Why 10,000 Cleats For Kids Are So Important
My name is Ikechukwu Ogwuegbu and my first pair of cleats cost $22.49 from Payless, and I got them in 6th grade. From the moment I laced them up, I was outside every day after school and on weekends with my brother, Chiamaka. He was the quarterback, and I was the wide receiver, sprinting up and down the grass field next to our apartment, imagining I was juking and hurdling invisible defenders.
After months of begging, my dad finally enrolled us in the flag football team at our local community center. This was my first taste of organized sports, and I loved every aspect of it. I loved going to practice, the butterflies on Friday nights before early Saturday morning games, and the pride of walking down the line, chin up, giving handshakes to teams we beat.
I wore those cleats for three years until I reached high school and joined the football team. As a freshman, I was an absolute scrub, but by my senior year, I had become a team captain and offensive MVP. This journey of hard work and dedication earned me the opportunity to attend and play football at the University of Maryland, where I would eventually go on to start Veii, the brand I have been building for the last five years.
My love for football transformed the ten-plus years of my childhood that were crucial to my development. I cannot imagine what I would have done with all that time without it. That one pair of cleats may have only been $22.49, but they had a compounding effect on my life to this day.
This is why I feel such a deep and passionate responsibility to provide a pair of cleats to 10,000 children in our communities near and far because a garden of opportunity starts with a seed of investment.
For every purchase using the code "cleatsforkids" we will donate 10% of sales toward providing cleats to kids waiting for that one pair that will be the difference in their life like that one pair was for me.
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