These father and son Philly sports diehards paint the cleats that their favorite players wear

The metal cleats were not allowed in the ballpark, the security guard said, unless they were a birthday gift.

Ryan Stevens and his father, Ron, had driven 14 hours in 2021 to deliver a pair of custom cleats to Andrew McCutchen before the Phillies played in Atlanta. McCutchen did not order the cleats — he simply liked one of Stevens’ social media posts — but Stevens knew this was his chance. He had to get them inside.

Ryan now works full-time customizing cleats and sneakers alongside his father. They take a plain shoe and bring it to life, painting it to perfectly match a uniform and adding personal touches for each player. Their company — NXT LVL Customs — has been commissioned by the players of the Philadelphia sports teams they live and die with. One of their pairs — the cleats Cooper DeJean wore for his Super Bowl pick-six — is even in the Hall of Fame.

But four years ago, the father and son were just trying to get noticed. So they purchased a gift bag, stuffed McCutchen’s cleats inside as if they were going to a birthday party, and made it past that security guard.

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“It was guerrilla style,” Ron said. “Whatever happens, happens. We were trying to see where the buses came in. We were thinking of all this stuff. Somehow, we got them in. None of this was planned. We didn’t talk to anyone. It just so happened that that day, they were doing batting practice on the field.”

They grabbed McCutchen’s attention from the stands and pointed to the bag. McCutchen waved them down to the field, and the father and son presented him with the cleats. McCutchen’s “Uncle Larry” alter ego was painted on one side, and his “rock, paper, scissors” home run celebration was on another. Ryan Stevens even researched what size cleat McCutchen wore. They were “dope,” McCutchen told Ryan. It was a start.

“I was like, ‘OK, now I have to top this,’” Ryan said.

Ryan saw the customized cleats big-leaguers wore and told his father he wanted a pair for his high school season.

“I said, ‘Yeah, how much are they?’” said Ron, who moved his family from Mayfair to Millville, Pa., when his son was 5. “It was like $1,000. That isn’t happening.”

So the son decided to paint his own cleats. They weren’t perfect — the paint peeled, and the shoes fell apart — but they were his. Soon, his teammates were asking him to paint theirs. Stevens, 22, researched the correct paints to use, learned how to prep the shoes, and added finishers.

His father painted cars at a dealership after graduating from Lincoln High School, so Stevens asked him for help. Painting shoes was almost like painting a car, his dad said. His hobby became a business in the spring of 2020 after the pandemic shortened Ryan’s freshman year at Central Penn College. The job blends his two passions: art and sports.

Ron, who was working for the state, chipped in when he could before business boomed so much that he left his job to join his son. They paint cleats for pro athletes, high school players, and guys in softball leagues. Ryan told his father that he wanted to start a business that could make custom cleats — the ones he wanted as a teenager — affordable for everyone.

They paint sneakers, too. They painted 50 pairs last week for employees of a skincare company to wear at a conference. The father and son do it all. Even Mike Schmidt ordered a pair.

“We’re working on stuff, and he’s on a FaceTime call with Mike Schmidt,” said Ron, 49. “I’m just in awe. His wife is yelling at him in the background. I’m just like, ‘This is crazy. This is insane.’”

» READ MORE: Cooper DeJean’s pick-six cleats, Nick Sirianni’s Super Bowl fit, and more Eagles artifacts are now in the Hall of Fame

McCutchen never wore the cleats they delivered, but the trip gave Ryan inspiration. He soon began messaging every athlete he could, seeing if they wanted to order a pair of cleats.

Finally, someone bit. Bailey Falter, then a Phillies pitcher, asked for a pair of Irish-themed cleats for spring training. The father and son hand-delivered the green cleats with shamrocks to Falter in Clearwater, Fla., before he wore them in a spring game. They watched on TV as Falter wore them on the mound. They made it.

Falter’s cleats led them to making a pair for Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott. Then Edmundo Sosa wanted his own. And Weston Wilson needed them, too. It seemed like the whole Phillies clubhouse was ordering them. A year earlier, they were sneaking cleats into a gift bag. Now they had a cast of Phillies wearing their cleats in the World Series.

“My wife and myself, we always instilled this work ethic of ‘Nothing is going to be handed to you. You have to go after it,’” Ron said. “I told him ‘Do it while you’re young. Take chances. Go for it.’ Once you get older, you have a family and kids and bills. You’re not always going to have this opportunity to take a chance. I told him to just push as hard as he could.”

The father and son watched the Super Bowl together in February at Ron’s house in Yardley. A week earlier, they met DeJean in the parking lot of the NovaCare Complex to deliver him cleats before the Eagles flew to New Orleans. The cleats were midnight green and black with the Super Bowl logo and the area codes of Philadelphia and DeJean’s Iowa hometown.

“That was the first NFL shoe we ever did,” said Ryan, who lives in Downingtown.

» READ MORE: It’s Cooper DeJean’s era. For a day, Eagles fans got to celebrate with the newest Philly icon.

Ryan grew up 150 miles from Philadelphia in Columbia County, but he never lost his passion for the teams his father raised him on. Philadelphia sports, he said, were everything.

“Living up in Millville, you had the ‘I’m a Cowboys fan, Yankees fan, Penguins fan,’” Ryan said. “There was no one like me there. I would wear the jerseys, and people were wearing cowboy boots, flannels, and cowboy hats. I definitely stuck out a little bit.”

The father and son are fans, so watching games is always stressful, Ron said. But now your favorite players play in the cleats you painted for them and the stress builds. What if they lose? What if he does bad? Is it my fault? Then they watched DeJean pick off Patrick Mahomes in the second quarter of Super Bowl LIX and weave through the Chiefs for a 38-yard touchdown that felt like a pendulum shift.

“As Eagles fans, we’re going absolutely crazy,” Ron said. “And he’s wearing our shoes. You don’t have anything to do with it, but in your mind you’re like, ‘That’s because of us.’ It was insane.”

After the game, DeJean loaned the cleats to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which displayed them last month in an exhibit celebrating the Birds’ second Super Bowl title. The cleats will stay there until after next year’s Super Bowl. It’s about a seven-hour drive from Philly to the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. That’s half the distance the father and son drove in 2021 when they were just chasing a dream.

“Just when I think it can’t get any crazier, he’ll call me and say, ‘Dad, guess who called me,’” Ron said. “I don’t think there’s any father in the world who wouldn’t love to have this opportunity to do this with his kid. As a father, this is awesome. One of our things we always had was sports. We watched games. We watched the Phillies, the Eagles, the Flyers, and the Sixers. That was our bonding thing.

“To be able to still have this in common and go to games and talk sports and then to have this business is really cool. I don’t know if there’s another word for proud. Me and my wife are just so proud of everything he’s done.”