Long Island native Riley Griffith was a New York state champion cross country runner before she joined the University of Louisville track and field team. She said if it wasn’t for her cross country coach’s support back home, she wouldn’t have joined U of L’s team.
“[My coach] really did impact my life and give me a lot of confidence to go do big things that I didn't think I was capable of before I met her,” Griffith said.
Now as a sophomore, she’s partnering with her teammates Layla Roebke and Julia Schmitt to help teach kids about the sport she loves.
Run Your City Louisville will be a 6-week, free running program for kindergarten through 8th grade students. The plan is to hold hourlong sessions weekly on Sunday, where Griffith, Roebke and Schmitt will teach about proper running techniques, how to work as a team and balancing nutrition and exercise.
The group has not set dates for practices yet, but signups are open online.
For Griffith, running is more than a sport. She said she found a second family among her teammates, gained confidence and learned how to be a good competitor.
Meg Hancock, a professor for U of L’s sports administration program, has published work on inequities in the sports industry, specifically among children ages 6-17.
“Specifically, sports participation in early childhood and adolescence leads to higher self-esteem, greater wage earning potential, lower health costs, reduced chronic disease, and lower levels of depression,” she wrote in her 2024 research.
“We want to go beyond just developing them as athletes,” she said. “We believe in developing them holistically as people, as teammates, and giving them an opportunity to be on a team without having the financial commitments to it.”
The price to play
According to a 2022 survey from the Aspen Institute, a research organization based in Washington, D.C., the average American family spends nearly $900 a year on one child’s sport per season.
“If you have two children for one single sport, you're looking at $1,600,” Hancock, the U of L professor, said. “Participating two, three, four years in a row, we're really seeing the cost add up, and that's just at a recreational level. We're not talking about access to club sports, which has even more financial barriers, typically for students.”
Additional coaching, travel, training and other expenses add up on top of that. Families spend about $30-40 billion on their children’s sports activities per year, the Aspen Institute estimated.
Sports participation for kids who come from lower income families is also lower.
“Often in areas that are poverty stricken, there is also less funding for participation in sports,” Hancock said. “When we think about how schools are funded, there might be limited access in terms of the types of sports that are even available.”
She said the inequity spreads when combined with race, gender and sexuality.
The price to play often deters families from signing up their kids for recreational sports, said Southwest YMCA regional sports director David Oliver. He oversees all the YMCA’s sports programs in west and south Louisville.
“Our programs are really small,” he said. “Parents sometimes can't afford [it]. But my job is to bring affordable programs just like everywhere else around the YMCA.”
Andre Klaasen is the sports director for the Northeast YMCA. He said they offer financial assistance for some families in the area so they don’t have to turn anyone away.
Griffith, the U of L student athlete and co-president of Run Your City Louisville, said she’s excited to offer a running program for kids without the financial hassle that comes with youth sports.
“We really just want to give kids the opportunity to get out there and be a part of something and have a fun, low-pressure experience with sports, so that even if they don't stick with running, even if they don't stick with sports, they get to have that opportunity,” Griffith said.
The program is part of a larger organization with several clubs in the U.S. and one in Rwanda with the same premise: connecting underserved youth with student athletes through running and sports activities for free.
