“What inspired the Summit is the N7 Fund Advisory Board wanted to contribute back to the overall vision Nike N7 has related to access to sport,” says Sam McCracken, N7’s general manager and chairman of its board of directors. “They thought, if we can bring the key players together under one roof, we can take a positive step forward in addressing the challenges to access to sport.”
The sold-out conference has attracted approximately 400 grassroots youth recreation leaders, including nonprofit representatives, wellness coordinators, coaches and Native athletes going by the title of Nike N7 Ambassadors. Prominent names include Notah Begah III, a Professional Golf Association tour pro who founded the Notah Begay III Foundation. He will share the beneficial work of his Foundation, which aims to reduce incidences of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes and promote the leadership development of American Indian youth through sports, health and research programs. Other panelists sharing success stories as a result of access to sport include Lorenzo Neal, retired NFL player for the San Diego Chargers and advisor to Intertribal Sports, a Temecula, California-based program that brings members of Southern California Tribes closer together through sports; Craig Robinson, the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University; Waneek Horn-Miller, an ambassador for IndigenACTION (an initiative through the Assembly of First Nations to coordinate a national sport fitness and wellness strategy for aboriginal youth) and the co-captain of Canada’s 2000 Olympic National Water Polo Team; and Kevin Carroll, a prominent author for ESPN/Disney and an National Basketball Association athletic trainer.
Numerous sport program coordinators, coaches and tribal representatives will also attend. “These are the people rolling up their sleeves to go back into their community and leverage sport as a tool for change,” McCracken says. “We also have a dynamic emcee, Kevin Carrroll, who has made a strong commitment” to the N7 initiative, he added.
Below: "Alvina Begay will kick-off the second morning of the Nike N7 Sport Summit on October 29 with a 2-mile walk/run around the Nike campus." (Courtesy of Nike N7)
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For more on the subject, see:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/10/31/nike-n7%E2%80%99s-sam-mccracken-leaves-footprint-in-spirits-hearts-and-minds-60779
Nike N7’s Sam McCracken Leaves Footprint in Spirits, Hearts and Minds
Recapping Nike’s First Annual N7 Sport Summit
The color turquoise wedded with an air of high spiritedness that just about set the Tiger Woods Building to shaking at Nike’s World Campus in Beaverton, Oregon, Oct. 28-30 during Nike’s first annual and sold out N7 Sport Summit. Nike’s U.S. communication manager Jill Zanger said 350 registered guests and some 50 Nike employees filled the building.
Passes hung around participants necks from turquoise lanyards. Nike employees volunteered their own time, sporting turquoise t-shirts. Guides to Nike’s sprawling campus wore turquoise rain gear. Summit participants donned the Nike shoes, compliments of each registration. And the air of spirit, the sheer exuberance? It came from Native youth who love to play, and from the adults passionate about those youth, their health and the well-being of Native communities.
The 2013 summit:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/04/29/nike-n7-sport-summit-proves-catalyst-native-leaders-athletes-define-tomorrow-149065
NIKE N7 Sport Summit Proves a Catalyst for Native Leaders, Athletes to ‘Define Tomorrow’
Nike N7 has transformed into a movement for positive change by more than 350 Indian country movers and shakers who swelled NIKE World Headquarters for the April 18-20 2013 N7 Sport Summit.
They share N7’s belief that sport has the power to transform.
Sparked by visionary Sam McCracken (Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux), N7 began with the 2007 N7 Air Native performance shoe designed for the wider Native foot, still provided at low cost to urban Indian and tribal programs. Nike rolled out the N7 retail line in 2009, whose proceeds to tribal communities and programs through the N7 Fund now exceed $2 million.
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