Up2Us Sports marks 15 years of empowering youth through sports and unveils a rebrand to expand its impact.
AmeriCorps announced that Up2Us Sports would once again receive critical funding for our national service coach program. Since 2009, AmeriCorps funding has allowed us to train and support over 3,900 coaches to significantly impact the lives of nearly 100,000 young people.
Welcome to a momentous occasion as we celebrate 14 incredible years of Up2Us Sports! Since our inception, we have been committed to empowering young people through the power of sports, national service and mentorship.
We hope you will read our latest Annual Report and we thank you for your support in helping us provide underserved youth with a coach who cares about them. This report covers our 2021-2022 program and fiscal year.
The Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health Innovation Awards—an initiative that aims to identify and fund mental healthcare solutions for children and young adults across the United States—honors a 2022 winner, Up2Us Sports.
Up2Us Sports coaches and their families got to experience a Miami Marlins game in person this past Friday thanks to Up2Us Sports Ambassador AJ Ramos. The Marlins closer generously donated 40 tickets for the coaches and their families for a night at Marlins Park.
Up2Us Sports Ambassador Sugar Rodgers will be heading to the WNBA All-Star Game next weekend. She was named a replacement player and will make her All-Star debut in her fifth season.
In the past seven years, I have highlighted in the Sports Doing Good newsletter and blog more than 4,000 stories of the “good.” This has included everything from on-the-field performances, work by non-profits, team and league programs reaching out to their fan bases, and of course, people overcoming challenges in their lives, big and small, to accomplish something important in their life. For this last category of stories, it is fair to think when overcoming “challenges,” we are talking about those physical in nature. Those are the ones that are the most obvious – someone’s physical challenge – is usually very easy to see. But, of course, it is not all about the physical.
To the kids she coaches Marnisha goes exclusively by ‘Coach Super.’ The moniker doubling as a nickname and the perfect embodiment of her life and commitment to young people. Hearing Marnisha’s story, her nickname becomes less surprising. Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio she grew up in a religious family where both of her parents worked, she went to school, played little league baseball and other sports here and there.
Up2Us Sports has announced the addition of lightweight boxer Damon Allen Jr. to their group of athlete ambassadors. The 24-year old Philadelphia native has gone undefeated since turning pro, currently holding an 11-0-1 record with 5 KO’s. Damon had a decorated amauteur career, amassing 210 fights. He is a six-time national champion, was ranked #1 nationally in the lightweight category and participated in the 2011 Olympic Trials. He burst into the professional circuit in 2013, winning five fights in his first year as a pro then signing with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions.
On Tuesday, May 30, 2017, Up2Us Sports collaborated with the LA Dodgers Foundation (LADF) to provide a unique training opportunity to partners of the Dodgers RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program. These partners, which span across Los Angeles County, and include Boys and Girls Club, recreational parks, nonprofits, and youth baseball academies, engaged with Up2Us Sports staff in our training on "How to Change Your Coaching in 7 Words or Less". Through this interactive 2-hour session, participants learned specific phrases, each 7 words or less, that they can use with their teams to help build positive relationships and promote youth engagement.
Angel Fulgencio grew up in Oxnard, California just a few hours north of Los Angeles. He is the son of an immigrant family whose parents migrated from Mexico. Growing up, his parents worked hard in the strawberry fields in Oxnard to provide for the family. In high school Angel joined the football team, which was his introduction into sports. Football kept him on the right track and encouraged him to set goals beyond high school.
AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) is a national service program to fight poverty in America. Each VISTA member makes a year-long, full-time commitment to serve on a specific project at a nonprofit organization or public agency.
On Monday, May 15, 2017, Up2Us Sports held its’ 5th Annual Gala, celebrating powerhouse female coaches and athletes. Up2Us Sports presented its Legacy Award to Mollie Marcoux Samaan (Director of Athletics at Princeton University) and Angela Ruggiero (four-time Olympic medalist in women’s ice hockey), who was unfortunately not able to attend due to a family emergency, but who was honored just the same.
Up2Us Sports is launching She Can Coach - a fundraising and awareness campaign focused on the importance of growing opportunities for women to coach and ensuring young girls in vulnerable communities have great female role models in their lives.
Research from the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports proves that girls drop out of sports at a higher rate than boys and that girls’ participation is strongly correlated with female role models.
Up2Us Sports and Edgework Consulting have been working together for more than 5 years to leverage the power of sports to help kids heal. We are proud to announce our new Sport and Trauma website where you can access resources and register for events. To date, we’ve trained more than 10,000 coaches to understand the impact that exposure to adverse childhood experiences and other kinds of toxic stress can have on young people.
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