Revisiting Title IX 46 years later

Caitlin Morris

Title IX, signed on June 23, 1972, was a game changer. It altered the rules for federally funded activities in education, making it illegal to discriminate against women and girls in this area. It also gave them the opportunity to participate in sports and physical activities, creating a path for some of our greatest athletes, like Mia Hamm and Sheryl Swoopes.

Title IX built a strong policy-based foundation, but 46 years later, we know that our work has really only just begun. While many systemic and cultural changes — from reductions in physical education programs in public schools to increasingly higher costs of participation in competitive sports — have led to a drop in physical activity among all kids, girls are still getting the short end of the stick.

At Nike, we believe if you have a body, you’re an athlete. But fewer and fewer girls hold that statement to be true about themselves. More than 38 percent of girls (versus 25 percent of boys) in America don’t participate in sport. Girls are consistently two years behind boys in physical literacy skills. We may not be entirely sure why this gap exists, but we know the scale of its impact. Generally speaking, when girls lack the competence, they also lack the confidence to engage in sports. Children as young as 8 years old begin defining themselves as athletes, or not.

When girls walk away from sport this early in life, it affects more than just their health and happiness. Research shows that physically active kids are 15 percent more likely to attend college, and earn 7 to 8 percent more money, on average. Essentially, play equals power.

So, the big question today is, how can we all come together to truly, finally deliver on the promise of Title IX to promote gender equality in sports? For starters, we’d love to share some important lessons we’ve learned from our investments with community and school-based partners that we believe could have implications for all stakeholders:

1. Smart program design and coaching are key. If we don’t design programs specifically for and with girls in mind, they will sit on the sidelines, or worse, stop showing up. Also, If we don’t offer the presence and expertise of female coaches, girls will be less inclined to participate. We know that strong women make good role models for girls and help boost their confidence both on and off the court/field/track, yet only 28 percent of youth coaches are female. Programs like the Mamba League have shown us what’s possible in this context. Inspired by Kobe Bryant’s own youth experiences and coaching philosophy, the Mamba League was created to inspire girls and boys to learn basketball fundamentals and to build self-assuredness through leading an active, healthy lifestyle. Nike worked closely with the Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club to create a program that encouraged an equal number of boys and girls teams at every site and targeted female coaches to lead the girls-only teams. Every single girls’ team was led by female coaches, which drew girls to participate in record numbers — they made up 48 percent of the League in its first year. Those numbers held up in year two as well, even after the Mamba League doubled in size.

2. Data gaps will continue to hinder us. We know that what gets measured, gets done. While there is some data available on adolescent and teenage participation in sports in after-school programs, like the Boys and Girls Clubs, the current data sets do not fully capture sports participation for younger kids (12 years of age and under). They also don’t adequately cover gender breakdowns. And we know that physical activity does more than create good health. It contributes to leadership, productivity and innovation. It lowers depression and crime, increases educational achievement and income levels, and generates returns to businesses. This is why it is so critical to create access for girls — and all kids — to have early positive experiences with sport, so they may reap the benefits over their lifetime. More research needs to be performed in order for all of us to better understand — and address — the issues at hand. Without a baseline for how many girls are participating in sports and other physical activities, or details on where and how we are falling short, we will not be able to successfully evaluate any of our current efforts and investments. Once fueled with this information, as program funders, we may better examine and better channel/invest our time, energy and resources toward creating innovative, proven solutions to get more girls — and kids, in general — active.

3. This is everyone’s issue. No one organization or sector can increase girls’ sports participation alone. This has to be a team effort in order to succeed. We need multi-stakeholder engagement — and we need to visit this subject together on an ongoing basis. We applaud the continuing collaboration between the City of Los Angeles, The Getty Foundation, and non-profit as well as corporate institutions who are gathering in L.A. on June 23 to help get more girls moving across the city. The Aspen Institute Project Play 2020 initiative is another great example of multi-stakeholder engagement in the United States. The consortium of organizations — of which Nike is a founding member — aims to develop shared goals and advance collective action around making sports accessible to all kids in the US, regardless of zip code, ability or gender.

Title IX Day is more than just a moment for reflection and celebration on how far we’ve come to build gender equity in athletics. It’s a call to action to break down the existing barriers for girls so they can confidently get in the game. Because we know that once they start, they won’t want to stop.

