Trump to Attend Final Day of Patriot Games, Airing on ESPN App

GENEVA, Ohio — President Donald Trump will attend the final day of competition at the Patriot Games just outside Cleveland, Ohio, today, according to his public schedule.

The Patriot Games are a national youth sports competition featuring two teenage athletes—a boy and a girl— from each U.S. state, territory, and some tribal nations. The male and female winners of the competition, which includes a mix of military-style endurance circuits and playground sports, like kickball and dodgeball, will split $250,000 in college scholarship prize money. Athletes arrived on the campus of Spire Academy in Geneva, Ohio, over the weekend, and formal competition began Sunday.

ESPN has been streaming the event on ESPN app, with on-site coverage anchored by some of its highest-profile talent, including Laura Rutledge, Jordan Rodgers, and Beth Mowins. 

The network is also producing an hour-long primetime special about the Patriot Games, scheduled to air on ESPN on ABC on Thursday, August 13 at 9 p.m. ET.

An ESPN spokesperson told Front Office Sports it doesn’t plan to feature any kind of live cut-in to Trump’s visit on its linear broadcast channels today. 

However, according to an email invitation reviewed by FOS, the president will sit before a television audience at Spire Academy this evening as part of the ESPN on ABC special taping. 

Trump described the Patriot Games as “an unprecedented athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes” in a video announcing the event late last year. According to CNN, athletes were selected through a video application process, where contestants were asked to film themselves answering a series of questions about why they wanted to compete and how sports have shaped their life experiences.

The event is sponsored by Freedom 250, an organization created by the Trump Administration to plan and execute large-scale celebrations in honor of America’s 250th birthday. Several events put on, at least in part, by Freedom 250 have been sports-centric, including the UFC Freedom 250 fight on the White House lawn in June, which lost $30 million for UFC’s parent company, TKO Group Holdings. 

It’s unclear whether Freedom 250 and the Trump Administration intend to make the youth sports competition an annual or otherwise recurring event. In June, Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values Nick Adams—who organized a White House visit for “Freddy,” the viral World Cup fan—told FOS the president “is the ultimate sports fan.” 

“He loves athletes, he loves athleticism, he loves athletic prowess,” Adams said. “He’s into all of those sports. He was himself very, very talented at multiple different sports. And I think, you know, had he not decided to go into real estate and politics, he may well have become a professional athlete of some kind.”

After the games conclude in Ohio, next up on Freedom 250’s sports celebration docket is the Freedom 250 Grand Prix; the NTT Indycar Series race is happening August 22-23 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.