By LINDA FLANAGAN
A handful of cities and counties have begun to pay closer attention to how sports in their areas are organized and made available to youth. Some local governments are working to coordinate and rationalize the way sports are offered to children and adolescents in their areas. Others are providing funds to neighborhood youth sports groups. Governments in three communities stand out for their leadership in improving youth sports: Fairfax County, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland; and the city of Philadelphia.
Background and key characteristics of the three models, each of them distinct:
Fairfax County Athletic Council
Balancing Competing Interests
In room 206 on the second floor of the Pennino Building on 12011 Government Center Parkway, in Fairfax, Virginia, 23 members of the Fairfax County Athletic Council and a handful of staff gathered for their monthly meeting to talk about sports. Kids’ sports, mostly: how to organize them, make them fair for all, and reconcile the competing adult interests in youth sports. It was a cold night in February, and the mixed group of men and women—some distinctly sporty, in ponytails and baseball hats, others wearing sweatshirts with athletic insignia—sat behind low-slung tables that had been shoved together to make a rectangle, so everyone could see and hear their colleagues around the room.
Two hours into the meeting, after hearing about the 5,000 unannounced cancellations of reserved gym space at elementary schools last year, the board chair erupted. “There should be repercussions!” she said. Families who had paid for sports programs that were to be held at school gyms were understandably livid. Hadn’t the school principals agreed to the county’s terms of use? This has been going on for years, the representative for volleyball said. Maybe it’s time to go to our members and organize an email campaign to get the Board of Supervisors’ attention, he added. A new Council member who also served on the Board of Education promised to pay attention. “We need to work together,” she said. It would be on the top of her mind when she next visited the schools. The chair reiterated that the families in her community, many of them from low-income Title I schools, would balk at any fee increases for sports programs if the cancellations weren’t addressed.
The Fairfax County Athletic Council includes 26 members, 23 of whom are voting members, under its bylaws. Representatives come from the following:
9 from each of the county’s “magisterial districts,” or civil divisions
3 from towns not included in one of the above districts
8 from “sport-specific councils” (baseball, soccer, basketball, slow-pitch softball, fast-pitch softball, football, volleyball, lacrosse) who are selected by their own Sport’s Council
3 at-large representatives, to speak up for women, diversity concerns, and general issues
3 members from county government: directors of Neighborhood and Community Services, Park Authority, and School Board (all non-voting)
Even with the flare-up over gym cancellations, the discourse that night was collegial and informative. Members took turns holding the floor, with others interjecting occasionally to offer a clarification or correction, all in keeping with Robert’s Rules of Order. Like any serious governing body, discussion lingered on the arcana of budgets, jurisdictions, and process. There was no grandstanding or bomb throwing, no need for chaos to impress the audience back home. The meeting ended two hours and 22 minutes after it began.
The Fairfax County Athletic Council was launched in the 1970s after a baseball enthusiast approached the Board of Supervisors—the county’s legislative body—to ask for money. Baseball needed bats and balls. Would the county fund it? One of the county supervisors liked the idea but realized that what was good for baseball would also be good for football, and other sports, too. Perhaps a sensible way to manage these issues going forward would be to set up a body that could represent all the various sports, invite them to hash out conflicts, and then speak with one voice to legislators. To capture each sport’s unique needs, the Board of Supervisors would appoint to the Council those who had on-the-ground experience in their sport. Gathered in a body like this, these local sports representatives would also provide a barrier between the people and the Board of Supervisors. “It was smart politics,” said Mark Meana, a longtime member of the Council.
This early, ad hoc version of the Athletic Council has evolved and grown over the last several decades into an organized, structured governing body. The Council Bylaws are specific about the group’s purpose and its membership. The Council would serve as “a forum for recurring input from citizens and sports organizations regarding athletic resources.” Its 23 voting members include representatives from districts and towns around the county, at-large representatives to speak up for diversity concerns and general issues, and from each of the eight largest team sports. Three non-voting members come from county government. Concerns about sports not officially represented on the Council can be addressed by any of the others on the Council. Any time the interests of the county clashed with those of the representatives from sports, the county reps had a one-vote advantage.