Caitlin Morris is the General Manager of Global Community Impact at Nike, where she focuses on getting kids active and reversing the physically inactive epidemic. Nike is a founding member of the Aspen Institute Project Play 2020 initiative, which is a multiyear effort by leading organizations to grow national sport participation rates and related metrics among youth. Learn more about Project Play at www.ProjectPlay.us.

Find the original story published here.

How Norway won the Winter Olympics

Tom Farrey
Executive Director, Sports & Society Program

Apart from that little North Korea diplomacy thing, the transcendent story of the PyeongChang Games was Norway, which performed better than any nation in the history of the Winter Olympics. Its athletes earned a record 39 medals, a stunning 16 more than the United States, reaching the podium not just in its traditional strengths of cross-country skiing and biathlon but also in alpine skiing, speed skating, ski jumping, and freestyle skiing.

The Norwegians won so much, modesty finally escaped them.

“Incredible,” said Johann Olav Koss, the Norwegian speed skater who won four gold medals at the 1992 and ’94 Olympics. “This has been the most incredible Olympics ever from a performance perspective.”

The haul is made all the more extraordinary by the relative size of the western-most Scandinavian country. Norway is a nation of just 5.3 million people, a population not much larger than Greater Detroit. Norway won 7.3 medals for every one million residents, according to research by NBC Sports. The only nation with a better ratio was Lichtenstein, which is more a hamlet than a country and won a bronze in alpine skiing.

One caveat before we move on: Countries with large populations can only rise so high on the above list. If the US won every possible medal in events that its athletes qualified for (228 medals), its ratio would max out at 0.70. The best pound-for-pound fighters are never heavyweights.

Still, the chart is a useful entry point into understanding the quality of a nation’s sport system. How it organizes its assets and confronts the challenges that other nations face. How it introduces children to sports, identifies and develops talent, and moves them through the lifecycle of an athlete. After these 2018 Winter Games, it is both natural and healthy to ask: What in the world have the Norwegians figured out?

That’s what I did for the past week from the advantaged perch of the International Broadcast Center in PyeongChang. It’s a like a sport-focused United Nations, with sport chiefs, journalists, and athletes from all over the globe passing through its cavernous hallways on the way to guest spots, happy to share insights. The Norwegians were particularly generous because, well, they’re Norwegians, who quite often are really nice people. (You can listen to my interviews on The Podium, the Olympics podcast from Vox Media and NBC Sports.)

“We have some responsibilities when we have this medal count,” said Tore Øvrebø, head of the Norwegian Olympic Committee delegation, as we sat down for our second interview in three days. “We want to talk about systems and how we do things, but not brag about it.”

He’ll leave the gushing to others, like Angela Ruggiero. The hockey hall of famer sits on the board of the US Olympic Committee and the executive board of the International Olympic Committee. Over the past few years, she became acquainted with Norway’s system as chair of the coordinating committee for the IOC’s Youth Winter Olympic Games, held in 2016 in Lillehammer.

“I was blown away and started sharing it,” she told me last week. “But the conversation is bigger now that we are at the Games.”

The good news: Many of the ideas underpinning Norway’s sport system have begun taking hold in the US, especially those at the base of the pipeline. Stakeholders who have engaged with the Aspen Institute Project Play initiative will recognize most of them. The better news: Norway offers a road map on taking next steps.

Here are five things to know about Norway’s sport system.

It wasn’t always a model

For more than a half century after winter sports were added to the Olympic Games in 1924, Norway performed well, thanks largely to a nature-loving culture in which families get kids on cross-country skis and skates before they are old enough to start school. Then, at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Norway won just five medals, none gold, and finished 11th in the medal table. For all that snow and ice that Norwegians grow up on most of the year, the land of vikings could produce no conquerors in the sports played on those surfaces. It stung.

“A national trauma,” Øvrebø told me with a smile.

But it was a highly productive national trauma. Opportunity is often born from crisis, and the failure to show at those Games – with Norway set to host the Winter Games in Lillehammer in 1994 – prompted sport, government, and other leaders to get around the table and begin collaborating in ways they had not done previously. They began to fully embrace ideas that had been percolating since Norway had underperformed in the 1984 Winter and Summer Olympics.

