even look you in the eye. But at the end of the season, they're exchanging birthday invitations, and they're exchanging phone numbers," said Guymon. "It's amazing to see the confidence these sports give these children."
Photos
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Related topics
Alex Cabrero
Alex Cabrero has been reporting for KSL since 2004. Alex has covered seven Olympics for KSL; 2008 Beijing, 2012 London, 2014 Sochi, 2016 Rio de Janeiro, 2018 PyeongChang, 2020 Tokyo, and 2022 Beijing. You can watch him weekdays on KSL 5 News at 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.