Former basketball standout Megan Silva Schultz ’06 has made an impressive career helping the Greater Richmond Region get active. And she’s just getting started.

 

Though she didn’t join organized sports until she was eight years old, Megan Silva Schultz ’06 dazzled as a basketball standout at Hermitage High School, earning district player of the year and all-state honors. What she went on to accomplish at Randolph-Macon is nothing short of legendary.

Schultz’s 2,371 points, 700 assists, and 446 steals top the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) all-time lists—for women’s and men’s basketball both. The Yellow Jackets won 99 games during Schultz’s tenure, and the two-time captain helped them reach the national championship in 2005 and the elite 8 the following year. Following her senior season she was named Honda’s DIII National Athlete of the Year. A decade later, she became the first NCAA DIII athlete to be inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

The accolades speak for themselves. Schultz, though, will be the last person to tell you about them. “My passion is for the game itself,” she said. “Outcomes are one thing, but the process is what I enjoy most.”

Attention to process is where Schultz shines in her role as chief operating officer of Sports Backers. The local nonprofit, whose goal is to “transform greater Richmond into the most physically active community in the nation,” produces some of the region’s biggest events, including the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k, the Richmond Marathon, and Dominion Energy Riverrock.

“It’s the only ‘real’ job I’ve had,” Schultz joked, referring to the five different roles she’s held in her nearly 15-year career at Sports Backers. She cut her chops as an intern “helping out however I was needed” at smaller Sports Backers events. Soon she was managing those same events—first the smaller ones, then larger ones like the Richmond Marathon. One opportunity led to the next until she found herself coordinating Sports Backers events and programs in a public-facing role.

“My initial desire was to grow as an individual within the organization. But as I was growing, so was the organization and its needs. We grew together.”

Schultz described her day-to-day as “connecting people and organizations with the tasks needed to make sure events run smoothly.” While that involves “a lot of schedule-management meetings,” she still pitches in wherever and whenever help is needed. At Sports Backers, it goes with the territory.

“No matter your position, we’re an all-hands-on-deck team during event setup,” Schultz said. “We work with thousands of volunteers, our own staff, and event committees to bring events to life. There are tons of moving parts. It’s so rewarding to see all the work you’ve done as a team come together in a desired end, and there’s no better place to watch it happen than on the front lines.”

Schultz believes working at Sports Backers means you have to live and breathe the organization’s commitment to a team-oriented, active lifestyle. Employees routinely show up to work in workout clothes or go for runs together during lunch. She brings that same commitment back home to her family, where it’s important for her three young children to see her “practice what you preach.”

“I love all the lessons you learn from playing sports,” Schultz said. “Patience, teamwork, the ability to fall and get back up again. So many characteristics that I strive for every day I learned best on the court.”

Like their mother was at their age, Schultz’s children haven’t expressed much interest in sports—not yet at least. She chooses to keep the whole family engaged by providing a variety of options to stay active like playing outside, walking to the school bus, or going on bike rides. The latter proved to be one of the pandemic’s silver linings. One of Schultz’s favorite memories from the last year was leading her family on a series of bike rides through Randolph-Macon’s campus when there weren’t any games scheduled.

“It’s important that we remain connected to the College as a family, and I’m proud to be able to pass that along to our kids through something as simple as a bike ride,” she said.