Moving forward, Norway took a more coordinated approach to advancing sport at every level. Sport science increasingly guided the design of the system and activities of the federations responsible for developing athletes, whose holistic needs (psychological, intellectual, and social) were now emphasized. World-class research on best practices was produced by universities and, rather than languish in academic journals, moved with purpose into the field. Coaches at every level were encouraged to apply key principles, and top coaches were brought together regularly to share knowledge across sports.

Sport for All is the governing ethos

The concept is baked into the policies and leadership structures that guide sport activity in Norway. The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports has under its purview the responsibility to develop athletes of all ability levels, including those with physical and intellectual disabilities, and the sport activity for all communities and all citizens at every point over the lifespan. The integrated approach facilitates engagement with the widest swath of the population through its member clubs, of which there are 12,000.

“Sport should be a human development program,” Øvrebø said, noting that 93 percent of young adults have participated in the system.

He said the way Norwegian society organizes itself encourages participation. “We have a social democracy model, which means that all kids have more or less the same opportunities,” he said. “They have good health care supported by the government and sufficient food and shelter growing up. They have a good education system and university system that is free. So when they start doing sport, they don’t need so much extra support because they’re already taken care of.”

Sport is seen less as a means to better life than it is in the US, where the chase for college athletic scholarships has reshaped the youth sport landscape over the past generation. Free to play for intrinsic rewards, most Norwegian youth still choose sports. It’s just more on their terms.

“(Youth) are literate and know how things work, and they learn to stand up and they can have a reflective conversation with teachers and coaches,” Øvrebø said. “The coaches cannot bully them because they have choice. If you have a child who chooses to be in sports, has ambition and understands hard work, then you can have a top athlete.”

Youth are the most important athletes in the system

The very best adult athletes are provided a renowned national training center, Olympiatoppen, to advance their talents. But unlike some European countries, Norway spends little on direct financial support for its elite athletes. About 250 athletes, across all winter and summer sports, receive an annual stipend of $10,000 to $15,000, Øvrebø said.

That doesn’t go very far on a per-capita income basis in the sixth-wealthiest nation in the world. (Norway, adjacent to the North Sea, is one of the world’s top oil producers.)

Instead, much of the focus of the Norwegian sport system is on the base of its pipeline. “Everything starts with the kids, the parents and the clubs,” Øvrebø said. Due to Norway’s small population and potential talent pool, sport leaders embrace policies that maximize enjoyment and limit attrition as youth move into adolescence.

They recognize that childhood is a time of exploration. So, youth are encouraged to sample a variety of sports through age 15; no less important, community clubs support that type of engagement. As a result, Norway has underwhelmed on the international stage in early specialization sports like gymnastics, which ask that children train in one sport well before adolescence to advance to elite competition. But youth also develop the overall athleticism that facilitates entry into a wide array of sports, and, research shows, creates athletes for life.

“People [in countries such as the US] are having a discussion about specialization at 6, 7 and 8, which is an absurd discussion in Norway,” said Koss, who now lives in Toronto. “It’s not like [Norwegian children] are not spending a lot of time in sport. They’re very physically active. They’re just practicing different things. They get a much broader base technically and physically than if they specialize early.”

This approach makes sense even for those who chase Olympic dreams, he said. “There’s a 10-year high intensity period [in elite development]. If you specialize from ages 7 to 17, you might not ever get that level. If you do it from 17 to 27, you peak at the right time.”

The latest example: Johannes Klaebo, 21. Considered a great all-around athlete who could have done well in soccer or other sports, he is one of the breakout stars of these Olympics, with three gold medals in cross country skiing. Øvrebø noted that until a year ago, few even in Norway had heard of him.

Competition structures are carefully introduced

Obviously, based on the PyeongChang results, Norwegian athletes know how to compete. But sport leaders in the country are judicious about when and how they introduce game and race formats, to align with best practices in athletic and child development.

One key feature: Clubs do not record game scores until age 13, to focus Norway’s network of mostly volunteer coaches on the personal development of each child rather than team success propelled often by early-blooming children who have a size advantage. Kids and adults keep scores in their heads, of course, but clubs are prohibited from publishing the results online or in the newspaper or using them to keep standings. In cross country skiing and other races, the time of the child may be posted but not their relative rank to other children.

