Every summer, 40 of the nation’s top high school track and field athletes travel to Beaverton, Ore., to participate in the Nike Elite Program, designed to inspire and train these high-level student-athletes. This year, according to KPTV, the training camp is coming under fire after a female student-athlete filed a lawsuit, alleging she was raped by a fellow participant.
Court documents say the 16-year-old student-athlete from California was “pressured for sexual favors” by a teenage boy at the July 2026 camp, and when she refused, he “violently raped her.”
The Nike Elite Program gives participating athletes the chance to connect and socialize when they aren’t on the track or field sharpening their skills. “She was looking to connect with people, and she obviously thought this was a guy that she could connect with and had no idea what his propensities were, what type of person he was,” said George Goldberg, the girl’s attorney.
The lawsuit says Nike staff found the girl after the assault, held her for 30 minutes without another adult present, and pressured her to write a statement claiming the incident was consensual. When her parents were called, staff did not show the parents her statement. Nike staff did not call the police.
The male athlete who allegedly assaulted the girl was expelled from the program and sent home, but Nike did not alert any of the other student-athletes or their parents of the issues with that athlete.
In a statement, Nike and the National Scholastic Athletics Foundation said partly, “We do not agree with the account of events set out in the complaint, and we will respond to it fully through the legal process. Two young athletes are at the center of this, and we are not going to discuss either of them publicly, now or later.”
“People that have been the victims of sexual assault - they need to be heard. And they need to know most importantly that if they come forward, they’re not going to be ostracized,” Goldberg said.
The lawsuit is seeking economic and non-economic damages and will be contested in Portland’s U.S. District Court.
