She watched girls quit the swim team. Then she built a global league of camps
Maegha Ramanathan started Girls4Sports as a high school freshman. It now runs free athletic programs in 23 countries.
The problem started on a swim team in Dublin, California. Maegha Ramanathan was 13, one of the girls on a competitive co-ed squad, when sexist comments aimed at her teammates began to push some of them out of the pool. Soon the comments were aimed at her too.
She did not quit. In 2021, as a high school freshman, she founded Girls4Sports instead.
The idea is plain and a little stubborn: no girl should be denied the right to play. “I wanted to ensure that no girl is ever denied the right to play sports,” Ramanathan told TIME. The group’s camps are free, and ABC7 San Francisco watched one at a local park, with sessions covering tennis, badminton, volleyball, soccer and track and cross country, and check-in for kids aged four through 12.
The staffing model is the clever part. Young women run the camps, equipment drives, conferences and workshops, and young women attend them. “In that way, we’re accomplishing two things at once,” Ramanathan told TIME. Every camp is a tryout for the next generation of organizers.
The numbers have kept pace with the ambition. TIME, which named Ramanathan a 2026 Visionary, reports that at 18 she leads about 1,500 volunteers across 20 U.S. states and 23 countries. By TIME’s count, the group has helped integrate more than 39,600 girls into 250 athletic programs worldwide, and has donated over 10,350 pieces of equipment to children’s homes, hospitals and youth teams.
The reach is genuinely international. TIME says Girls4Sports has helped launch or grow girls’ teams in India, South Africa, Pakistan, Kenya and Lesotho, often alongside local partners. Ramanathan’s parents are from Devakottai, India, a town where, she says, very few girls play sports.
There is also a small-grants arm. Last year the group launched a national fellowship that gives 15 girls $200 each to run their own initiatives, which so far have included workshops on body image and mental health for female athletes.
The recognition has followed. Ramanathan received the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award at the 2025 ESPY Awards, and this March she spoke at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York.
She has been consistent about where the credit goes. “It’s all thanks to the power of youth,” she told TIME, “what youth can do when they come together.”
The swim team lost some of its girls. The league that came out of it exists so that fewer teams do.
