By LINDA FLANAGAN
Outside of school sports, most states historically have taken a hands-off posture with youth sports organizations and protecting the health and safety of the athletes they serve. Except for the widely adopted Lystedt Law which established rules about concussion management, government oversight has been spotty. That’s starting to change. In response to persistent problems with the youth sports ecosystem — lack of access in low-income communities, an epidemic of life-altering injuries, and a lack of systematic training or oversight of coaches — some states have begun allocating substantial public resources and creating guardrails for engaging children in organized athletics.
Colorado, Alabama, California, Minnesota and Massachusetts stand out for their leadership in addressing these oversights. These states offer insights for policymakers and advocates exploring ways to better govern and support youth athletes.
New Project Play Resource
Learn about the five ways states are supporting and governing youth sports
Colorado
This month (August 2024), Colorado introduced the strongest law in the nation regulating the behavior of youth sports organizations. The Safer Youth Sports Act requires that all providers, non-profit and for-profit, establish and post a “prohibited conduct policy” that applies to coaches, parents, spectators, and athletes, and mandatory reporting policy for adults who have knowledge of a violation. The act requires the state’s Department of Early Childhood to make a model code of conduct available that an organization may adopt.
The impetus for the law was a leader of a youth football organization requesting help from his state legislators to prevent more incidents of bad behavior by adults. An insurance company, Players Health, helped draft the bill (see Project Play interview with 63X30 member Kyle Lubrano). It included a provision that all coaches pass a criminal background check to rule out those with a history of child or sexual abuse, and annual abuse prevention training that includes appropriate one-on-one interactions with players.
The move builds on Colorado’s rich history of support for sports and outdoor recreation. The state funnels a portion of its lottery proceeds to spruce up parks, open spaces, and recreational facilities. In Aurora, for example, the lottery helped fund new facilities and enhance existing ones, in part to give more kids the opportunity to play.
Many organizations around the state work together to get kids exercising and involved in sports: the public high schools collaborate with the Special Olympics to offer unified sports; the Colorado Rapids Youth Soccer Club is a partner with the parks and recreation department; and Great Outdoors Colorado, a state-funded organization, offers grants to schools, towns, and non-profits to expand sports opportunities for kids.
The next step: better connecting the silos among providers and other stakeholders across the state to identify and close gaps in access and quality. Like other states, Colorado is programs-rich and systems-poor when it comes to youth sport activities. To help, the Aspen Institute, UC Health, Denver Broncos Foundation and other partners have created Project Play Colorado, our first statewide initiative to share knowledge and develop shared opportunities to build healthier children and communities through sports.
WHAT MAKES COLORADO A MODEL:
It was the first state to require youth sports organizations to adopt a code of conduct policy.
It’s one of seven other states that uses lottery proceeds to fund recreational programs.
Key organizations have come together there to share knowledge and break down barriers to cooperation.
Alabama
“All you have to do,” said Jack Crowe, the esteemed college football coach from Alabama to the state legislator he was trying to convince, “is have the same law for kids as you have for hotdogs.” He was referring to the legislation that he was trying to push through the state house: the Coach Safely Act, which would require all coaches working with kids 14 and under to get trained in basic safety protocols. Crowe kept hammering the point: food handlers in Alabama needed to get certified in how to handle nachos and burgers. But coaches working with kids were off the hook. Crowe insisted that young kids playing sports in his home state needed coaches who knew how to prevent injury or catastrophe—and what to do if disaster occurred. That was the place to start.
Crowe turned to Dr. David Satcher, a former Surgeon General and then a leader of the National Council of Youth Sports Safety, to figure out how to go about it. “He discussed with me over the two years we worked together how policy attached to property changed ordinances in every city,” Crowe said. “Whenever you’re using public property, it can be regulated.”
Crowe also knew that the mandated training he was presenting to the state had to be both succinct and thorough for legislators to accept it. He approached Dr. James Andrews, a respected authority on sports injuries, who created a two-hour course for coaches that addressed the primary dangers to young athletes.
By 2017, Crowe had built a team of enthusiastic and experienced advocates who were willing to write letters and call elected officials in support of the bill. He also pulled in policy experts who knew how to move legislation, including Drew Ferguson, who had deep roots in the state, and was a respected proponent of children’s health. Crowe also shared research and statistics revealing what doctors have called an epidemic of largely preventable youth sports injuries.
The final version of the Coach Safely Act asserted that any youth sport group working with kids aged 14 and under “shall require” its coaches to be trained every year on the primary causes of children’s injuries. The Department of Health had to approve the training course, which could be taken online or in person, and was obligated to come up with rules to implement, enforce, and administer the law. The key passage of the short bill appeared in Section 2, which spelled out which youth sports associations needed to comply with the law: “Any organization that administers or conducts high risk athletic activities on property owned, leased, managed, or maintained by the state, an agent of the state, or a political subdivision of the state.”
