Youth sports provide countless benefits to children, who grow physically, mentally and socially through their involvement in team activities.
Yet, youth sports participation is down nearly 8% over the last decade and the opportunity for kids to play is increasingly tied to a family's income.
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Working with local community leaders, Play Like a Champion helped to increase youth sport participation by 400% in two years in one neighborhood of concentrated poverty.
Transforming Youth Sports Culture
The youth sport industry has placed an increased emphasis solely on winning and achievement, creating an environment with high-stakes and high pressure that caters to only the most talented athletes and those who can pay to play”.
Play Like a Champion transforms this destructive culture through education and by striving to make sports fun again, including all children in an environment that is compassionate, nurturing and focused on facilitating the physical, mental and emotional development of children.
The youth sport industry has placed an increased emphasis solely on winning and achievement, creating an environment with high-stakes and high pressure that caters to only the most talented athletes and those who can pay to play”.
Education is critical for those who lead and establish the culture for youth sport organizations: coaches and parents. Developmental psychologist and University Professor, Dr. Clark Power created a research-based curriculum, influenced by his 25 years of professional work in child development and his personal experiences with his own children.
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This curriculum is the Play Like a Champion Today Educational Series, which has served more than 150 youth sports organizations across 42 states since 2006. Over 125,000 coaches and parents have taken the workshops, which have touched the lives of over a million children.
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Fifteen years of rigorous coach, parent, and child evaluations attest to the quality and effectiveness of these workshops.
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The Play Like a Champion program provides continuous educational content throughout the year through weekly coach/parent emails and consultation that elevates the sport culture.
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Every June, Play Like a Champion hosts an Annual Sports Leadership Conference attended by community partners. This presents an opportunity for all partners to gather in kinship for additional education, inspiration and connection.
The transformative sport culture of Play Like a Champion commits to 4 basic core values:
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Serve all children in the geographic community regardless of athletic prowess or ability to pay.
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Understand that the activities are for play/leisure and are meant to be fun.
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Conduct all activities in a team environment. A "real" team is a community held together by close personal ties and commitment to the common good of all. Whereas a “pseudo” team is a group formed for the sake of each person’s self-interest. A real team is comprised of members adhering to the adage, “There is no ‘I’ in team.”
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Provide coaching that is focused on life mentoring first and improving athletic performance second.
Adhering to these core values, Play Like a Champion has worked successfully with urban communities in Chicago, IL and South Bend, IN to bring together existing organizations, develop programs and educate coaches. In doing so, we've helped build sustainable assocations that provide the positive opportunities and mentorship children need. Keep reading to learn more about how we do this!
Building and Sustaining Associations
Play Like a Champion works with local communities to help them build collaborative associations of youth organizations so that they may better serve all the children in their neighborhoods. Typical organizations that comprise these collaborative associations include:
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After-school sports and recreational programming
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Summer camps
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Parks and Recreation
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Public School Athletics
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Boys and Girls Club
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Police Athletic Leagues
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Specific Sport Programs, such as “Girls in the Game” or a boxing club.
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Large scale organizations, such as a regional hospital with community outreach projects, may also join as “affiliate” members.
The distinguishing principle of our approach is building “kinship” with partner sport organizations. Play Like a Champion does not adhere to a "top down" method but rather a “together with” approach. An example of this can be found in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. In 2016, we sat down with community and youth sports leaders in the area. Over a period of 6 months, we listened to and learned from North Lawndale youth leaders, built trust among participating members, and developed shared goals that came about through discussions, experience, a community-wide needs assessment, and a shared vision.
Forming associations is also advantageous because individual sports programs that serve children from low income families in low income neighborhoods lack the organizational and financial resources to sustain their operations. Rather than compete with each other for funding that is on the decline, they are able to collaborate for the sake of greater effectiveness and efficiency. In other words, they are stronger together.
Consider Play Like a Champion's winning formula for community-based association building:
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Play Like a Champion enters communities at the invitation of community leaders focused on children’s welfare and development and operates as an engaged member of the local community establishing trust and a mutually felt sense of kinship.
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We operate as a “catalyst” helping individual organizations to cooperate together for the good of the whole.
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We adhere to the principle of “saving children on the front end.” Children face threats of street violence, gang recruitment, school dropout, and incarceration. Youth sports and recreational programs are not only valued for the sake of “prevention” but for developing young people as productive citizens.
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We conduct a thorough assessment of needs and assets in the community.
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Working collaboratively, we develop a strategic plan to address the community’s needs in creating sustainable programming for local youth.
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We form the association as a centralized umbrella organization responsible for operational support, creating the processes for planning, recruiting, data collection, reporting, and seeking funding. Association members retain their organizational identities but coordinate their operations to serve all of the children in the community.
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Finally, Play Like a Champion provides training for coaches and parents that sets the culture and establishes a positive, character-driven experience for local children.
These steps not only transform the culture and provide opportunities, they create a sustainable model for future generations of children. Play Like a Champion works with in kinship with communities to make this happen, but we can't do it alone. Sustaining youth sports requires resources that can be hard to come by in low income areas. Keep reading to learn how A Team for Every Child works to secure resources for partners and how you can help.
Securing Resources
Play Like a Champion believes that youth sports should be a public good and accessible to all. We believe that all children deserve an opportunity to play, to be physically active, to have caring adult mentors, and to be a part of a team. These experiences can be transformative and lifesaving to both the children and the mentors that engage in them. The accessibility of sports and physical activity for all cannot happen without recourses to make them possible. For sustainable youth sports programs to run they require:
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Facilities, including fields, gymnasia, swimming pools and their continued maintenance, preferably in the neighborhoods of the children they are serving.
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Equipment such as balls, bats, gloves, racquets, backstops, basketball hoops, uniforms, etc..
