In 2003, Christy Keswick (B'97) drove a U-Haul from western Massachusetts to Boston. In the back of the box truck were 500 Spalding basketballs.

A week prior, Keswick had trekked to Spalding's then headquarters armed with just a PowerPoint presentation. She left with her first donation pledge. The only thing left was to pick up and store a truckload of basketballs, all within a week.

Keswick is the co-founder and president of Good Sports. The nonprofit organization collects and donates new sports equipment for underprivileged youth around the U.S.

More than two decades since that cross-state drive, Good Sports has donated to more than 10 million children across the country.

"Good Sports is trying to break down barriers to access for kids to play youth sports and to get involved in physical activity," Keswick said. "We know that sports have an impact on social, emotional, physical, mental and academic [well-being]. We can't start saying certain kids have access to something like that while certain kids don't. That is what drives us as an organization."

The Roots of Good Sports

Keswick grew up in a small town in Connecticut and loved sports from an early age. When she was a little girl, she joined her town's new youth soccer league. She was the only girl on her team and felt out of place, but her father kept encouraging her.

During her time at Georgetown, Keswick (second from left) coached a Little League team in the Georgetown neighborhood with her best friend Kelley Sullivan (B'97).

"Soccer ended up being a sport that I gravitated toward. It was always a safe place to be," she said. "Sports was something I did every day, spent a lot of time on courts and fields. I learned a ton from sports in terms of teamwork and just life skills."

She took her love for sports with her to the Hilltop.

Keswick cheered on her friends playing for Georgetown's basketball, soccer and football teams. She also coached a Little League team with her best friend and stayed active by running around the hilly streets of the Georgetown neighborhood.

In the classroom, Keswick valued her liberal arts education. She took to heart the Jesuit value of cura personalisand the importance of developing every part of herself.

"It's not one thing that makes you successful. It's many things and experiences over time that make you successful," she said.

Keswick studied finance and marketing in the McDonough School of Business, where she developed the business acumen she would later use as a nonprofit founder. During her junior year, she interned with Ernst & Young and its Entrepreneur of the Yearprogram. She learned about what it takes to build a start-up company, lessons she would use several years later as the co-founder of Good Sports.

Launching a Nonprofit Start-Up

After graduating from Georgetown, Keswick worked in management consulting in Boston. On her first day of work, Keswick met her colleague Melissa Harper, who would become a good friend and the co-founder and CEO of Good Sports.

Keswick with her co-founder, Melissa Harper.

Keswick loved to research, create strategies and solve problems for her clients. But she also wanted to implement the strategies she was creating and build something herself, not hop between projects every few months. She wanted to do something more meaningful, she said.

During a scuba diving trip with Harper in Key West, Florida, the two friends dreamed about building a business together. It was the first play in what would eventually become a game plan for Good Sports.

Keswick and Harper wanted to channel their love for sports into a business in the Boston area. Through research, they recognized that participation in youth sports had been declining, and many children were being priced out of sports.

The two also realized that Massachusetts was a hub for sports equipment companies and manufacturing, including firms such as New Balance, Reebok, Puma and, at the time, Spalding.

"If we could build a model where these companies could provide their excess equipment they weren't selling, maybe we could redistribute it to organizations that need it and help solve this problem," Keswick.

In 2003, Keswick and Harper founded Good Sports and put their business model to the test. Back then, entrepreneurship was not as common a path as it is today, Keswick said. Quitting their consulting jobs was a huge risk.

"You can't build a business on the side, but you quickly learn that no one wants to give you any money to do it until you prove the business model," Keswick said. "As scary as it was, it felt so energizing to be able to think about building something on your own.

"If you're going to build a nonprofit, you've got to be passionate about the mission. We just felt really good about what we might be able to build together if we could get this right. That kept us going."

Making Sports Available for All Kids

Today, Good Sports has donated almost $130 million worth of sports equipment to high-need communities in the U.S.

When Good Sports received its first donation, Keswick and Harper had no idea where to store 500 basketballs. They stuffed their cars, apartments, friends' homes, anywhere they could find until they could identify communities that need sports equipment.

Now, the nonprofit operates a 45,000-square-foot warehouse to sort donations. The organization has also grown to 30 full-time employees.

As president, Keswick leads the organization's strategy, business development and marketing. Over the last two decades, Keswick has formed partnerships with prominent brands like Gatorade, Under Armour and Dick's Sporting Goods. Good Sports also regularly collaborates with professional athletes such as Steph Curry and Paige Bueckers.

In November, the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Allianceawarded Keswick with the 2025 GEA Entrepreneurial Excellence Awardfor Best of Social Impact. Keswick said she was proud to be awarded by her alma mater and to see Georgetown recognizing social impact entrepreneurship.

Keswick serves as the president of Good Sports and leads the organization's strategy, business development and marketing.

"I think recognizing that there are people who are doing this for a different kind of return and a different kind of impact, that made me proud as a Georgetown alum that they're thinking in that way," she said. "It was a pretty incredible experience."

In looking ahead, Keswick is focused on positioning Good Sports to thrive well into the future, beyond her leadership.

"We have built the foundation of a company that is going to thrive beyond the founders. That is something that we care deeply about and that we are focused on as an organization," she said. "There's more to do here, and the work we are doing is critically important."

For Hoyas looking to get into entrepreneurship, Keswick recommends leaning on others, especially Georgetown alumni, and having patience while building a strong business foundation.

"There has to be some unmet demand, some unmet need that makes this make sense. Or, you need to figure out how to be a disruptor around something you can do better," she said. "If you can identify that, then you can be creative about how to approach it. Just know that you're never going to be able to do this alone. Building a business is definitely a team sport."

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