This year, Ursinus College hosted its first ever Girls & Women in Sports Day, and it was a slam dunk.
The 2026 Girls & Women in Sports Day took place on campus on Sunday, March 29, and featured a free all-sports clinic for girls in grades kindergarten through eighth. The event gave each participant the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of several sports from our very own Ursinus athletes.
The event coordinator, Katie Ciuffreda ‘26, was initially inspired to host this event after attending the Snell-Shillingford Symposium, a leadership conference for female collegiate athletes in the Centennial Conference. Ciuffreda explained, “Growing up, I had frequently attended Rider University’s Girls & Women in Sports Day, and that idea of wanting to pay it forward to the next generation had always been in the back of my head somewhere.”
The process to plan and coordinate the event was quite extensive, and Ciuffreda had to start from the ground up. To help put her idea in motion, she recruited Ursinus’s Title IX Coordinator Dan Kelly as well as Rider University’s Girls & Women in Sports Day coordinator, who supplied Ciuffreda with a list of planning steps to guide her. Ciuffreda also involved Ursinus coaches and athletes, as well as the Athletics Department to help staff and promote the event.
When asked about the importance of having an event like this at Ursinus, Ciuffreda talked about her own experience at Rider University’s Girls & Women in Sports Day. “When I was growing up, going to Rider’s event, I was able to see myself represented in a way I hadn’t experienced before,” said Ciuffreda. “It was the first time I had really thought like, ‘Hey, I could do this when I grow up.’”
Ciuffreda emphasized how all-sports clinics such as this one are great opportunities for young girls to explore other sports. “There’s some pretty typical sports that parents place their kids in, like soccer or softball,” she said. “But maybe they are able to attend an event like this, and the kid is now interested in tennis or volleyball, something they hadn’t yet explored.”
She also emphasized how impactful the event is for the young girls who participate: “It really didn’t hit me like how important this was until about halfway through the event. I was watching one of our younger groups of girls learning to pick up a lacrosse ball for the first time, and then I went to the gym and saw girls learning to bump and spike a volleyball… The whole time, I could look around and see smiles on the faces of the girls, their parents, and the Ursinus athletes.”
Since last Sunday, the event has received a tremendous amount of appreciation and positive feedback. “I’ve heard in thank you emails from many parents already that they can’t wait to attend next year’s event and that they will spread the word to everyone they know, so I just really hope the school [and the Athletics department] take notice that uplifting female athletes matters,” said Ciuffreda.
Since Ciuffreda is a senior and is graduating this spring, she is looking for two fellow student athletes to take over her coordinator position in order to host the event next year: “My hope is that with all of the positive feedback we received, that athletics will help put on the event next year.”