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Transportation. This can be a significant obstacle to participation for children whose parents work full-time, do not own a vehicle, or cannot afford the costs.
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Security guards to monitor the safety of children and facilities.
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First aid, which requires training, equipment, and a system for injuries that occur on-site.
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Insurance.
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Coach education.
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Coaches, who may be volunteers or a mix of paid persons and volunteers.
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Personnel costs for the administration of programs. Record-keeping and continuous evaluation is essential to sustainability and effectiveness of services delivered.
Funding for recreation within public schools and at the community level has been on a steady decline since 2008. Thus, fees assessed to players is the primary source of revenue for most youth sports programs, which creates a problem in low income areas. In many poor, urban and rural areas, the “pay to play” model is inaccessible. The most common solution is to provide "scholarships" for children who cannot afford the cost of participation. Rarely, though, are there enough scholarships to go around and generally scholarships go to the most “deserving” (most athletically talented) children. As a result, inspired leaders in the community run their own programs with limited organizational capacity and funding, scrambling to raise money just to survive from season to season. This is extremely time-consuming and is often handled by great coach-mentors whose time is better spent with the children.
As a solution to these problems, Play Like a Champion helps build collaborative associations that can take-over many of the administrative duties and oversee the securing of resources for individual member organizations. The collaborative association supports the sharing of resources such as facilities, equipment, and other supplies needed to run each of the individual programs in a community. Furthermore, the association takes over the duties of fundraising in order to secure the long-term capital needed to keep these programs running. Yet this can be a difficult task. Play Like a Champion provides expertise in this area and assists with lobbying for public funding and seeking grants from community foundations, as well as donations from individuals. Through Play Like a Champion, sports and recreation programs in poor and underserved communities can have a chance to flourish, sustain, and create opportunity for children in every community, regardless of income.
So where do you come in? We need your help to help transform the culture of youth sports, build associations in urban communities and secure resources that allow us to sustain opportunities for children across the country.
Our Impact
In the North Lawndale neighborhood in Chicago, as little as 1 in 9 young people had access to sport programming in 2018[1]. Of those who had the chance to participate, 88% were boys and 82% were playing basketball.
We know that young people want to be part of a team and play with their peers, through all types of activities and programs. These low participation counts are not for lack of interest but rather a lack of opportunity and resources. Every young person deserves a safe and nurturing environment to play -- whether through formal programming or informal play. This kind of environment allows a young person to grow and develop their capacity for healthy relationships with their peers and adults, a strong belief in oneself and the encouragement to overcome and address hardship[2]. Without a safe, healthful after school activity, children are also more vulnerable to involvement in gangs and street violence.
Sports and recreational programming provide space for a young person to develop aspects of themselves that are rarely encountered in a purely academic setting. Though typically referred to as extracurriculars, Play Like a Champion believes sport and recreational programming is so essential that we view them as co-curricular to the lessons learned in the classroom.
When 85% of young people in a neighborhood lack the access to programming capable of providing lifelong mentorship, relationship-building, and accountability for one’s actions, we all lose[3].
Our Response
Through community interviews and needs assessments, it became clear that communities want to come together to work towards providing all young people with the benefits of these co-curriculars. At Play Like a Champion, we are creating collaborative neighborhood athletic and recreation associations that provide every child the opportunity to play and be a part of a team experience that develops them socially, emotionally, morally and physically helping them to become productive citizens.
In North Lawndale, we facilitated the organizational development of the North Lawndale Athletic and Recreation Association (NLARA). Initially a group of committed community leaders, the NLARA has developed into a family of 15 non-profit organizations working to serve over 2,000 young people and their families. As an association, the NLARA works collaboratively to increase opportunities for young people to play. In just 3 years since its inception in 2017, the NLARA has experienced exciting growth.
Our Impact
The NLARA has increased total participation by over 400% between 2018 and 2020 [4]. Within the sports programming supported by the NLARA, there has been major improvements in the diversity of opportunities provided to young people.
We saw a 335% growth in girl’s participation between 2019 and 2020 [4]. We accomplished this through intentional partnership with girl-focused programming and encouraging programming partners to create an inviting culture for girls to join in.
For more detail on our work, see the following recent reports:
South Chicago Needs Assessment
Additionally, we welcomed multi-sport programming, rugby, and soccer into our programming! This means we doubled the variety of sports offered to young people in the neighborhood over 2 years.
By working collaboratively and establishing one shared goal across a community of programmers, the NLARA is creating opportunities for young people who were previously unable to participate. With project management from Play Like a Champion, the NLARA continues to measure and assess their collective impact through analyzing registration data and program evaluations.
Play Like a Champion expedites positive change within communities by driving data-informed decision-making and guiding the development of a collective culture focused on positive youth development through play.
Citations
[1] Needs Assessment 2017
[2] Survey data from 2019 and 2020
[3] Needs Assessment 2017 and Survey Data 2018-2020
[4] NLARA Participation Data 2018-2020
Join the Movement
There are several ways that you can be part of the solution, helping to provide a team for every child in your community or in other cities across the country. You can help change the story by joining us and investing in the lives of children who need our support.
Consider the following ways to join the movement!
Creating opportunities for children requires resources. From dedicated staff to equipment and training, we need your help to provide in order to provide sustainable solutions to children in need. Click here to learn more about how you can support these efforts!
Work with us to provide a positive youth sports experience for every child in your city. From an initial needs assessment to building a sustainable association and beyond, talk to us about how Play Like a Champion's approach can benefit your community. Click here to send us an email and learn more!
Creating a great youth sports environment means giving coaches the tools they need. Using Play Like a Champion Today Educational Series curriculum, we train coaches in a positive, developmentally appropriate approach to sport. Sponsor training in your community! Learn more about our programs here!
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