NRPA Partners With Score Sports to Provide Grants to Park and Recreation Agencies

April 21, 2026

The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), the nation’s leading advocate for parks and recreation, is proud to announce that the organization is partnering with SCORE Sports to support park and recreation agencies in their youth sports programming.

Grounded in the belief that access to sports builds confidence and connection, SCORE Sports and NRPA continue to remove obstacles so more young people can participate and thrive. SCORE Sports will donate $100,000 worth of gear in total to 100 park and recreation agencies across the United States ($1,000 per agency). In addition, they will partner with NRPA on the organization’s youth sports initiatives, including sponsoring the NRPA Youth Sports Summit at the 2026 NRPA Annual Conference in Philadelphia.

Two park and recreation agencies share how this support will ensure more youth can participate in sports programming:

“Providing our youth participants with new equipment or jerseys without having to increase fees is huge! Also, providing a potential participant equipment like a glove, ball, etc. that otherwise may not have played…that's what it's all about! One less potential barrier!” - City of Eudora, Parks and Recreation Department, Eudora, Kansas
“Equipment for sports can add up in cost, and many people can only afford one sport. We want to make it doable for people of all socio-economic backgrounds to choose multi-sport opportunities for their youth. " - City of Greeley Recreation Division, Greeley, Colorado

“We are grateful to SCORE Sports for their continued support of park and recreation agencies across the country,” said Kellie May, NRPA chief partnerships officer. “Ensuring agencies have access to quality apparel and equipment is essential to expanding youth sports opportunities and helping more young people get in the game.”

“At SCORE Sports, we believe every kid deserves the chance to play,” said Mitchell Gross, SCORE Director of Marketing, Partnerships and Business Development. “Through our partnership with NRPA and the launch of S1, a new apparel line purpose-built for park and recreation programs, we’re putting durable, high-quality gear at accessible price points into the hands of communities to get kids off the sidelines and into the game. This partnership is about more than equipment -- it’s about access and ensuring cost never stands between a child and the opportunity to play, compete and grow.”

Park and recreation agencies play a critical role in providing youth sports and out-of-school time programming nationwide, reaching more than 50 million young people each year. Coaches and caring adult leaders are often the most important factor in ensuring that young people have positive, developmentally supportive experiences in sports.

Since 2023 through the Youth Sports in Parks and Recreation initiative, NRPA has provided funding to more than 200 communities and is on track to increase access to high-quality, affordable, fun and welcoming multi-sport opportunities for more than 480,000 youth and train more than 24,000 coaches nationwide. Through these efforts, NRPA developed a set of promising coach training, recruitment and retention strategies for park and recreation agencies to implement, highlighting a unique opportunity to establish and scale sustainable, impactful and continuous coaching pipelines nationwide.

For more info on NRPA’s Youth Sports Initiative, click here.

For more info on NRPA, visit nrpa.org