Rock Solid Sports began in May of 2004 by CEO, Shelley McMillian who felt a calling to serve both inner city and the All-American kid community. Rock Solid was originally developed as an adventure sports camp program and ran strictly in the summer. The uniqueness of the program is that while it ran Christian sports camps, it also incorporated an aspect of character building, team building, and leadership skills.
During the two year trial run of this program, we began to see a strong need in The Shreveport community to have a recreational facility that served all demographics, while also attempting to combat the obesity rate of a state that was, at the time, the second most obese state in the nation. In the Fall of 2006, after witnessing 1,136 kids come through Rock Solid’s summer camp, we were forced to look at the true impact the program was making. We gave up our lease we had on a YMCA facility and walking in complete faith, transitioned the program to a non-profit and waited. We waited on a property where lives could be forever changed, a place where every dollar given could also impact other non-profits, a place where we knew God had His hand all over the future of a program, which could be a major impact on the Shreveport-Bossier community, as well as, future communities.
2007 and 2008 would see us chunk a tremendous amount of money into a facility (The old Riverside swim and tennis center) that we dreamed we would get to stay for a long time, however with 6000 lives being impacted at that facility, God seemed to have other plans so in 2009, we transitioned our program to Calvary Baptist Academy’s campus. We have enjoyed 3 incredible summers on this campus where we have seen over 8000 lives impacted through after school programs, summer camps, and holiday camps. We are currently in the process of reconstructing our 40 foot rock climbing wall at this facility, along with some sand volleyball courts and pray that in the future God will give us the means to erect the Rock Solid “Will Mathews Impact Center.” We have served children of every demographic, race and religious foundation. We have served the needs of Special Olympic athletes, the Providence House homeless shelter children, Junior League, various churches, various schools, child protection services, foster care and over 15,000 kids who have represented our All-American middle and upper class demographics. We have given over $300,000 in subsidies to children who could not afford to participate in such a program.
We are running after school programs, various teambuilding opportunities for schools, sports teams, corporations, churches and various other non-profits. We are also the management group running all city swimming pools in Shreveport, LA and have had the pleasure of serving and ministering to over 40,000 people in our community through those pools the last 3 summers.
In 2010, God showed up in an incredible way through a group of young people from Bolivar, MO serving the Shreveport community. In April of 2010, a member of the Bolivar community anonymously purchased the former Jamz building and has donated it to the use of Rock Solid’s mission of furthering the Kingdom. Missouri is currently running leagues, tournaments, sports performance academies, sport’s training, summer camps, leadership conferences and is slated to open its after school programs in August of 2011.
The future of Rock Solid (in both Louisiana and Missouri) includes the continuation of a dynamic summer experience, after school programs, sports performance academies, leagues, tournaments, youth events, senior adult events, kid fit programs, etc. Our vision is to create a facility in which families can come together to play, learn a healthier lifestyle together, while also being surrounded by incredible mentors, community leaders and people who can enhance family relationships.
