“Because every child deserves a chance to play” — this is the motto that brings students from all majors together into a student organization that lives out one of A&M’s core values, selfless service. This is Sports for Kids.
Sports for Kids (SFK) is a student organization that works to provide kids in the local community the chance to be involved with sports to promote the importance of athletics in the lives of young people. SFK also strives to be a model for positively impacting the community in a fun, social environment.
“We are a non-profit organization, and basically what we do is host free events for kids in the Bryan-College Station area between the ages of 4 and 12,” said finance senior Bailey Arnold, SFK co-chair. “Some things we do are taking kids to A&M athletic events, like volleyball games, baseball games, all for free.”
Arnold serves as a co-chair of SFK, alongside chemistry junior Jessica Lowry.
SFK offers several different opportunities to B-CS kids, including Show and Tell, Sports Saturday and Sports Fest. The members of SFK also volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club throughout the year.  Each of these events offer kids the chance to interact with sports in a different way.
“At a show and tell, we take the kids to A&M athletic events,” Arnold said. “Typically in the Fall, we take them to a volleyball game and then towards the end of the semester there’s preseason basketball games. Sometimes, we actually have the athletes talk to them after the game. It’s really fun and the kids love that event because they see the athletes up close and a lot have never been to a sporting event like that before.”
Sports Fest is SFK’s largest event and is held once a semester. Texas A&M student athletes from a wide variety of sports host booths to answer questions and run drills.
“The athletes are so great with them — just by helping them, answering questions, and are just really open to it,” Arnold said.
Mathematics sophomore Kailey Hicks said the stations consist of drills being taught by members of SFK and athletes.
“They usually do drills at the stations,” Hicks said. “At one station, they’ll have them do some kind of football drill, since we have football this semester and we’re very excited about that. I ran one of the stations last semester and we just did volleyball drills, so learning how to pass. The kids are just having fun while learning to play whatever sport they play.”
Sports Saturday is a mini field day held at Spence Park in which children spend time with members and play sports including frisbee, soccer, kickball, tag, capture the flag, etc. Hicks said her favorite memory from SFK comes from a Sports Saturday event.
“My favorite memory is of a little boy  one Sports Saturday,” Hicks said. “He got there and he wasn’t very happy and didn’t really want to do anything. So I asked, ‘Do you want to go play soccer? Do you want to go play kickball?’ and he was like, ‘No, no.’ So we went over and sat on the sidewalk and I just talked to him. He started playing with sticks and so we ended up building a fort out of sticks and rocks. And it was a lot of fun.”
For Lowry, her favorite memory is having the opportunity to work with the kids and getting to see their smiles.
“My favorite memory is probably from the semester before I became a co-chair,” Lowry said. “At Sports Fest, I was getting to work with the four- to five-year-old age group and they were so cute just walking around. One girl wanted to put on our tutus and it was really fun. Their smiles just make your day.”