When Jenny Carnes began working as an unpaid school intern for the San Antonio Sports activities Basis within the fall of 1999, she by no means anticipated she’d someday be working the group answerable for internet hosting lots of San Antonio’s largest sporting occasions.
Carnes says her journey to changing into head of what’s now San Antonio Sports activities began even sooner than that, although — when she was first given a basketball in kindergarten.
“A coach gave me a basketball once I was … at an all-boys basketball camp, and I can actually say I’d not be in my job right now had that coach not seen one thing in me and given me that ball that I then practiced with each single day for the following 10-plus years.”
Carnes went on to play basketball in highschool after which for the College of the Incarnate Phrase, the place she additionally studied enterprise administration and sports activities administration, graduating magna cum laude the identical yr she interned for San Antonio Sports activities.
Over time, Carnes has held a number of roles within the group, together with government director of the native organizing committee for a number of NCAA Males’s Ultimate Fours, the 2021 NCAA Ladies’s DI Basketball Match, and senior vp, amongst others. In 2022, she grew to become the CEO of San Antonio Sports activities, following within the footsteps of Russ Bookbinder, who led the group for 10 years earlier than her.
Launched 41 years in the past by a gaggle of San Antonio’s sports activities visionaries who held weekly conferences over buckets of fried rooster, San Antonio Sports activities has develop into a staple in San Antonio, each serving to town safe and host eight NCAA Ultimate 4 occasions and working half a dozen youth applications that concentrate on serving to underserved communities.
Now, with the 2025 NCAA Males’s Ultimate 4 occurring in San Antonio in lower than every week, the nonprofit’s 21 employees members are working full steam forward. However there might be no relaxation for the weary as soon as the colossal occasion concludes as a result of, this yr, San Antonio Sports activities can also be serving to town launch its first unbiased marathon in December, making 2025 actually a monumental yr for San Antonio Sports activities.
“That is probably the most thrilling yr, I believe, in our group’s historical past,” Carnes stated. “And to be part of all of it these years later, and to know that we’re making a distinction for our neighborhood, each in financial affect, but additionally legacy occasions, legacy applications, children occasions — it’s simply, it’s superb, and I’m tremendous proud to to be part of San Antonio Sports activities.”
Within the highlight
As of November 2024, San Antonio Sports activities estimates it has had an financial affect of greater than $1 billion in San Antonio since its founding. The 2025 NCAA Males’s Ultimate 4 is anticipated to have a further $440 million financial affect on town and to attract greater than 100,000 guests downtown.
San Antonio Sports activities now operates a $7 million finances and manages near 2,300 volunteers yearly, not together with the roughly 2,500 volunteers it directs for the Males’s Ultimate 4.
Aside from this yr’s Ultimate 4 and town’s inaugural marathon in December, the group can also be making ready to assist San Antonio host the 2026 NCAA D1 Ladies’s Volleyball Championship, the 2027 NCAA D1 Males’s Basketball Regional event, and the 2029 NCAA Ladies’s Ultimate 4, stated Elena Wells, government director of the San Antonio Native Organizing Committee and vp of occasion improvement for San Antonio Sports activities.
That’s on high of the common programming the nonprofit has, which incorporates Activate SA, i play! afterschool, Past the Sport and town’s All-Star soccer and basketball video games.
The group’s incoming chair Mary Ullmann Japhet stated she’s seen the group each remodel and be reworked by San Antonio over its 41-year historical past.
Japhet served as San Antonio Sports activities’ senior vp of communications and advertising for 18 years previous to beginning her personal public relations media firm in 2019 and has remained an lively board member.
“It is a very huge yr for San Antonio Sports activities,” she stated. “The group is an actual spine of our neighborhood.”
Fried Hen Gang
As part of the “Fried Hen Gang,” the group of San Antonio sports activities leaders that first conceptualized a San Antonio Sports activities basis, famend San Antonio swim coach George Block says it’s unbelievable to see what San Antonio Sports activities has develop into.