Crowe established the Coach Safely Foundation when it became clear that the Department of Health was ill-equipped to carry it out. He realized that local mayors and city councils and Parks and Recreation Departments around the state needed to understand the new law. Parents needed to read it, too. Crowe brought on a well-connected and experienced former sports commentator to meet with the heads of cities, counties, and schools. For their part, private teams and clubs were less opposed to the law as dismissive of it; kids on their teams didn’t get injured. Short of advocacy, the main enforcement mechanism remained the threat of lawsuits by disgruntled parents. Plaintiffs’ lawyers were quick to understand this, Crowe said.
The organization has trained 50,000 coaches since 2019 across 90% of Alabama’s hundreds of municipalities. Arkansas enacted its own version of the law in August. And legislators in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and Mississippi have filed similar bills that rely on the Coach Safely Act as a model.
“Every state has a chance to give municipalities, school districts, and county commissioners the means to do something,” Crowe said. “But it’s still up to them to do it.”
What makes Alabama a model:
The Coach Safely Act was the first-of-its-kind law to impose training requirements on youth sports coaches outside of schools.
The architect of the law borrowed from the federal anti-smoking campaign by attaching legal standards to public property.
The campaign that drove the legislation was exemplary in its use of strong data, embrace of institutional support, and leveraging of respected public figures.
Minnesota
Ice hockey routinely lands on top of the charts of most expensive amateur sports. Even Minnesota, famous for its 10,000 lakes, needs to build and maintain ice rinks to keep up with residents’ hunger for the sport. After Title IX brought more girls to the rinks, exacerbating the shortage of ice arenas, state leaders searched for ways to increase access and keep down the cost of play. Minnesota’s historical attachment to the sport demanded a creative solution.
State Senator Jim Metzen and Representative Bob Milbert arrived at a plan. In 1995, they spearheaded legislation that authorized almost $3 million to build and renovate local ice rinks. Known as the Mighty Ducks Grant Program, the law allowed localities to apply for up to $250,000 in grant money, provided they could match their request with other sources of funds. Grants were to be awarded equally between city centers and the rest of the state.
By the time the first five-year grant program ended in 2000, the state had distributed nearly $18.5 million and constructed 61 new ice sheets around the state. Legislators renewed the program in 2014, this time to help communities keep up with new EPA requirements on refrigerants. “The Mighty Ducks legislation provided the answer to the problem,” Milbert said.
Critical to the success of the grant programs—and to the preservation of public ownership of these coveted ice rinks—is the state’s Amateur Sports Commission, or MASC, which administers the grants. It was officials at MASC, at the state legislators’ behest, who came up with the plan on how to fund local rinks in 1994. While most sports commissions are tasked solely with encouraging athletic tourism as a way to plump state coffers, MASC, established in 1987, had an additional duty: to “promote the development of recreational amateur sport opportunities and activities in the state.” One vital way the commission executes this mission is by managing the grant applications for ice arenas that come in from around the state.
Because most Minnesota rinks are publicly owned—and thus more affordable than the privately held facilities in other states—more kids play ice hockey in Minnesota than any other state, and the participation gap between it and the rest of America continues to grow. “If we didn’t have our non-profit community-based model, our numbers would plummet,” said Louis Snee, a leader of Minnesota Hockey, which governs youth and amateur hockey in the state. “If you don’t have public ownership of the rinks, the system collapses,” he added. More recently, legislators have authorized the commission to partially fund a youth soccer program as well as public schools with inadequate facilities.
On top of its grant administering, the commission occasionally serves as a convening body for Minnesota. During COVID, it engaged youth sports organizations from around the state and developed a return-to-play strategy. More recently, MASC has gathered leaders to talk about recruiting and holding on to referees, said Karah Lodge, the commission’s associate director. Though MASC is involved in a range of youth sports concerns, it’s not a regulatory body that can discipline organizations or impose fines, she added.
What worked for Minnesota could work for New Jersey, Iowa, or any other state if legislators there can be persuaded that keeping kids’ sports local and affordable matters “I don’t know why you couldn’t have a commission structured like ours that could address the unique needs of a particular state,” Lodge said.
What makes Minnesota a model:
Through MASC, the state plays an important guiding role in constructing and developing amateur sports facilities.
MASC brings youth sports organizations together to discuss pressing concerns and administers state grants.
Children’s sports’ participation in ice sports has grown because facilities are local and relatively low-cost.
California
As California goes, so goes the nation. It’s an expression that captures the state’s history of innovating through technology, and its leadership in launching social and political movements. In some ways, the same spirit applies to sports and recreation, as it was California that introduced action sports and began the cascade of laws on NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) that swept through state legislatures and changed college sports.
