HCHS students start nonprofit to make sports accessible

BY ANNA HUGHES

Being a varsity athlete is no easy feat. Becoming one is arguably even harder. Hinsdale Central juniors Sofia Malinas and Mia Barakat, who play on the soccer and tennis teams respectively, have spent over a decade training — practicing multiple times a week and competing in countless tournaments, all while balancing both club and school teams.

Although the journey can be grueling, the girls love it. They credit sports with shaping who they are today. They know that success as an athlete takes time, determination, dedication, and talent. They also realized, however, that one of the key components to an athlete’s success is money — a fact of sports that is often overlooked.

“Our involvement in sports has forced us to spend thousands of dollars per year on expensive equipment and clothing,” the girls said. “Especially at younger ages, we would grow out of all of our clothing, tennis shoes, and cleats in under a year. These would accumulate into piles of expensive, outgrown items in our closets and garages.”

These piles of gear inspired their nonprofit, Sports for All (SFA), which is focused on bringing gently used sports equipment to athletes in need.

“After playing soccer and tennis in many different areas, we noticed how many programs in other neighborhoods lacked proper equipment and facilities,” they said. “Many of these schools and parks were under-resourced for ‘non-essential items,’ and we realized that we could provide these facilities with at least some of what they need. We also thought we could provide them with items more efficiently than their admins could, making our nonprofit a perfect fit for their needs.”

SFA’s mission of making sports accessible goes beyond providing equipment: They want everyone to experience the life-lessons that come with participating in athletics.

“For us, we really benefitted from all of the resilience sports have given us over the years. You can’t win every match or game, but you can get up and try again,” they said. “Resilience is not something that can be taught, but something that is developed from experience. Sports have made us into the people we are today in regard to our ability to face challenges and consistently grow from them. This is a skill essential to life outside of sports and school, but can’t be taught from a textbook, so we decided we wanted to provide this opportunity to as many people as possible.”

Malinas and Barakat utilized this skill when starting SFA, which was a complex undertaking on top of their already jam-packed plates. They recalled the challenges that came with turning their idea into a real, functioning organization — including taxes, accounting, paperwork, and all the unglamorous details that come with running a company.

The Sports for All team continues to grow at Hinsdale Central High School.

“We originally started as a two-person team with a scrappy website that had no clear mission or plan,” they said. “With the help of the club director at our school, we kicked off our nonprofit by hosting Sports For All’s first drive at Hinsdale Central. After two weeks, we quickly realized that manpower and better planning would be necessary if we wanted to scale the nonprofit and start filling boxes with donatable gear.”

They soon realized that they needed more hands on deck to decorate boxes, make flyers, and run their social media account.

“We also needed a clearer plan of who we were going to contact and how we were going to get the boxes, decorate them, and get them to different locations. We did this by hosting a recruiting event for SFA, where we were able to gauge how many of our classmates were interested in working with us, and from that, we were able to form the amazing team we have today,” they said.

Since their official incorporation in March, SFA has collected sports equipment from drives at different schools, donated over 450 pieces of equipment to children in need, and hosted fundraisers to benefit their cause. They’ve grown to a team of ten who hope to provide over 1500 students with sports equipment by January 2026.

“It is really cool to see how our work impacts other people,” they said. “We have met so many people that we otherwise would have never crossed paths with over the past couple of months and have seen how we have impacted them in real time.”

To learn more about Sports for All, visit sportsforallnonprofit.org.