Block, who skilled 9 Olympians throughout his profession and went on to function the athletic administrator of Northside Impartial College District for 35 years, credit the thrill surrounding the 1984 Summer time Olympics in Los Angeles for the group’s rise.
He stated it was this pleasure that pushed then-Mayor Henry Cisneros to create an “newbie sports activities process drive,” which consisted of Block, fellow swimmer Pete Williams, native architect Ralph Bender, former pentathlete Robert Marbut, Jr., and Invoice Hanson, the manager director of then-San Antonio-based U.S. Trendy Pentathlon Affiliation.
The group met on Tuesday nights to debate how they might assist town capitalize on newbie sports activities tourism, Block stated, including that they’d at all times have a bucket of Kentucky Fried Hen as they plotted.
After two years of devoted efforts, the San Antonio Sports activities Basis was formally established with the aim of bringing the Olympic Competition to town. Nevertheless, regardless of their relentless work, the 1991 Olympic Competition was finally awarded to Los Angeles as a result of San Antonio lacked the mandatory amenities to host such a high-profile occasion.
Spurred by the rejection, Cisneros and the Fried Hen Gang have been in a position to safe approval to put a proposal for a brief half-cent tax improve on the poll simply two days later, geared toward funding the development of a “domed” stadium.
In January 1989, the tax handed and building of the Alamodome started. In 1991, town was awarded the 1993 Olympic Competition, with the Alamodome formally opening its doorways in time for the occasion.
“We had years that we’re solely surviving as a result of we’re being housed by considered one of our volunteers of their workplace complexes, and our first kind of huge victory was the ’93 Olympic Competition,” he stated. “The irony is that it nearly made us go broke.”
However the success of the Olympic Competition boosted the group’s profile and paved the best way for future occasions, solidifying its fame and making certain its survival by means of subsequent years of progress and improvement.
The Alamodome hosted its first Males’s Ultimate 4 in 1998, led by bidding efforts from the San Antonio Sports activities Basis. This yr’s Ultimate 4 brings the overall to 5 males’s and three girls’s tournaments held in San Antonio. San Antonio final held the Males’s Ultimate 4 in 2018, profitable the bid to host it once more in 2025 that very same yr.
“It’s each superb and it’s precisely what we dreamed as a result of we knew it was doable,” Block stated of San Antonio Sports activities’ progress and success.
Each step tells a narrative
Block stated he believes it’s the group’s success in these main occasions that has given town the boldness to lastly let San Antonio Sports activities launch the San Antonio Marathon.
He joked that San Antonio Sports activities has been “kind of politely combating with town” for years about taking on the marathon, as a result of they noticed “a lot cash getting sucked out of town,” as a result of marathon being hosted by the California-based Competitor Group as part of their Rock ‘n’ Roll Operating Sequence.
Carnes and Block each credited former metropolis supervisor Sheryl Sculley for bringing San Antonio its first Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon in 2008.
An avid runner who’s accomplished quite a few marathons, together with two Boston Marathons, Sculley acknowledged the potential for a significant race to advertise health and increase town’s fame.
“Ten years in the past, there weren’t lots of people out working commonly,” Sculley advised the San Antonio Report in 2016 whereas making ready for a Metropolis Supervisor’s 5K. “Now you may’t go anyplace with out seeing individuals out working.” San Antonio’s 2024 Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon had an estimated 19,000 members.
Carnes stated San Antonio Sports activities is happy for the brand new problem of internet hosting San Antonio’s personal marathon. The nonprofit has partnered with town and marathon business specialists from The Belief Group to get the inaugural occasion up and working.
The marathon’s theme is “Each Step Tells a Story,” Carnes stated. From an Alamo-themed mile, to a Spurs-themed mile, to a Whataburger-themed mile, San Antonio Sports activities is happy to launch the complete course later this week, Carnes stated.
“We’ve been working for therefore a few years, and we’ve constructed this actually cool crew, and to be on this place to indicate our neighborhood what we will do on a big scale — after which ship one thing just like the marathon — that’s what we’re what we’re all about, what we’ve been working towards,” stated Wells.
The marathon is about to happen Dec. 7. Registration for the occasion is at the moment open.
