On a Tuesday morning this week, the TRAC at Warsaw High School was unusually busy for the summer. Kids were filing in, carrying pickleball paddles and bubbling with excitement for the activity they were going to do. The kids were there thanks to the work of AGAITAS, an organization that provides free summer sports camps for kids.
AGAITAS, which is now expanding internationally, began in 2012. Ryan Burgher, who founded the organization, described his motivation to do so. “I've always been a soccer guy. I've played soccer at Warsaw High School. I coached at Huntington University. I played at Grace College, so it's what I kind of felt like I was good at.” The first camp was small, with less than forty kids. “We started in 2012. We did one soccer camp and our soccer camp had 37 kids. We did it at Lakeland Christian Academy.”
Since that first small camp in 2012, the organization has exploded in size, adding basketball, golf, baseball, cross country, and pickleball. The challenge they’ve run into is high demand, which is a good thing, says Burgher. “The nice problem that we had was our camps were getting full so fast,” he said. “We had 150 kids sign up for our soccer camp in an hour. Our golf camp fills up in 15 minutes…. K21 invited us to get back to our original mission, which was making it free for every single kid, not just the kids that are able to sign up on time.”
To solve the problem, they introduced a new type of camp. “We started pop up camps where we go into areas in the community, usually lower income areas… and do free soccer camps from 5:30 to 7:00, and we do dinner there also.” Burgher described the growth of the organization, saying, “This past summer, we have the 23 camps that we've done--- over 2000 kids going through--- and then that doesn't count the number of volunteers from the high school and middle school and adults that help out too.”
Many of the volunteers are kids who attended AGAITAS camps when they were younger. The registered programs serve kids from kindergarten to eighth grade, and the popup camps serve all ages. “The goal, too, is, when a kid graduates in 8th grade and isn't able to come as a camper anymore, the goal is that they come back, and they serve as a counselor.” Burgher discussed the trend of students returning as volunteers, saying, “Over the years since we started tracking--- we didn't track in the first couple of years because we didn't think this was a thing…. But since we've been tracking the kids going through, we've had over 300 kids attend as campers and then come back and be counselors. It is a leadership development program.”
A large aspect of the organization is faith, which is integrated through prayer and devotions during the camps. Faith also impacted the founding of the camp, being the main mission. “Our mission is we use sports to share Christ with people. That is all we want to do.” Burgher described the AGAITAS mission, saying, “Two things. One, to make things free for everybody, and two, to use our passions and our gifts to share Christ. This is like the well that people are coming [to] for water, and we want to give them so much more than the water, or the sports. We want to give them living water through our
programs, so our goal is not that they come and get better at sports, it's that they come and they hear about Christ.”
Burgher himself was inspired by his faith to start the program, explaining, “There's a story in the
Bible how Jesus feeds 5000. He used the kid that had bread and fish. This little kid that had very little to bless the magnitude of people. So, I figured, what was my bread and fish and I thought, a soccer ball. I
thought, alright, I can bless people using soccer, and God has used it for so much more than that.”
So much more, including international expansion. “We're in India right now, so we're doing camps in orphanages in India and villages in India. We've probably done 13 camps over in India…. We've been talking to about going to Honduras, going to the Dominican Republic, and there's a former intern right now that's doing pop up camps in Wisconsin. We have an intern going back to Ohio that wants to start cross country AGAITAS in Ohio.”
AGAITAS is supported entirely by donors and provides completely free pop-up and registered camps for kids. More information about the organization, a complete schedule, and donation and volunteering information can be found at agaitas.com.