This year, Adom Appiah, Tory Bailey, Gabriel Banuelos, Jacob Eusebio, Amani Shah and Holly Wilson were chosen as the recipients of the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award, one of ESPN’s Sports Humanitarian Awards. The Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award celebrates and honors youth who are using the power of sport as a catalyst for change and making a positive impact on society.
Adom Appiah
At the age of 12, Adom Appiah started a school project to improve the Spartanburg, South Carolina community, as it faces systemic issues including health disparities, racial inequities and lack of support for after-school programs. The project propelled Appiah to launch his nonprofit, Ball4Good, which uses the power of sports to address social issues in his hometown. Since its inception, Appiah has raised over $100,000 to support 20 local nonprofits, and he has organized local events and food drives, while also supporting Martin Luther King, Jr. Day basketball camps. In addition to fundraising, Appiah’s goal for Ball4Good is to encourage kids to support their community by volunteering and provide grants for organizations addressing local issues, all through the power of sports. Appiah has created a committed youth group and involves them in making impactful decisions for their community, as they help select grant recipients and provide younger kids with volunteer opportunities. When the global pandemic presented countless, unforeseen obstacles, Appiah and his team quickly adapted to engage remotely with their community, and raised over $20,000 to support organizations impacted by COVID-19. Before heading to college in 2022, Appiah hopes to raise an additional $100,000 to sustain Ball4Good’s future.
Tory Bailey
After not being able to play tennis in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) as an independent player because of California’s current rules and regulations for both charter and home school students, Tory Bailey recognized the inequities and began working with the Pete Brown Junior Tennis Program (PBJTP) to develop a community tennis program for non-traditional high school players. Currently, charter and home school students in California can only join their school district’s public school tennis teams upon the team’s coach granting them permission to be a part of the team, creating an inequitable opportunity for kids to compete in the sport. With PBJTP, Bailey created a community plan that proposes a change to CIF’s current entry process policy to play tennis for students in the Southern Los Angeles Unified School District, charter and private schools and homeschooling programs. Bailey believes tennis will open the door of equal opportunity for inner-city students who come from low-income environments, and is fighting for a community tennis program that will allow for these non-traditional high school players to compete in CIF’s tennis season and playoffs. Tory will be attending Howard University this fall as a scholar athlete playing on the men’s tennis team.
Gabriel Banuelos
As a son of an immigrant and single mother in the Watts area of South Los Angeles, Gabriel Banuelos, grew up in an environment filled with high poverty, guns, drugs and gang violence, which ultimately prevented kids like him from playing outside. Banuelos recognized that children from the projects needed safe places to play, and he decided to take action by approaching the Los Angeles Police Department about creating a safe environment for youth to play soccer outside once a week. This led to a collaboration with LAPD’s Police Athletic League (PAL) program and Nick’s Kids was born to not only provide youth a safe place to play, but to also allow kids to interact with police and alleviate their fears of law enforcement. Today, over 30 kids meet several times a week at a supervised park to play soccer, have fun and are allowed to simply enjoy being a kid. The program also offers academic tutoring to encourage and motivate students to maintain their grades, as well as provide mentorships, encouragement and reinforces important morals and values to help them envision a better future and become productive young adults. Gabriel will be attending UCLA in the fall.
Jacob Eusebio
Growing up with an autistic brother, Jacob Eusebio always understood the disparities people with intellectual disabilities face as they navigate their daily lives, along with the challenges of finding inclusive programs for them to participate in. For Eusebio, it was difficult to find his brother adaptive group tennis lessons, so he created Serving Advantage to make tennis accessible to children with developmental disabilities, while allowing high school tennis players to coach and interact with the kids, no matter their ability. By partnering with local organizations, Eusebio saw a 450% increase in student participation, with 99% of the kids having no prior tennis experience. The Doubles Partners volunteer program creates a two-way street where students with disabilities connect with peers in a safe environment, and partners are taught how to be empathetic and understanding of their differences. The program started with 14 Doubles Partners from five local high schools and has grown to 40 Doubles Partners from 16 different Southern California high schools. Serving Advantage also has started a scholarship program to bring tennis to special needs families in underserved communities. Eusebio hopes to create a judgment-free space where special needs and general communities create lifelong friendships that transcend tennis.
Amani Shah
As a young tennis player in Southern California, Amani Shah has realized the incredible benefits the sport provides her, while also recognizing within her community the huge gap in diversity, inclusion and access to the game that exists, largely due to the financial costs to participate. To address these disparities, Shah and her sister founded Second Serve — a fully youth run nonprofit organization — in 2019 with the goal to give tennis equipment a second chance by collecting gently used and excess tennis equipment, and redistributing it to underserved youth around the world to help kids gain access to the sport. Shah’s leadership has led to Second Serve growing its team to include over 70 Second Serve Presidents between the ages of 13 and 17 across the country. Her organization also partnered with local nonprofits to donate equipment in underserved communities across 23 states, as well as internationally across 11 different countries, including Uganda, India, Nigeria and Argentina. By sourcing equipment for these organizations, Second Serve is fueling youth involvement in tennis and giving more kids the opportunity to use sport to change their lives. Since its inception, Second Serve has collected and donated more than 10,000 pieces of equipment.
Holly Wilson
Holly Wilson’s passion for helping her community is deeply rooted in her interest in public health, and while a student at the University of Maryland she expanded her love for her studies into community involvement by coaching and mentoring through the sport of soccer with L.A.C.E.S. (Life and Change Experienced thru Sport). L.A.C.E.S. leverages the power of sport to mentor youth and empower local communities, while fostering life-skills and leadership development in the lives of the hundreds of at-risk youth, refugees and street children they serve. Wilson helps them by working with refugee youth in the Prince George’s County Riverdale community, and has enabled recently resettled youth as a mentor and coach and ambassador. Despite facing language barriers, as many of these youth do not speak English, Wilson uses soccer to build relationships with them and their families to ensure they feel supported and welcomed within their communities. On behalf of L.A.C.E.S., Holly developed and implemented a city-wide soccer festival that brought refugee youth and non-refugee youth together to support cross-cultural understanding and foster a connection through the sport. Upon her recent graduation from college, Holly hopes to pursue her interest in public health as a physician assistant.
Beginning in 2019, BJKLI partnered with ESPN to present the annual Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award during the ESPN Sport Humanitarian Awards. The Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award recognizes a selection of high school and college-age individuals who use sport to create social good. Award recipients have the opportunity to attend the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award (ESPY) and receive a $10,000 scholarship to use toward college or a non-profit of their choice. In the years ahead, BJKLI and ESPN will work with Beyond Sport, a global organization that uses sport to address social issues, to ensure additional programming and support for the award recipients.