Local Sports Camp Partners with NorCal's H.I.T.S. Program

Aby Ryan first conceived the idea for Athena Camps when her daughter started kindergarten. 

The year her daughter started coincided with class sizes going up from 20 kids to 30. Ryan was shocked to see groups of five-year olds already running around in cliques and separated in groups at such a young age. 

“At that point I thought okay, I need to start this,” she said. 

Athena Camps wound up being a fitting marriage between all of Ryan’s interests and experiences. She played professionally on the ITF Women’s Professional Tennis Tour in the early 90s before entering the coaching world. She spent three years at Presentation High School and in 1994, made the jump to NCAA Division I tennis as the head coach at Santa Clara University. 

Ryan left Santa Clara in 2003 and her daughter was born in 2004. Over the next eight years, she held leadership and development positions around the Bay Area that got her involved in grant writing and creating programs for girls. 

“When I left coaching I really thought I was done with tennis,” she said. 

Over time though, she began to realize how beneficial sports had been on her mental health and how they could help other girls. 

“I started creating these programs that turned out to be pretty successful so I decided to go out and start my own company that was about empowering girls through sports,” Ryan said. 

It was important to make sure the camp wasn’t just about sports though. 

Early on in the process, Ryan took her best friend’s daughters to Starbucks and told them about her idea. They said not everyone liked sports and suggested including art, so she added art projects to the camp. 

While sports wasn’t the original focus of her idea, she realized how important and beneficial they and tennis were to her mental health and wanted to include them. Like that, Athena Camps’ pillars of art, sports and mentorship were born. 

“The whole idea is to build the confidence and community of young girls and women to inspire each other, nurture each other, uplift each other, and be positive and inclusive,” she explained. 

A typical day at Athena Camps will consist of time for girls to try multiple sports with time set aside for art, discussion and, team building. 

This year, Athena Camps is celebrating 10 years and also became a H.I.T.S provider in partnership with USTA NorCal. H.I.T.S aligning so closely with Athena Camps’ teachings, it’s been a natural fit. 

“The partnership with NorCal is just fabulous,” Ryan said. “Our camp has a theme each week, which are life lessons. The H.I.T.S program encourages you to talk about life and the theme and we do that as well so it’s a really natural partnership.”