“It’s a great model,” said Karen Avvisato, who runs athletics for the Department of Neighborhood and Community Services. She has been on the Council as a non-voting member for 30 years and characterized its role as that of an advisory group for the county’s public sports facilities. “They help troubleshoot problems in the county and the school system,” she said. Mike Thompson, another long-serving member with deep understanding of the area’s issues with sports, said during the meeting that the Athletic Council “represents the single largest set of organized citizens in Fairfax County”—and that’s in one of the largest, and most varied counties across the state. The group had power, and it was incumbent on members to leverage that influence before the Board of Supervisors when matters critical to the Council bubbled up. The chair observed that rarely, if ever, were the group’s recommendations rejected by the legislative body.
Many of the representatives have served for decades, volunteering to attend regular evening meetings in an airless conference room where they studied power point presentations on budgets and synthetic turf. Some raised their hands to take on more work, offering to form committees to, say, compose pointed letters to the Board of Supervisors on fee increases. Everyone on the Council had to see beyond the narrow interest of the group it represents, said Bill Curran, director of athletics for the Fairfax schools. He recalled the Council positions he supported that some of his high school athletic directors opposed. “We have to look at the bigger picture and what’s in the best interest of everybody, as opposed to our siloed interest,” he explained.
What makes the Council effective:
Exacting by-laws allow for representation across districts, sports, and government bodies.
The Council’s historical knowledge of the County’s residents, programs, facilities, and systems ensures thoughtful and knowledgeable insight, which confers legitimacy.
Its manageable size gives it the flexibility to act.
By including sports representatives who are close to the ground with authorities from the essential governing bodies (park authority, school district, County government), the Council connects the grassroots of youth sports to the treetops.
The appointed representatives are respected among their constituents and have a longstanding interest in sports, especially that of kids.
The Board of Supervisors, which put the Council in place decades ago, continues to support its work.
Montgomery County Sports Advisory Committee
Closing EQuity Gaps
Montgomery County, Maryland is a sprawling region of roughly 1 million people that’s adjacent to Washington, D.C. A hub for biotech research and home to a few large federal agencies, the county is racially mixed, with a majority of white citizens and surge over the last decade of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.
During COVID, members of the Montgomery County Council, the area’s legislative arm, grew concerned about inequities in access to sports among the young. The roughly 160,000 kids who lived across the region were having vastly different sports experiences: the “haves” from affluent Bethesda and Chevy Chase, were thriving, while the “have nots” in other parts of the county were falling behind—thwarted by language differences, a lack of volunteers, culture clashes, and registration costs. Also, sports groups in the county that administered athletics, like the Parks and Recreation Departments and schools, were operating independently. In June 2022, the Council established a Sports Advisory Committee to make more effective use of county resources.
The Committee is not a governing body, and it has no budget. In addition to its 17 appointed members, all of them volunteers, the group also includes 9 “ex-officio” members from the public sector who are involved in running the county’s youth sports, from the schools, the parks, and the revenue authority, among others. In 2023, committee members began meeting once a month at different recreation centers scattered throughout the county to get a better feel for the gaps across the region.
Almost immediately, the Committee formed three working groups to gather information on the county’s major challenges: one for facilities that would collect data to figure out where kids were playing in relation to available facilities; another on programs to evaluate what the county was offering; and one on participation to study the barriers to play.
The work has required tackling prickly issues that involve competing interests, starting with field use. Who gets priority to use the best fields, and when? The Parks Department manages both the 300 sports fields in public parks and the 177 field spaces at elementary and middle schools. In theory, access to these public spaces could be allocated entirely based on community needs. What complicates matters is the Parks Department’s “adopt-a-field” campaigns, in which outside organizations come in to renovate these fields in exchange for preferential use. If these refurbished public fields are in scrappy communities without adequate play spaces, who should get to use them first? Are facility pricing formulas equitable? Are appropriate incentives in place to solicit diverse participation? Another thicket is the county’s Historical Use policy, which allows organizations to carry over a preferred time slot for field use over to the next year. This approach helps large sports organizations with a long history to plan their programs better but can prevent smaller and newer ones from ever getting established.
As for the 27 high school playing fields, the athletic directors typically control how they’re used. Tensions around protecting field quality for school competitions versus making facilities accessible for community use are palpable. What to do about natural versus synthetic fields is another sticking point.
