UD fan creates custom shoes to honor Anthony Grant’s late daughter

“I was asked to do a pair of customs for Dayton basketball head coach Anthony Grant,” Gilardi said in the video. “We decided to highlight his daughter’s organization, Jay’s Light, whose goal is to spread awareness of mental health. I added a portrait of her on one side of the shoe, as well as added the logos of the organization on both shoes. I added the throwback UD logo on the other side of the shoe, which personally is my favorite logo. I’m so happy to have done these for him, and I hope to see these on the court. As always, go Flyers.”

Gilardi, who lives in Troy, is a 2019 graduate of Lehman Catholic High School in Sidney. He earned a degree in graphic design from the University of Dayton in 2023. He started his shoe business three years ago. It grew by word of mouth as people saw his designs on social media.

Gilardi designed two or three pairs a month as a side job while he was a student at UD. By his senior year, he was designing and selling two pairs a week. Over the past year, his business took off and became a full-time job. He also started working for Stadium Custom Kicks in January.

“I was applying for graphic design jobs, and that whole process was just brutal,” he said, “Especially now for that industry, it’s just so hard to get a design job and it’s so competitive.”

Gilardi built his own business and has seen it expand with high-profile clients. He has designed custom cleats for Green Bay Packers safety Rudy Ford and Tennessee Titans cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting.

In the video showing him painting the cleats for Murphy-Bunting, Gilardi said, “They were done for ‘My Cause, My Cleats,’ and he wanted to highlight his organization: Successful Jocks. I was given these shoes at noon, and they had to be ready and shipped out by 3 o’clock that same day so they can be worn the next step. This is a pretty surreal moment for me, and I hope I can get more players in the NFL to wear my cleats as well.”

The opportunity to design a pair of shoes for Grant came about after Gilardi reached out to Dayton baseball coach Jayson King to see if he could create custom shoes for the team’s players and/or coaches. He designed three pairs, including one for King, in early February.

King then told Gilardi he wanted to send a pair of custom shoes to Grant and that he wanted the shoes to spotlight Jay’s Light, a mental health and suicide prevention initiative started in the name of Jayda Grant, who was also known as Jay by her friends and family. She took her own life at the age of 20 in 2022.

In October, UD held an event titled “The Spotlight, To Shine A Light On Mental Health” in honor of Grant’s daughter. It then raised money for the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation, the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio, Jay’s Light and other local organizations by playing a charity basketball game against Ohio State at UD Arena.

All of that was on Gilardi’s mind as he painted the shoes in his studio at home in Troy. The top of the shoes include the numbers 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

“The whole time I was working on them I was little emotional, knowing what he’s gone through,” Gilardi said. “It was very cool for me to create something for him that means a lot to him.”

Gilardi doesn’t know if Grant will wear the shoes during a game but did hear that Grant liked the shoes.

“He did say when he does wear them, or if he wears them, he’s going to wear them with pride,” Gilardi said.