On Wednesday, the Reds Community Fund, St. Elizabeth Healthcare and Pitch In For Baseball & Softball (PIFBS) distributed close to $70,000 worth of baseball and softball equipment to 24 high schools and 14 youth organizations across Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.
For the 10th straight year, the partners teamed up to help local high schools and youth organizations in the region and presented the gear to the teams during a distribution event at Griffin Elite in Erlanger, Kentucky. In what has now been a decade of working together, with additional Northern Kentucky support from the R.C. Durr Foundation to further elevate the impact for the third consecutive year, the group has provided over $550,000 in equipment to more than 17,000 local student-athletes.
“Our program growth this year is primarily through the increase in youth organizations that are represented here today, which really gives us another vehicle to grow our game,” Reds Community Fund Executive Director Charley Frank said. “It's so important to support the high schools and equally important that we are in the communities and the neighborhoods with the younger athletes and teams that are hopefully aspiring to become varsity and junior varsity athletes in the future.”
Frank and the Reds brought a very special guest this year -- pitcher Andrew Abbott. The 2025 All-Star was blown away by the scope of the event and the amount of equipment on display.
“It’s huge in any sport you play to go in at an equal level of equipment,” Abbott said. “After that, it all comes down to talent and drive. And a lot of these kids are going to have those boxes already checked, because coming from backgrounds where they may not have had all the resources early on, they're already going to know hard work and how to compete to make up for that. And that’s speaking from a personal standpoint. I didn’t have any of this kind of stuff growing up. I was playing on dirt fields with hand-me-down equipment. And that teaches you a lot at an early age. I’m really proud to be at something like this because this donation today helps equal out the playing field a little bit it and represents a lot of what I went through as a kid, as well.”
The Reds Community Fund and St. Elizabeth Healthcare both invest dollars annually in the program to assist amateur baseball and softball in Greater Cincinnati, and PIFBS helps maximize the investment with their relationships with top equipment manufacturers. Donated equipment included baseballs, softballs, bats, helmets, gloves, cleats, catcher’s gear, portable practice nets, compression sleeves and more.
“This is a program that means a lot to us at St. Elizabeth Healthcare – to be able to give back to the young people in our community, to the coaches, to the teams and to the communities that we serve in northern Kentucky and southeast Indiana,” said Matt Hollenkamp, St. Elizabeth Healthcare Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations. “This year marks the one hundred 65th anniversary that St. Elizabeth was founded in Covington. Much like the Reds, we've been around for a very long time in our community. This community is who we are. This community is our why at St. Elizabeth Healthcare. And this is especially meaningful to me, because I'm not only in my position at St. Elizabeth, but I'm also a coach at one of the high schools, so I know firsthand how far this equipment goes. It's helping young people play sports, which means being active, being healthier and increasing your self-confidence.”
The 24 participating high schools included Augusta, Bellevue, Boone County, Campbell County, Dayton, Dixie Heights, East Central, Gallatin County, Grant County, Holy Cross, Covington Holmes, Lawrenceburg, Lloyd Memorial, Ludlow, Newport, Newport Central Catholic, Pendleton County, Scott in Northern Kentucky. Southeast Indiana schools featured South Dearborn, South Ripley, Milan, Switzerland County, Rising Sun, plus Taylor High School in Ohio. The 14 youth organizations that received equipment included the Boone County Rivermonsters, Campbell County Knothole, Ludlow Athletic Club, Bellevue Vets, Grant County Little League, Riverfront Baseball, Kenton County Youth Sports, NKY Bandits Baseball, NKY Youth Athletics, Omega Royals, River City Rhinos, Scott County Youth Baseball, Villa Hills and Y’all Baseball.
"I think getting new equipment opens the doors to more people playing, because where we're from, not many people can afford new equipment,” Holmes High School junior and softball catcher Julie Starr said. “So having new gloves and things like that gives people the opportunity to come out without the burden of trying to buy new equipment.”
Pitch In For Baseball & Softball, which is dedicated to eliminating equipment barriers for underserved youth, has been a key component for all 10 years of this initiative. On a larger scale, the nonprofit has helped more than 2.4 million children play baseball and softball in every U.S. state and nearly 120 countries worldwide since 2005.
But for PIFBS, it’s about more than the data. It’s about peeling back the stories of the kids that are affected by their work.
“Julie [Starr] hit the nail right on the head. That's what programs like Pitch in for Baseball & Softball do – make it so parents don't have to stress, and people don't have to incur costs to be able to play because the gifts of the game should be accessible to everybody,” CEO Meredith Kim said. “It’s hard for a student to tell a parent they want to start a new sport in high school and in order to do that, they need all this equipment. For some families, that’s just not an option, it’s not possible. So, we've heard stories of students that literally would not have been able to play without these donations, so it’s so meaningful to help kids get out and get involved in something after school.”
With the baseball and softball players all equipped with their new gear, it will soon be time for them to put it to use with the spring season approaching. Abbott made sure to bestow some big league advice upon the student-athletes in attendance before the event concluded.
“Always compete. It’s the person next to you trying to take your job, so just go out, put your head down and work. It's all the work that's done in the shadows. It's the commitment. You can't skip a day, and you're going to miss out on activities. But I'm living proof that it's worth it at the very end. So just put your head down, work, compete, play against people that are better than you so you get better, let the rest take care of itself. And this equipment provided to you on the table today, that's going to take you to the next level.”
In addition to support from the Reds Community Fund, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, PIFBS and the R.C. Durr Foundation, the event is also made possible through a partnership with In-Game Sports. The regional amateur sports event group helps coordinate communication with the schools and manages event setup at Griffin Elite.