Unstructured play is foundational to participation in sports. Starting this year, elementary school students in California schools must receive at least 30 minutes of recess, and at least 15 minutes on early release days. The law also prohibits school staff from restricting a student’s access to recess unless the physical safety of the student or any peers is threatened.
It’s the strongest recess law in the nation. Introduced in 2023 by Sen. Josh Newman, chair of the state’s education committee, the bill was backed by public health researchers, youth development advocacy organizations including the Play Equity Fund, Kaboom, the Gasol Foundation and the state PTA. Professors Hannah Thompson (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Rebecca London (UC Santa Cruz) testified on the evidence for recess and provided data from their recent study showing that only 56% of low-income schools provided 20 minutes or more of daily recess in 2020-21. If implemented, the bill is expected to boost academic performance for nearly 3 million California students.
The state has been a leader in safety, requiring background checks for all coaches and training on abuse prevention and identifying heat illnesses. In 2021, California limited full-contact practices in youth tackle football to just two per week, not to exceed 30 minutes. The law also requires that coaches be trained in head injuries, that a medical professional be present for all games and that an authorized person attend all practices to remove injured players if necessary.
That approach was balanced by an initiative launched in 2021 to promote physical activity. The Governor’s Advisory Council on Physical Fitness and Mental Well-Being, chaired by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, aims in part to foster a “more positive and inclusive sports culture” for youth. More recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom blocked a proposal to ban tackle football for children under age 12, pledging to work with lawmakers “to strengthen safety in youth football — while ensuring parents have the freedom to decide which sports are most appropriate for their children.”
In spring 2025, the Project Play Summit will be hosted in California (city TBA).
What makes California a model:
The state has attempted to strike a balance between promoting participation and safety.
Lawmakers recognize the important role of unstructured play and school recess.
The governor’s office uses its convening power to connect silos across the sport and health sectors.
Massachusetts
State Senator Barry Finegold was tired of the accumulating troubles among the young kids in his state who played sports. Injuries were out of control, thanks to overtraining and single-sports specialization. While clubs and private teams were thriving, their public, inexpensive counterparts were straining to stay afloat, especially in poorer communities. Though exercise is known to improve moods, kids involved in competitive youth sports were anxious and burned out. And the state was doing little to stop it. "Why do we allow there to be regulation of when people play sports in high school and college, but we don't do anything when it comes to our most vulnerable population — young people?" he told a reporter.
Massachusetts had a record of tackling these problems piecemeal. In 2011, it tightened up concussion protocols; in 2022, it compelled youth sports organizations to carry out background checks on their coaches; it regularly appropriated sums of money to fund community sports, most recently in March of 2023. In 2024, the attorney general launched an initiative to curb sports gambling among youth, and Senator Cynthia Creem introduced a bill that would add social-emotional learning to school sports’ programs.
But Finegold believed it was time to address these issues more systemically. In October of 2023, he and colleagues from the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, along with counterparts from the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, held a public hearing to review the state of play and to consider regulatory options. The testimony confirmed his suspicion: the state needed to exert its authority in safeguarding kids and addressing inequities. But what was the proper form or mechanism for that oversight to occur? Puerto Rico offered an intriguing option. There, an empowered Department of Recreation and Sports imposed stiff rules about how much young kids could practice and compete. More feasible, and perhaps more politically sustainable, was the state sports commission in Minnesota.
In February, Senator Finegold submitted a Bill, S2601, which called for the creation of an independent, fully funded state athletic commission. The proposed body would restructure the current sports commission—which now oversees unarmed combat sports and sits under the Division of Professional Licensure—and give it broad authority under the executive branch. This stand-alone athletic commission would have its own appointed membership and would contain two divisions: one on combat sports, and the other on youth sports. Staffed by experts, this second division would monitor all youth sports in the state not overseen by another body, like the middle or high school athletic associations.
As proposed, the sturdy new commission would have a broad portfolio of interests. It would study problems and recommend legislative reforms, starting with youth combat sports, which are now unregulated and riddled with abuses. It would educate parents about the risks of early specialization and other matters. And it might look for ways to restore public ownership of vital youth sports facilities, as Minnesota had done with its ice rinks. By conducting public hearings, it would give citizens a voice on issues they care deeply about, conferring legitimacy on potential legislation.
Since submitting the bill, Finegold has been working to develop support for it through informal channels. It’s possible that establishing an independent, sturdy athletic commission may not require changing the law; the governor may already have the authority to empower it. If enthusiasm wanes, Finegold’s office will push harder for a separate bill, already filed on the House side, that regulates youth combat sports. Comprehensive reform like this may take time, but Senator Finegold is committed to seeing it through.
What makes Massachusetts a model:
It represents a shift away from incremental fixes to a systemic solution.
The proposed commission is drawn from a proven model in another state.
If approved, the independent sports commission would have the regulatory authority to preempt problems before they emerge.
The above research was commissioned by the Aspen Institute 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.