April Brooks has become a familiar face in the Jefferson County public schools, where she oversees athletics and activities across the Louisville, Ky., district. Her visibility is key to building relationships that support her goal of setting high, and inclusive, expectations around youth sports.
“When I go into elementary schools, the kids are like, ‘There’s the sports lady!’ I love it. That’s me,” she said.
For elementary school students to recognize any athletic director is unusual, let alone one who oversees 52 school-based athletic directors and some 10,000 student-athletes. Athletic directors typically work behind the scenes, managing packed competition schedules, hiring and supporting qualified coaches, and ensuring games run smoothly for student-athletes and spectators alike.
Then again, Brooks, 43, stands out, even in a sea of athletic directors anywhere. And not just for her tall, athletic presence, honed during her days as a celebrated athlete at JCPS in the 1990s, when she captained her high school track team.
Brooks is the first Black woman to serve as executive director of athletics and activities at JCPS, and she works in a profession that remains overwhelmingly male. About 80% of the nation’s K-12 athletic directors are male, and 66% are white, according to recent national data.
Brooks’ hire is good for the profession. It’s also good for the students in her district. “The fact that Dr. Brooks is working in a community she came up in lets girls get to see her not only as a woman and a leader, which is unique and inspiring, but they also are seeing a woman who came from where they came from. Automatically, there’s a certain level of buy-in that comes from having a shared lived experience that she’s bringing to the table,” said Daycia McClam, vice president of community engagement and advocacy for the Positive Coaching Alliance, a national nonprofit that advocates for improving youth sports.
That visibility is essential—not incidental—to the goals Brooks has set for the district. Those goals include keeping the districts’ top student-athletes in public schools rather than losing them to better-resourced private schools and significantly boosting girls’ participation in sports.
“I want more kids to have opportunities to do something positive that gives them a stronger sense of belonging in their school and keeps them away from the streets and other negative things that could be going on,” Brooks, a 2026 Leader To Learn From honoree, said. “So I think everything that I’m trying to do with sports coincides with them being better in the classroom, being leaders in the classroom, and being leaders on the field.”
Facing a post-pandemic sports-participation slump
Brooks took the helm of Jefferson County’s athletics department during the 2021-22 school year, when the district saw its lowest sports-participation numbers in years. The decline mirrored what was happening nationally: High school sports participation dipped 4% between 2018-19 and 2021-22, with a greater decrease in girls’ participation than boys’.
At a December hearing of the Committee on Education and Workforce, U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., a former educator, said 70% of children quit organized sports by age 13, calling the trend “a loss of one of the most effective tools we have to combat rising isolation and mental health challenges in our children.”
Overall participation in high school sports is hard to track. The numbers vary by state, gender, and individual sport (for instance, at least 21% fewer girls are playing high school basketball now compared to 2000, according to National Federation of State High School Associations survey data). Over the past 23 years, high school sports nationwide saw peak participation in 2011 of 55.1% and a post-pandemic low in 2021 of 49.1%. Recovery has been slow and uneven, with the latest data from 2023 showing 51.9% participation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Inequity played a major role in post-pandemic declines in high school sports, say experts. During school closures, student-athletes from higher-income families could continue training through private gyms and clubs, Ann Paulls-Neal, the head coach of girls’ track and field at Highland High School in Albuquerque, N.M., said.
Student-athletes from underresourced families didn’t have that same access. Many were also responsible for caring for siblings while parents worked, especially in districts like JCPS, Brooks said.
In Jefferson County, where 66% of the district’s more than 96,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, high school athletics participation plummeted to 6,632 students in 2021-22, down from 9,607 in 2017-18—a 30% drop. Girls were especially underrepresented, with about 1,500 fewer girls than boys playing sports.
Even after schools reopened, JCPS continued to confront additional barriers to athletic participation. Private schools with turf fields, stadium seating, and modern facilities drew some top athletes away. At the same time, Brooks noticed that many girls who could be participating simply weren’t.
The decline in girls’ sports participation isn’t unique to JCPS. “We see a huge drop in sports participation among girls between the ages of 9 and 13,” said McClam.
Many communities lack athletic opportunities for girls-only teams that emphasize development. And as girls approach adolescence, they may become increasingly uncomfortable playing on mixed-gender teams, McClam said. Also, the growing number of competitive travel sports teams starting at ever-younger ages draws mostly affluent families that can pay for equipment and related fees. The outliers who stick with sports, said McClam, tend to be girls identified from a young age as talented athletes. And they are apt to join teams—and schools—with the best resources.
So Brooks had a lot of work to do to make JCPS a place where the best student-athletes wanted to stay and play for their local public school and where students underrepresented on the playing fields and courts—especially girls—opted to stick with or give high school sports a try.
Brooks faced these challenges while new to the position and uncertain of how receptive her colleagues would be to her. Her background, going back to her childhood, prepared her well for what lay ahead.
Growing up in a sports family
Brooks’ approach to leadership is rooted in her upbringing. She comes from an extended family of athletes: Her father was a quarterback at the University of Kentucky; an aunt ran track and field for a state championship-winning team in college; and an uncle played basketball at the University of Louisville before playing professionally with the Utah Jazz.
Sports were central to family life. Neighborhood games of dodgeball and kickball topped Brooks’ fondest childhood memories—and she usually held her own. “My dad would always tell all the neighborhood boys that I was the fastest girl and that I could beat all of them,” said Brooks, who admitted to proving him right. “He taught me and my sister that girls could do anything that boys could do.”
