Lewisburg foundation gets youth grant to help kids play sports
Lewisburg’s Play It Forward foundation picked up $520 in youth-led grant money, adding to more than $1,000 aimed at easing sports costs for local kids.
Play It Forward, The Jaxon Snyder Foundation, received a $520 Youth Sports Access Program grant through Community Giving Foundation’s Youth in Philanthropy effort, adding to a local roundup that said the Lewisburg nonprofit got more than $1,000 in youth grant funding overall. For Union County families facing the rising cost of youth athletics, the money is aimed at a familiar problem: the price of getting a child onto a team in the first place.
The grant comes from a program that is now in its 22nd year and includes all public schools in the Community Giving Foundation’s 5 1/2-county service area for the 2025-26 cycle. Students survey peers, identify needs, and decide where the money goes themselves. In 2026, they distributed $100,400 through 125 grants, with the awards celebrated April 15 at Danville High School.
Play It Forward says its work is simple and practical. The foundation collects and redistributes sports equipment, and it also helps families with team fees and court costs. That matters because sports expenses can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars per season, a level that can push participation out of reach for parents trying to cover registration, shoes, uniforms, and travel. The new grant will not erase that barrier on its own, but it does give the foundation another tool to chip away at it.
The Jaxon Snyder name behind the organization gives the effort a deeper local meaning. WNEP reported that Jaxon Snyder died at age 13 in 2024, and his family created Play It Forward to carry on his love of sports and to help other children avoid being left out because of cost. His mother, Stacie Snyder, and father, Nate Snyder, have described the work as a way to remove financial barriers to youth sports. The family also dedicated a bench in Lewisburg-area parkland in Jaxon’s memory.
For Lewisburg and the broader Central Susquehanna region, the latest grant is modest in dollar terms but direct in purpose. It helps keep equipment moving, fees covered, and one more child in the game, which is often how pay-to-play barriers are reduced, one season and one athlete at a time.
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