Number 46
NCAA and Partners Transform Closed San Antonio School into Legacy Park
Featured Focus:
Community Programs, Youth Development, Access/ Equity / Inclusion
Scope of Impact: Local
As part of their annual commitments to supporting the tournament’s host cities, the NCAA Men's Final Four Legacy Project (presented by Dove Men+Care) recently transformed San Antonio's South Side with the debut of Rayburn Legacy Park. Here’s what you should know:
Revitalized Space: The park features a renovated gym, new walking track, sports fields, and more, creating a vibrant hub for the community. This addresses a critical need in a designated "Park Desert."
Youth Focused: Located at the Boys & Girls Club, the park offers enhanced facilities for over 100 children, promoting healthy lifestyles and community engagement.
Collaborative Victory: The project's success is a testament to the partnership and teamwork between the NCAA, the City of San Antonio, Harlandale ISD, and San Antonio Sports.
While Houston pulled-off a memorable upset of Duke before meeting the same fate at the hands of Florida, the Final Four brought a lot more to San Antonio than only excitement on the hardwood. The transformation of a former elementary school into Rayburn Legacy Park, bringing much needed resources to the local San Antonio community, was the highlight of the weekend — if you ask us, anyway.
With this project, the NCAA and its partners made a real sustainable and strategic investment in a neighborhood that often gets overlooked. The demographic profile of the South Side of San Antonio reveals a community grappling with significant socioeconomic challenges, and the park offers a tangible and accessible resource to promote physical health, mental well-being, and positive opportunities for kids and their families.
It echoes the commitment shown overseas, and highlighted in DL35, to ensure that big sporting events bring a positive long term impact in the community they are hosted in. We love it!
YOUR NEXT PLAY:
You don’t need to host a Final Four to focus on community impact. All events and partnerships can benefit from taking a page out of the NCAA’s playbook, working with local partners to support local residents.
So, here’s our question: When you host an event, what are you doing to make sure you leaving the host community in a better state than you found it?
Information about the the NCAA's broader initiatives for community engagement during the Final Four.
In-depth article from the San Antonio Report on the Rayburn Legacy Park unveiling.
Official website of San Antonio Sports, a key partner in the Rayburn Legacy Park project.
Details on the partnership between the NCAA and Dove for the Legacy Projects in host cities.
Official site of the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio, serving youth at Rayburn.
The school district partnered with the NCAA for Rayburn Park transformation.