“We like to win and lose, but it shouldn’t follow you and define you as an individual when you are a kid,” Øvrebø said. “We like it to be [about] play and having fun. They should learn social skills. Learn to take instructions, and think by themselves. Learn to know what the rules are. Learn why we are doing these things together. So there is a value system going through the [activity] that is actually about developing people. That’s the main goal of sport, to develop people.”

And if a club violates the no-keeping-score rule? “You get expelled from the Norwegian confederation of sports,” he said.

That might seem like a draconian penalty to people who only know the US model for youth sports, with its landscape of travel tournaments and AAU national championships down the second-grade level. Deeply held cultural notions that some have about the role of winning and losing in sports as a way to prepare children for life  have sparked fierce, philosophical debates about the provision of “participation trophies” to little kids.

We learn from the kids that everything is about having fun, so we try to put that into all our systems

In Norway, there’s no real debate. Kids through age 12 get trophies at the end of each season.“Everyone should see themselves as winners, just for participating,” said Øvrebø. They regard a participation ethos as key to, among other strategies, making room for late bloomers who don’t grow into their bodies, true interests, or talents until the teenage years. In the US system, there’s more pressure to achieve early as a means of gaining access to club teams that aggregate talent.

“I’m not saying the US is doing it wrong, because you have Olympic success and incredible, impressive professional sports,” Koss said. “We don’t have the talent base, so we have to do it different. Personally, I like the Norwegian model because I’m the result of it. I was not good at 15. I didn’t break through until 16 or 17, and if I would have been excluded before then, I might not have made it.”

Øvrebø said the Norwegians consider ambition to be “natural” and that that coaches are expected to teach psychological “competition skills,” especially as athletes begin training for elite competition. But the values and benefits of cooperation are promoted as well. It’s been a defining feature of the Norwegian teams in PyeongChang, rivals on the same team training together – and playing off steam together. Time’s Sean Gregory noted in a piece last week how members of the team have been playing cards and charades before competitions.

“We came here with three objectives,” Øvrebø told me last week. “One was to have fun. That’s very important. We learn from the kids and the freestyle [athletes] that everything is about having fun, so we try to put that into all our systems. We also should leave Korea being at least as good of friends as we were coming in. We’re planning another Olympics, so let’s not break too many relationships.

“The last ambition is to take 30 medals. To be top three.”Mission accomplished there. And then some.

The model is funded – by gambling

The US is one of the few nations without a sports ministry or similar federal entity charged with coordinating sport development. In 1978, the Congress asked the U.S. Olympic Committee to take on that role, with oversight over the sport-specific National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in charge of each pipeline. The challenge: It was an unfunded mandate. Without dedicated resources, the USOC relies on sponsorships, media revenues, and individual donations to support operations. Those funds largely go to NGBs and athletes with the best prospects of delivering Olympic medals, which in turn drives commercial opportunities.

Norway has the grassroots piece covered, thanks to gambling.

Sports betting and other forms of gambling are legal in Norway, and controlled by a government-sanctioned non-profit company, Norsk Tipping. When placing a bet, players may direct 7 percent of their stake to a local club, humanitarian organization, or cultural organization of their choice. This doesn’t affect their possible prize but is a distribution of a small share of Norsk Tipping’s annual surplus. In 2017, the “Grass Root Share” generated $58 million, said Roar Jodahl, spokesman for Norsk Tipping.

At the end of the year, Norsk Tipping sends the rest of its surplus to the government, which distributes the funds to an array of organizations based on a formula determined by the country’s parliament. The current distribution cut is 64 percent to sports, 18 percent to culture, and 18 percent for social/humanitarian purposes. In 2016, that generated $330 million for sport organizations, most of them at the community level.

The next step for Norway is to improve its international performance in summer Olympics.

Since inception in 1948, when Norsk Tipping was created as a means of financing the rebuilding of the country after World War II, the fund has delivered $6.4 billion (in 2016 value) to sports.

