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Youth Sports Alliance Provides Opportunities To Thousands Of Area Kids

The Youth Sports Alliance has hired a first ever Development Director who is on board and gearing up for their biggest fund raiser of the year. Registration for the Get Out and Play programs are open but filling quickly and there’s a new afterschool program in The South Summit School District this year. The fall scholarship application window is closed but more scholarship applications will be taken in the spring of next year. Carolyn Murray has this update:

The Youth Sports Alliance started as a legacy to the 2002 Winter Olympics. It grew from a community wide effort to get more kids participating in winter sports in Summit and Wasatch Counties.

Emily Fisher, Youth Sports Alliance Executive Director, told KPCW they sold out of the Jan’s Winter Welcome Fundraiser in just three weeks. The event raises a half million dollars in one evening and the money is used to provide scholarships for kids to participate on one of the seven competitive winter sports teams, the afterschool programs for elementary, middle and junior high students and for junior athletes competing on a national level.  She says Twenty-two hundred students a year are touched by the YSA programming.

Fisher said the organization has new programs they’re launching this year. They have grown to a point that they‘ve hired a Development Director to emphasize fund raising. Their objective is to give every child a chance to participate and each year, they have more young athletes than resources.

“We really felt like for the one two punch for YSA, we really needed an Executive Director and a Development Director to really grow where we want to be. We are doing a pilot program in South Summit this fall for our programing and every year we evaluate our scholarships and we have more need than money that we have. In order to grow and get to where we wanted to be, we felt the Development Director was a very important position and I’m just thrilled to have Jana on the team.”

Development Director, Jana Dalton was a Major Gift Officer for US Ski and Snowboard for four years.  

“I’ve been a 24-year resident of Park City. I have three teen-age children who have gone through the local programs. I’ve also worked in the elementary schools and helped with Get Out and Play. So, I’m really excited to give back to the community where it all started for my children. I’m excited to be on this team. I think it is a great group. Bring more awareness to the community and nationally as well.”

Fisher says the opportunity drawing for the annual Jan’s Winter Welcome is a VIP trip for two to see the Tour de France. All the money raised goes toward youth scholarships and programs.

“You know through the amazing support of Vail Epic Promise, it’s a trip for two, VIP to the Tour de France, summer 2019, from the alps to Paris. You get to sit on the Champs-Elysees and have some Champaign as the Tour de France finishes. It’s a really amazing trip and all of the ticket sales from that go a hundred percent back to either the YSA or the club that they’re sold for. It’s such a great opportunity and such amazing support from Vail Epic Promise to have that opportunity drawing and to know all those funds go directly back to the community.”

The Jan’s Winter Welcome is October 27th at the Stein Erikson Lodge in Deer Valley. They are sold out of the event but have a wait list. Anyone can purchase tickets for the opportunity drawing.  

Get out and Play and Activ8 are afterschool programs that are open for registration now but are filling quickly.

Go to ysaparkcity.org for more information or to apply on line for any of the YSA programs.

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