Los Angeles - Kids In Sports, one of the city's premiere after school sports programs, has had wonderful benefactors in its 12 year history. Its board includes Olympic luminaries Rafer Johnson, Anita DeFrantz and Ann Meyers Drysdale. Its fund raisers and events have had the benefit of honoring sports celebrities like Olympic Skater Dan Jansen and surviving members of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. From its outset, KIS was unique in creating local KIS sports clubs in each community it serves. Today, hundreds of community volunteers, mostly parents and neighbors in hard pressed neighborhoods, support each of the local 14 KIS sports clubs throughout Los Angeles. But nowhere in its history has it had a benefactor quite like 15-year-old Nick Barnes, of Pacific Palisades. Nick, a very active Boy Scout, was eager to earn points for his Eagle Scout badge (the highest honor in Scouts). While searching for just the right project, his mother showed him a newspaper article about Kids In Sports, whose after school sports programs serve nearly 9,000 boys and girls throughout greater Los Angeles County. "I like to work with kids," says Nick, a sophomore at Campbell Hall School, a private school near his home. "So I thought I should do something to help Kids In Sports." What he decided to do was to build the first Westside drop-off for (gently used) sports equipment. "I thought of doing this collection because we have a lot of old sports equipment," he said. "I knew there was no drop-off anywhere in the city for KIS and I thought this would be a good way to help them get more equipment to the kids."

Kids In Sports is structured so that part of its mission is, in fact, making sure kids have the sports equipment and uniforms they need to have a fulfilling sports experience. "Much of our funding goes into furnishing all our teams with uniforms and the proper equipment to play sports," says KIS Executive Director Keith Cruickshank. "Having someone like Nick understand, at his age, the importance of those elements to a successful outcome for KIS kids is quite remarkable." The project began more than a year ago when Nick was 14. He and his Dad built a 7' high, 5 1/2' wide and 3 1/2' deep shed to serve as the drop-off center. "It took a long time to build," he says. "About 300 hours. My friends in the Boy Scouts helped because my Dad and I had never done anything like this before. It was hard but we got it done by building it in sections at my house." An 8th grader at the time at St. Matthews, the school allowed Nick to put his beige shed at the car pool drop-off area on the campus. When he graduated, the school left the shed in that location so that Nick could continue his collections. "In the beginning, I was doing it for the Eagle Scout points," says Nick. "I also had a school requirement for community service hours. But this was more than that. It was something I truly enjoyed doing. And once it started, I knew I wanted to keep it going, even after I had enough Eagle points and even after I'd graduated." Getting the word out about the collections required additional organizing on Nick's part. St. Matthews has a running announcement in the school paper about the drop-off shed. But Nick also created another route for raising awareness about collecting the equipment. Calling again on his fellow Scouts, he put together a plan where he and his Scout pals would blanket a few streets in the Pacific Palisades with hundreds of printed flyers announcing the need for the sports equipment. It takes several hours for them to distribute the flyers. The payoff is lunch at a nearby sandwich shop with Nick and his Dad. "These are really good guys," says Nick, "so they're happy doing the work and getting lunch."

After he and his friends distribute the flyers, they go back to the same few streets in the Palisades the next weekend. Using his family's two Radio Flyer wagons, the guys fan out, looking for cartons of sports equipment at the houses where they left flyers. Those donations go into the wagons and eventually are combined with the equipment collected at the shed. "I go to the shed about every five weeks," says Nick. "Every six months, my mom and I pile what we've collected into the car and take it down to KIS headquarters in Exposition Park. The shed doesn't fill up quickly, but I'm happy with what we've collected." Over the last couple of years, Nick and his pals have donated everything from skis to golf clubs and basketballs, helmets, a snowboard and even La Crosse sticks. "Nick is a wonderful young man," says Tony Giarla, program director for Kids In Sports. "He works very hard at collecting this equipment and it means a great deal to all of us at KIS to have the support of Nick and his family." Nick says this effort means a great deal to him as well. "I really like knowing that I'm helping out other kids," he says, "and maybe making a difference in their lives. Maybe something I've donated will inspire a young kid to play basketball, or it'll give him a hobby or something like that." Nick plans to keep the shed going until he goes to college. Nick's mother, Sarah, says she and her family are very proud of Nick. "It's just who he is," she says. "Kids In Sports is not his only community service. He also works at a local children's service center during the summer. He has a good sense of humor so he knows how to make it fun for them." Nick says he's learned a lot doing his community service work. "Most of all, I've learned that I'm lucky to live where I live. I'm very fortunate. That's why I want to give back to the community and to the kids," he says.