“The funds from Norsk Tipping are and have been vital to the financing of sports in Norway for many years,” Jodahl wrote in an email. “As explained above, the financing is reasonably large and the only annual contribution from government to the sports movement. This means it finances a large breadth of sports purposes close to home to the regular Norwegian – like the building of sports arenas all around the country for various sports, soccer balls, training gear and kids’ activities. But it also provides the main financing for the professional sports programs, like the anti-doping program, the Olympiatoppen program, mentorship and scholarships for professional athletes.”

Those funds also allow the government to drive adoption of best practices by sport providers, through the setting of grant criteria. “That provides opportunity for mostly sport-for-all projects,” Koss said. “This is critical to the stability and health of the Norwegian people.”

The results are hard to argue with. Norway is ranked No. 1 in the world on the Human Development Index, a measure of public health. It also ranked first on the World Happiness Report and first in the Democracy Index. One could argue those measures are unrelated to sport, but the Norwegians I spoke with disagree. They view sport as an all-purpose tool to build better citizens and more cohesive communities.

Now, they’re No. 1 in elite sports, at least in winter disciplines.

“It’s something that intuitively (makes sense),” said Ruggiero, of the strategy of growing access to quality sport activity for youth as a means of delivering better health outcomes and ultimately better Olympians. “But when you see results, people notice. It’s just taken a while for that youth structure to bubble up and produce results at the elite level.”

The next step for Norway, Øvrebø said, is to improve its international performance in summer Olympics. The country won just four medals, all bronze, at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But progress is being made there, too. In 2017, Norway rose to No. 1 as the greatest “per-capita sports nation in the world,” according to a website that issues annual rankings based on results in international competitions. Norway scored points throughout the year in 21 different sports, including track and field, handball, rowing, road cycling, and swimming.

“So it’s not the food, and it’s not the genes,” Øvrebø said. “It’s how we organize things.”

Alan Ashley, chief of sport performance for the USOC, is intrigued. The US won 23 medals in PyeongChang, down from 28 in Sochi in 2014 and 37 in Vancouver in 2010 when it set the Winter Games record. Displacing the US at the top of the medal table was not just Norway but Germany (31) and Canada (29) – all countries that have embraced sport-for-all policies and greater coherence in athlete development.

“We have something of a fractured system in our country,” Ashley said. “We have high school sports, club sports, college sports. You’ve got elite sport through NGBs, all these players in the mix. If we can figure out a way to be more systematic and consistent in how we introduce children to sport, get them to love sport, give them skills, and how we train our coaches, then we can use that as a springboard.”

Tom Farrey is executive director of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program. At the 2018 Project Play Summit, the program will explore ways to improve the US sports system, drawing in part upon lessons learned from Norway’s model.

NCAA VPs say college need to help repair 'broken' youth sports model

Oliver Luck & Brian Hainline
Aspen Institute Guest Authors

America’s approach to the development of the youth athlete is broken.

As a leader in amateur sports, the NCAA is committed to supporting and promoting solutions to healthy, sustainable, long-term athlete development strategies in youth sports.

As the Aspen Institute notes, participation in sports by children and adolescents can provide a range of benefits that can last into adulthood. These benefits are not limited to the expected physical improvements that come with physical activity, but also include important emotional and social benefits that can translate into stronger social and leadership skills.

But for these benefits to be fully available to our youth athletes, the participation experience must be effective. One troubling trend is the increasing number of young people specializing in a single sport beginning at a young age, typically in their pre-puberty years.

One common myth that often leads to early sport specialization is the misconception that having a single sport to focus on will lead to opportunities to participate in elite levels of competition beyond the high school level. But this myth is not supported by the facts. Indeed, the vast majority of Olympic athletes played multiple sports as children. There are no data to support that early specialization leads to a greater likelihood of a college scholarship or a career as a professional athlete.

The unfortunate reality is early specialization is fraught with risks. For example, researchers are finding that early youth sport specialization is associated with increased rates of overuse injury, burnout, decreased motivation for sport participation and, eventually, complete withdrawal from sports.

Professional athletes, Olympic athletes, NCAA coaches, and countless medical experts have spoken out against the trend, but youth sport leagues and many parents still struggle to find the right balance for their respective young athletes.

Our expectation is that other NCAA sport communities will re-examine their early recruitment rules and practices.