That confidence carried into high school, where Brooks ran track and cross-country and eventually captained the track team. “Becoming the captain of my high school track team taught me how to get people to rally around a common goal,” said Brooks, who went on to run track at the University of Kentucky.
She learned early to lead by example—showing up early, staying late, and doing the work herself. That philosophy still defines her leadership style.
“I do every job that I expect everybody else to do,” Brooks said. “So you may see me in the concession stand, you may see me taking tickets. You may see me putting numbers on for kids and getting ready for a relay—wherever I’m needed.”
Breaking into a male-dominated field
Brooks’ career trajectory prepared her for standing out. As a student, she was often one of the only Black students in advanced academic classes and in cross-country, which remains predominantly white.
“My parents always taught me that we love everybody, we accept everybody,” she said.
Brooks’ groundbreaking hire doesn’t seem to have fazed her, but it resonated across the district.
“If you take a look at the landscape of our athletic directors in the district, it’s mostly white men,” said Robert Moore, the chief of schools at JCPS. “And now, there’s this strong Black female stepping in to lead a group that hasn’t been led by anyone that looks like her.”
To female employees in the district’s athletic department, the hire felt validating. “We thought either the guy who was at the middle school would just get promoted or some other guy, somewhere in some other department, would get the job,” said Leslie Lintelman, who oversees middle school athletics at JCPS.
The district’s decision to hire Brooks came as somewhat of a relief to Lintelman. “It almost felt like a weight lifted off your shoulders. You felt that empowerment, like, this is somebody I can relate to,” she said.
Empowering girls through sports starts early
One of Brooks’ early priorities was expanding girls’ access to sports. Working with Lintelman, she helped launch the district’s first all-girls elementary basketball league, giving girls a dedicated space to play and build confidence.
To generate interest in the all-girls’ elementary basketball league, Brooks visited many physical education classes at the district’s elementary schools. She admits the task was made easier by the recent popularity of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, Women’s National Basketball Association players she included in her video presentations to elementary students.
“Now, we have this kind of pipeline of little girls who are enjoying the sport, and then we’re getting them into their middle school teams, and then from their middle school teams, they’ll go on to play in high school,” Brooks said.
Expanding opportunities and listening to students
Brooks felt good about her efforts to build a pipeline of female athletes from a young age. But that wouldn’t fix the post-pandemic drop-off of sports participation in the district, which had hit girls particularly hard.
“When I looked at that data, I noticed that, after COVID, we really had a decline in females’ sports participation, particularly among African American females—we were thousands of students down,” she said.
Looking for answers, Brooks asked girls in the district: What sport would you like to play that we’re not offering?
The answer was clear: flag football.
Girls’ flag football has surged nationwide in the past few years, with 17 states sanctioning it as a high school sport by the fall of 2025, according to NFL FLAG, the official flag football league of the NFL, and experts predict many more will follow.
With the support of the district’s high school athletic directors, Brooks launched a club-level flag football program in 2024, with seven girls’ teams districtwide. This year, it’s up to 13 teams of between 20 to 25 athletes per team, she said, and interest continues to grow in the new sport. Among the 174 female students playing in the districtwide flag football program, 122 are Black, 26 are white; 26 identify as “other.”
Competing with better-resourced schools
Brooks also confronted facility disparities head-on. Athletic ambassadors—middle school students—surveyed peers who weren’t participating. Many cited better-funded club teams outside the school setting as why they chose them over school-based sports.
“I was honest with our superintendent. I said, ‘I want you to go out there and look at some of these [private] school facilities,’” Brooks said. “They’ve got college-like stadiums, new locker rooms, turf fields, bleachers, concession stands.”
The superintendent responded in 2022 with a long-term plan to add about five turf fields to the district per year. So far, 10 of the fields have been installed. The district also invested in two college-level gymnasium floors that allow it to host tournaments. New indoor and outdoor bleachers are also part of the plan.
Community support in the form of tax money has facilitated some of these changes, Brooks said. But to generate additional funding, Brooks launched an annual Celebration of Champions gala, which recognizes the district’s athletes. Despite early skepticism, Lintelman said, the event has raised more than $100,000 in two years, funding equipment, scholarships, uniforms, and facility upgrades.
In another effort to support districtwide athletics, Brooks has partnered with the University of Louisville to secure sports-administration interns. They gain valuable experience to pad their resumes for future work opportunities, and JCPS gets extra support at athletic events and for related behind-the-scenes tasks.
‘Always on call’
Athletics leadership is a round-the-clock job, said Brooks, and delegating at least some tasks is necessary.
“We’re constantly on call,” she said—responding to injuries, facility issues, or last-minute staffing needs.
“It’s not just throwing the balls out. It’s making sure that the refs are there. It’s making sure that you have an announcer. It’s making sure that you have ticket takers. It’s making sure that the kids have water,” she said. “I don’t think people realize the time commitment away from their own families it takes to support student-athletes: the nights, the weekends, when most teachers and administrators are gone, the athletic director is still there.”
These days, attending sporting events generally means she’s working. But Brooks brings the same enthusiasm to athletics that she has since she was a little girl, which makes the job fun.
“I’ve learned so much more about so many different sports. I’m at bowling championships, swim championships. How cool is that? I never thought I’d be at a bowling championship,” Brooks said. “And I really think what these cheerleaders do is pretty fantastic. I’m kind of wowed by cheer and dance.”
