The Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award celebrates and honors young people who are using the power of sport as a catalyst for change and making a positive impact on society. This year, ESPN has expanded the Award to include three Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award honorees and 20 regional recipients.
Maegha Ramanathan
Maegha Ramanathan founded Girls4Sports, a youth-led nonprofit based in Dublin, Calif., dedicated to expanding access to sports for underserved girls while addressing gender inequality in athletics. After facing sexism as a competitive swimmer, Maegha channeled her frustration into action, building a national network that uses sports as a tool for empowerment and leadership development. What started with cold emails and donated equipment has grown into a robust, multi-chapter organization with 1,500 volunteers and programs in 20 states. To date, Girls4Sports has integrated 39,600 underserved girls into 250 sports programs and donated over 10,350 pieces of sports equipment to 70 children’s homes, hospitals and teams. The organization offers free seasonal sports camps, professional athlete speaker events, advocacy workshops and school-based team development, like launching Dublin High School’s first-ever girls’ flag football team. To date, Girls4Sports has cultivated 1,000 student changemakers and built an inclusive community that inspires girls to lead.
Rishin Tandon
As a youth climate advocate from Issaquah, Wash., Rishin Tandon is using the power of sport to address the intersection of environmental sustainability and sports equity. Troubled by the environmental inconsistencies he observed in youth sports, from long, gas-powered commutes to practices canceled due to poor air quality, Rishin realized these weren’t just environmental issues, but equity issues. He recognized that conditions like extreme heat, poor air quality and lack of shade disproportionately affect under-resourced communities, and that limited access to facilities, transportation and infrastructure widens the gap in who can safely play sports. This led Rishin to create YESS (Youth Eco Sports Scorecard), the first grassroots tool designed to embed climate action into everyday youth sports. With input from global climate leaders and data from 13 different sports, YESS evaluates teams across five categories, including transportation, waste, and climate readiness, using behavioral nudges to drive change. Since its inception, 46% of participating teams using YESS report consistent use of refillable water bottles, while 50% follow guidelines for heat and air quality safety.
Ian Waite
After seeing a former teammate stuck in a minimum-wage job without guidance or support after high school, Ian Waite of Boca Raton, Fla. created Bigger Than Sports (BTS), a fully Gen Z–led nonprofit building pathways to success for student-athletes from underserved communities. By building on what sports already gave them — discipline, teamwork, time management and resilience — and helping these student-athletes transfer those traits into the rest of their lives, Ian built BTS’ peer-to-peer mentorship model to help high school athletes chart paths beyond sports, addressing a systemic gap in post-graduation planning. In BTS’s first year, 100% of mentored student-athletes built structured post-high school plans, and all reported increased confidence and meaningful connections through near-peer support. Under Ian’s leadership, BTS has expanded rapidly, scaling to six high schools across two states, reaching over 300 families through community-unifying tournaments and launching a new summer camp that combines sports with mental health, mindfulness and leadership workshops.
In addition to the three Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award honorees, the following young people have been named regional recipients:
- Julia Banuelos, California
- Indigo Bruehwiler, West Virginia
- Daryl Fletcher, Maryland
- Ezra Frech, California
- Chris “CJ” Matthews, Georgia
- Sydney Mednik, Maryland
- Maggie Munson, Wisconsin
- Isabelle “Izzy” Murphy, Massachusetts
- Marlies Nauman, California
- Olivia Ohlson, Illinois
- Arden Pala, California
- Emily Pape, New York
- Josephine “Josie” Portell, Missouri
- Taylor Roberts, Tennessee
- Amy Schwem, Virginia
- Emerson Su, California
- Vick Tan, Minnesota
- Niam Taylor, California
- Leah Wang, Texas
- Brianna Zhang, Michigan