“All of these issues are the reality of life,” said Tom Cove, a sports and fitness industry executive who chairs the Committee. “You have to acknowledge the different stakeholders who are serving the community,” he added—those from the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Already, the group has identified tangible solutions to some of the problems, which they’ll likely recommend to the County Council. It’s clear the county needs community liaisons to clarify policy and expand access for citizens on the ground. They’re also missing out on easy technological fixes, like adding lights and making apps available. The county as a whole would benefit from what Cove calls “one-stop-shopping” for sports. This would require schools, Recreation, and Parks Departments to work together. “Our fundamental challenge is to make better use of the resources we have,” Cove said.
What makes the Sports Advisory Committee promising:
While Committee members reflect a wide range of backgrounds, professional experiences, expectations, and desired outcomes, they are united in their desire to improve the quality and availability of programs.
The Montgomery County Council is fully supportive.
Each of the county’s seven districts are represented.
Committee appointments are made in keeping with the standard county process for selecting and confirming appointments.
The Committee chair and its appointed representatives have a “let’s-get-stuff-done” approach to the work.
It’s a standing Committee with staggered three-year terms, which creates continuity and fosters institutional knowledge.
Philadelphia
Connecting silos with city funding
In 2018, the Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative—a coalition of grassroots organizations dedicated to improving kids’ sports opportunities—convened a task force to address the fact that many children from low-income families lacked access to sport options. The task force consisted of 65 participants and included members of the mayor’s office, the schools, Parks and Recreation Departments, and Public Health, along with representatives from higher education, professional sports, corporations, and non-profits. After nine months, it issued a report that called for a collective response: the city government, schools, non-profit, and private sectors would have to work together to build a better ecosystem that allowed all kids to grow through sports. Going forward, the Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative (PYSC) would act as an intermediary between the city and everyone else; the non-government entity would serve as the group’s backbone.
Though the pandemic occurred not long after the task force released its findings, the group’s prompt response to the crisis burnished its reputation with city officials. In 2021, the city awarded the group a five-year funding plan through its Parks and Recreation budget, which allows the organization to fully assess the current system, support existing programs, and pair its small youth sports organizations with Parks and Recreation locations. It is also establishing new programs at schools and recreation centers and then measuring them for effectiveness in partnership with Temple University. These pilot programs, like one that assigns trained coaches from the non-profit organization Up2Us Sports to work with kids in recreation centers, will be evaluated and retooled depending on the findings.
Beth Devine leads the Collaborative. She attributes the success of the partnership between city leaders and the coalition she heads to a few factors. First, the mayor and his top officials were fully supportive of the initiative; without their enthusiastic backing, organizing a broad-based task force and then cobbling together joint solutions would have been a struggle. It also helped that Philadelphia is a relatively small city of about 1.5 million residents. It’s “neighborhood based,” Devine said. PYSC and the city work together to make quality sports programs more accessible for kids, and to serve them where they are, but the non-profit coalition has no enforcement mechanism. Even so, Philadelphia is a model of local governance of youth sports because city leaders have found a way to address a public problem—the lack of affordable and available high-quality youth sports programs—by forming a public/private partnership that works collectively to tackle it.
Why Philadelphia’s approach works:
A network of youth sports organizations built an intermediary in the PYSC.
The mayor was a fierce advocate for youth sports and got behind the PYSC.
The city and PYSC saw opportunities to improve and acted together to design, test, and build effective youth sports programs.
There’s collaboration across the local sport ecosystem.
New Project Play Resource
Learn about the five ways cities and counties can better organize and support youth sports, with examples from communities across the United States.
Bottom line, solutions exist to the “programs-rich, systems-poor” ecosystem that permeates youth sports in communities across the country. The Aspen Institute encourages cities, towns and counties to consider the above models in developing the most appropriate mechanism for them to better organize and support sports activities for members of their communities.
The above research was commissioned by the Aspen Institute and written and reported by Linda Flanagan, author of Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania are Ruining Kids Sports—and Why it Matters (2022, Penguin Random House)
Explore other youth sports policy and governance resources from Project Play here.