News & Updates

Girls Play Sports Parents, Guardians & Friends,

2020 has been a year of loss and struggle for everyone, but particularly so for our school-age children. The young girls in our community need GPS’ social-emotional support and physical activity more than ever before.

GPS highlights during this COVID time has been our play at the park, GPS YouTube videos and our Virtual Summit on leadership and action. We are proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, and we need your help to continue providing creative and safe programs for our girls.

Please join me today and make a gift that will support the young and vulnerable girls in our community. We look forward to the day we are back in our schools. Until then, our best wishes for a safe and healthy holiday season.

Joyce C. Anderson
Girls Play Sports Board President

Donate to our Annual Appeal today by visiting our website  or via your phone by texting “Give” to 847-572-5414.

In September, Girls Play Sports hosted their first ever virtual fundraiser.  Named Patio Pep Rally, Board Members, Community Members and Staff hosted friends on their patios for a safe, socially distanced  event.  The 30-minute program, which can still be viewed here  was hosted by GPS Executive Director, Sarah Ghantous and ETHS Senior Elisa Walker. It featured videos from participants, coaches, board members and staff as well as special guest, Liz Stanton, founder of Through Her Eyes Project. We ended the evening with drawing a raffle for 4 amazing baskets put together by board members, Gabe Brooks and Kathy Tisdahl.

We are so grateful to all the community members who supported this event! Together we raised close to $8,500 which will go towards providing scholarships to any girl in need who wants to participate in our program.  The GPS staff would like to thank the following people: our Development Committee, Kathy Tisdahl, Gabe Brooks, Amanda Wright, and Lisa Geraldson, Abby Roman, Ava Sultan, Aleigha Dogan, Alana Stone, and Katrina O’Connor for your work on putting together the videos, David Chan from ETHS for helping us produce the program, Elisa Walker and Liz Stanton for being part of the program and finally all the board members who hosted friends on their patios and allowed us to share the mission of Girls Play Sports.

Hi faithful GPS Supporters!

As I come to the end of my third month as Executive Director, I would like to take a moment to check in with you all.  As you can see from the information below, we have been very busy at Girls Play Sports. Hosting events, running programming and trying to keep calm and faithful during a very difficult time for everyone.  I am so grateful to have joined this organization and for the opportunity it has provided me to support girls in our community.  These months have flown by as I have gotten acclimated to the responsibilities of my new position.  I have been so lucky to have had the support and encouragement from the GPS Staff, Mary Collins, Liz Brieva, Kerri-Simone Adedeji and Viviana Valentino as well as former ED, Megan Livatino and Board Chair, Joyce Anderson. Ladies, I do not know what I would have done without all of you.  While my days have been mostly filled with learning the ropes, I have had the opportunity to hear from many people what an important role Girls Play sports has played in their child’s life.  This goes for both participants and coaches.  It truly warms my heart to know that we are making a difference especially in these very trying times.  As we move forward during the next few months, I will be looking to reach out to more of our community to hear  their thoughts on how Girls Play Sports can continue to serve the needs of the young women in Evanston.

Wishing you all a healthy and safe end to 2020! Thank you for supporting our mission of empowering girls through sports.

With gratitude,

Sarah Ghantous

Hello and happy summer!

How are you doing? Girls Play Sports staff, volunteers and community partners miss seeing our young participants and volunteers and hope you are all doing well.

During the past few months, we’ve been busy providing resources on our Quarantine Gym website page, creating a Quaranteam Skills & Drills video project over on our YouTube Channel, planning our new summer socially-distanced programs,  Sports In Our Community Programs, learning about the latest health guidelines and planning for the future as things open up, restrictions are lifted, and health concerns still on are the forefront of our minds.

We know that GPS plays an important role in the development of girls’ health, well being, confidence, leadership and development as people. In the face of extreme challenges like COVID, racial injustice, and economic depression, it is critical that the community—caring, committed adults and also peer groups—support our youth in staying healthy. As an award-winning youth-based sports development program, GPS provides that kind of critical support, along with scholarships for at least 50% of our participants.  Through our Sports In The Community Programs we are continuing to bring high quality, health-appropriate programs into the community through several innovative approaches that meet children where they are, give them opportunities to interact safely, and lift their spirits along with their skill sets! We need your support.

Together, we will overcome adversity. As you may know, this spring, due to COVID, we had to cancel our first annual Pep Rally fundraiser, all of our programs, and our summer camp. This meant that hundreds of girls who typically participated in GPS activities, learned new skills, discovered strengths within themselves, were not able to engage with our fabulous high school role model coaches and our dedicated staff. Due to all those losses in revenue, we need your support now more than ever. Please make a donation today, any amount makes a difference. Help GPS get back in the game, stronger than ever.

We will get through this together!

-The Entire GPS Team

Donate Today!

Girls Play Sports is thrilled to announce that we have named Sarah Ghantous Stein to the position of Executive Director, effective July 15, 2020. Sarah brings an impressive track record of getting things done as a leader and an innovator. Most recently, she helped grow and transform Curt’s Cafe into multiple locations and raised almost $1 million as the Development Director. Prior to her career in non-profit work, Sarah was in pharmaceutical sales and launched products like Lunesta. She has extensive experience planning fundraising events, grant writing, working with budgets, and developing and implementing a strategic plan.

Sarah will be responsible for creating and implementing a strategic plan, oversight of fundraising and communications, as well as day-day operations.

For the past 10+ years, Sarah has dedicated herself to leading non-profit volunteer organizations in Evanston to support our youth. She has served on the Girls Play Sports Board of Directors, President of the Evanston Township High School Boosters, started Girls on the Run chapter at Walker Elementary, co-chaired the annual fundraiser for Foundation 65, and has led multiple fundraisers on behalf of the Woman’s Club of Evanston. Sarah’s superior skills in global thinking, planning, organization and passion have led to many great successes for the non-profits she has worked with.

Sarah is taking the helm from our original Executive Director, Megan Livatino who brought our co-founders’, Chris Livatino and Liz Brieva, vision to life. Sarah is looking forward to working with the experienced staff at Girls Play Sports to grow the organization and expand programming to other communities with a focus on reaching underserved youth. Sarah did not play team sports growing up as there were not many opportunities for girls to get involved at a young age. She passionately believes that it is something that all girls should get to experience during their youth.

Sarah’s daughter Emma dabbled in many different sports during her youth, was a Girls Play Sports leader and is a NCAA DI water polo player at Villanova. Sarah has a B.S. from Boston University and a certificate in Grant Writing from DePaul University.

Welcome Sarah!