The consequence of sport withdrawal is particularly concerning. According to the American Heart Association, about 1 in 3 American kids and teens is overweight or obese, with the prevalence of obesity in children more than tripling from 1971 to 2011. Stated another way, the United States has become one of the most physically illiterate countries in the developed world (physical literacy means having the ability, confidence and desire to be physically active for life). This is due, in part, to an increasing number of kids dropping out of sport during pre-pubescent years because of sport burnout.

What many youth sports leagues and parents may not realize is that multisport participation — not sport specialization — is the key to developing better long-term athletic performance while simultaneously increasing the potential for a lifetime of enjoyment of physical activity and recreational sports.

Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer and Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney both have been vocal about their preference in recruiting high school athletes who play multiple sports.

“I want the multisport guy,” Swinney told The New York Times. Data from professional sports underscore why Swinney, Meyer, and many other coaches prefer well-rounded athletes.

Early sport specialization has not been beneficial for high-caliber athletic performance at professional levels. The most recent NFL draft supports this concept.

In 2017, 30 of 32 NFL Draft first-round picks were multisport high school athletes, representing high school participation not only in football, but also track and field, baseball, basketball, and lacrosse.

The athletic success and advancement of multisport athletes is not limited to just professional sports. Among Olympic athletes, 7 in 10 report playing multiple sports growing up.

The NCAA is working in partnership with many organizations to help create a healthy, balanced culture in youth sports that supports the positive potential outcomes of sport participation, while strongly discouraging some of the more pervasive, negative elements of youth sport culture like single-sport specialization.

In 2015, the NCAA collected information from more than 21,000 current NCAA student-athletes at Divisions I, II, and III universities. According to the survey results, the sports with the highest percentage of students who had not specialized by age 12 were football, lacrosse, and track.

• 71 percent of Division I men’s FCS football players played other sports before college.

• 88 percent of Division I men and 83 percent of Division I women lacrosse players also played other sports.

• 87 percent of Division I female runners and 91 percent of Division I male runners played other sports before college.

Across all three divisions, the men’s sports in which athletes were most likely to specialize in their sport by age 12 were soccer (63 percent), ice hockey (59 percent), and tennis (45 percent). Among women’s sports, the highest rate of specialization occurred in gymnastics (88 percent), soccer (61 percent), and ice hockey (57 percent).

Nearly 50 percent of college athletes in baseball, football, and men’s soccer said that young athletes in their respective sport play in too many contests, and approximately 40 percent of football and men’s basketball players said they regret not trying more sports when they were young.

We recognize and acknowledge that there is substantial room for change and improvement within the NCAA model of recruiting as well.

Results from a recently released survey of more than 15,000 NCAA student-athletes show that although a strong majority of college athletes view their recruiting experience as positive, early recruitment is related to less positive feelings about the recruiting experience.

Additionally, young people who commit to a school before 11th grade are less likely to enroll there or to have known what they wanted to study at the time of commitment. Those who commit before 11th grade are also more likely to have had a coach leave before their enrollment and to experience a change in their scholarship offer.

Recruiting rules vary by sport, but the college lacrosse community is among those leading the way to address early recruitment via rules changes.

Last April, the Division I Council passed a rule — submitted jointly by the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association and Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Coaches Association — prohibiting college lacrosse coaches from communicating with prospective student-athletes until Sept. 1 of their junior year of high school.

Additionally, a Division I governance group is examining the issue of early recruitment for all sports. We all need to keep in mind that talent identification is quite unpredictable before age 17 — another reason to question the value of early recruitment.

The encouraging news is that some very good work already has been done, and many organizations are taking seriously ongoing steps to help encourage change where it’s needed. Specifically, the American Development Model is a targeted effort between the United States Olympic Committee and its national governing bodies of sport, including the NCAA, to apply long-term athlete development principles in a way that improves the culture of sport in the United States.

Importantly, the American Development Model emphasizes the importance of kids having fun in sport, while also participating in multiple sport activities before the age of 12. This approach allows young athletes not only to develop motor skills that transfer from sport to sport, but also to cultivate a passion for sport and an active lifestyle. The American Development Model brochure, which is free and available online, serves as a valuable resource for parents and coaches of young athletes, regardless of age, sport, or ability level.

