Leveling the Playing Field for Student Athletes in Need

LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD

SPREADING THE SPORTS WEALTH

BY HOWARD BLAS | JNS.ORG

When Max Levitt was a student at Syracuse University, he had a unique window into the world of sports equipment. As equipment manager for the school’s football team, he regularly witnessed perfectly good cleats, footballs and other gear being thrown into the dumpster.

“My first job was to prep the locker room and go through the inventory,” he said. “I had to throw away 300 useable footballs.”

Levitt recalled being heartbroken at the sight of usable equipment being thrown away, saying “it really bothered me. It stuck in my head.”

He learned that university sports departments negotiate contracts with partner companies that include receiving the newest gear each year. And so, he had an idea — collecting and redistributing sports equipment to those who don’t have the proper equipment.

There is a particular need for sports equipment, as the gap in accessing sports programs and equipment for people without financial resources has widened in recent years. This wasn’t the case when Levitt, 33, was growing up in the 1980s. “Back then, everyone participated in youth sports through the public recreation department. We had coaches and equipment, and sampled various sports.

“But over the last few decades,” he explained, “we have seen the privatization of sports and a ‘pay to play’ model. Some people pay as much as $30,000 or $40,000 a year for off-season training, pitching coaches and more.”

This has impacted public sports programs, said Levitt. “Public recreation is now more about facility management. For lowincome families, there is no place to go for youth sports. As a result, participation rates for sports have gone down in low-income communities.”

Levitt said he was always a big sports fan and participant growing up. “I spent every second of my free time playing sports, organized or not organized — at the JCC [Jewish Community Center] and at my eight years at Camp Modin in Maine.

Howard Salzberg, director of Camp Modin, remembers Levitt as a camper many years ago: “I remember him as a mature, kind kid who was athletic and loved to do all the activities, particularly sports.”

Levitt emphasized that playing sports has benefits beyond the physical. “Sports shaped me as a person,” he said. It also provided structure, and helped him and his friends stay out of trouble in those hours when school was out and parents were still at work, he added. “As a kid with lots of energy and not always the best behaved, sports served as an important outlet.”

He considered himself and his friends to be fortunate; they grew up in relative affluence with good role models. He also grew up in a home where Jewish values were emphasized. “Tikkun olam [‘social justice’] was woven in. We always had donation bags in our house growing up — for clothes, books and furniture — but nothing for sports equipment.”

As he began learning of the lack of equipment of low participation rates in sports for children of lower-income families — and as he looked around his own home and the home of friends, and realized how much unused sports equipment was sitting in closets, garages and attics — a light bulb went off. “We have food banks where people can get the food they need. It is a simple model. But there is nothing like this for sports,” he observed.

And so, in 2013, Levitt started “Leveling the Playing Field” in