In Oakland, a library where kids check out soccer balls instead of books

There's been plenty of discussion about the accessibility epidemic in youth sports in the United States in recent weeks, but Oakland thinks it has the solution. It just takes kids to something they usually would avoid in the summer: a library.

This month, the Oakland Parks, Recreation and Youth Development department debuted the Park Play Lending Library inside the Larry E. Reid Sports Center in East Oakland's Brookfield Village neighborhood. Inspired in part by the tool-lending libraries offered in Oakland and Berkeley, local residents can borrow sports equipment to use at nearby facilities and parks. The July 11 opening was described as a celebration of National Park and Recreation Month.

The idea came about thanks to a team led by Maribel Lopez, the OPRYD recreation supervisor, as she noticed that kids and families would come to the sports center and ask to borrow equipment often, especially as the days got closer to summer. The 18-year parks and rec veteran used the last remaining bits of her department's annual budget to make this vision come to life. The library is stocked with footballs, soccer balls, volleyballs, jump ropes, yoga mats and tennis equipment. After some community suggestions, they even added card and board games, like UNO and dominoes.

"We're aware that sports can lead to social mobility," Lopez told SFGATE in a phone interview last week. "When kids are familiar with golf, tennis, soccer, and other, you know, games or sports that are more socially mobile, then they have access to different communities, different friend groups, different neighborhoods, and we want to be a vehicle for that. We want kids to be able to speak each other's language and connect through sports."

Lopez believes the library will be especially helpful because it helps a high-need region of Oakland, according to the city's equity index. Located just south of the Coliseum complex, Brookfield Village lacks city resources and services compared with other neighborhoods, which amounts to a lack of green space, parks and, most importantly, equipment for kids to play sports with. The area also has a lot of kids, so Lopez thought it would be a great place to start this library as a pilot program.

For many working at the sports center, they know firsthand the benefit that this sports library could bring to the community, as they grew up there and saw what it was like to live without one. 

"I think it could give kids an opportunity to come out to the park and play in a safe environment, knowing that there is equipment here to use if their parents don't have the monetary needs to to provide the kids with soccer balls, footballs," Riles Nganga, an OPRYD recreation leader, said. "I know growing up, I didn't have access to any of this stuff, so I think us being able to offer that to the community is a great thing."

This is not the first time the Larry E. Reid Sports Center has brought its community a highly needed athletic public resource. When it opened in 2011, it brought the first swimming pool to the neighborhood since 1976. In the decades between, the only swimming option was a nearby contaminated estuary. 

"Kids were talking about being Olympic gold-medal swimmers but we had nowhere to learn," community representative Jacquee Castain told Bay Area News Group in 2009.

In a similar vein, there are families who want to see their kids being active, entertained and engaged with something positive this summer - particularly if it keeps them out of the streets doing other stuff - but who don't have access to even the most basic equipment they'd need to do just that, particularly in East Oakland. Maria Garcia, a lifelong Oakland resident who works the front desk of the sports center, said many families are limited financially when getting their kids involved in sports.

"Parents are trying to keep food on the table, but also navigate being able to have their kids go to things and participate in things, and sometimes, it can be difficult," she told SFGATE last week. "And I think having resources like this kind of opens up that door for them to be able to do that."

In 2022, the Aspen Institute released a report on youth sports in Oakland and found that just 14% of all the kids in the city get the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day - below the 23% national average. The organization's national State of Play report in 2025 revealed that the cost of youth sports has risen 46% since 2019, with the average family spending about $1,016 annually on a child's top sport.

These numbers have received a considerable spotlight underneath the United States' serving as a host of the World Cup. While the U.S. men's national team had one of its most successful campaigns in years, what continues to haunt this country's future in the sport are these rising costs, an issue that the faces of American soccer have acknowledged.

It's not the goal of this library to fix the American pay-to-play soccer system in one fell swoop. But what it does do is serve as a force moving in the opposite direction of what created this youth sports dilemma in the first place. If all goes well at this center, it's not hard to see a rapid expansion so that there's one sports lending library in each Oakland district, with a greater variety of equipment based on community feedback. They also hope to develop partnerships with local teams. Until then, however, the focus is making this pilot prospect get off the ground as smoothly as possible.

"The library is just at the beginning stages right now," Nganga said. "Everything isn't even here yet, so we still want to get spike ball out here. Anything cornhole. We're still ordering cornholes. Anything that can get people outside, outdoors, moving and not being in the house sedentary."

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