The guidance provided by the American Development Model long has been supported by experts in the field, but the concerning results of recent research has amplified the importance of re-examining the way in which we approach youth sport participation in this country. We welcome the news that the Aspen Institute’s Project Play 2020 coalition of leading industry organizations and non-profits plans to make sport sampling and multisport play a year one priority.

Our expectation is that other NCAA sport communities will take a cue from lacrosse and work with the NCAA national office and its governance structure to re-examine early recruitment rules and practices. Similar rule changes in other sports may prove to be a key step in encouraging multisport participation at the high school level.

We strongly believe that athletics should be an integral part of youth development and society as whole, but it’s important that we do it properly. Kids need to be physically active, but they also need time to recover both physically and emotionally.  And if they’re not having fun, they are less likely to be physically active for life.

Oliver Luck is NCAA executive vice president for regulatory affairs and strategic partnerships. Brian Hainline is NCAA senior vice president and chief medical officer.

Story was originally published here.

Preparing our children for a lifetime of fitness

Chris Watts
Aspen Institute Guest Author

It is widely known that this generation of kids is the least active in our nation’s history. At the National Fitness Foundation, we find this unacceptable and are on a mission to reverse this trend so that all children can benefit from a lifetime of health and fitness.

That is why we recently joined with more than a dozen leading national sports organizations, including the US Olympic Committee, NBC Sports, and Nike, on a multi-year commitment to boost youth sports participation rates for kids, regardless of ability or zip code. Led by The Aspen Institute, Project Play 2020 will execute evidence-based strategies to get more kids in the game and help them continue playing for life. This unique effort is an unprecedented partnership in which industry and non-profit groups are coming together to develop shared goals and specific actions so we can truly start making progress by 2020.

These national collaborations are important, but it is the work at the local level that makes the most meaningful difference. Last month I was proud to announce our Foundation’s commitment to train physical educators for the newly announced Project Play: Baltimore initiative, because when kids receive quality PE, they are more likely to participate in sports, embrace physical activity and perform at their highest potential both inside and outside the classroom.

This commitment demonstrates how the National Fitness Foundation uses cross-sector partnerships to deliver long-term results towards a healthy, active nation. As America’s health and fitness charity and the nonpartisan nonprofit partner of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, we are focused on making sure students are empowered to be fit for life by enhancing and elevating quality physical education.

Six Decades of Championing Fitness

Project Play 2020 is the latest national push to prepare kids for a lifetime of health and fitness, one that the federal government has been trying to drive forward for more than 60 years. In the 1950s, alarming research showed that American youth lagged in several fitness measures. President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by convening a White House Conference on Youth Fitness and establishing the President’s Council on Youth Fitness in 1956. It’s striking to see how similar the goals of that conference are to Project Play 2020, as both make universal access a top priority. Project Play strives to make “sport accessible to all kids, regardless of zip code or ability.” In 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon vowed to work on behalf of kids in “urban, suburban and rural homes, in crowded tenement sections and in well-to-do neighborhoods.”

The stats haven’t changed much either. In his keynote speech to the White House Conference on Youth Fitness, Nixon noted that less than 50 percent of high school students were taking physical education. Today, half of US high school students reported not attending any physical education during an average school week. Other numbers paint an equally dire picture today: more than 66 percent of youth don’t get the daily physical activity recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; only 37 percent of 6- to 12-year-olds played on a team sport last year; and one-third of children are obese.

Getting kids active will pay dividends in many ways. Children who are active and fit are better behaved in school, display a greater ability to focus, and have lower rates of absenteeism. And, of course, the health care system will see significant savings if we can make a dent in childhood obesity and physical inactivity.

More than 66 percent of youth don’t get the daily physical activity recommended by the CDC.

Despite the presidential focus and the commitment of other high-profile figures, such as past chairs of the President’s Council Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominque Dawes, the problem of youth physical inactivity worsened. Council members serve an important role advising the president on national priorities and serving as official ambassadors to the country, but with a $1.1 million budget, they are limited in their ability to provide grants and make long-term investments.

Private Sector Partner Needed to Accelerate Mission

In 1970, President Nixon made high school basketball star Tom McMillen the youngest member ever to serve on the Council. McMillen went on to careers as an NBA player and Maryland congressman, and then returned to the Council in the 1990s, this time as co-chair under President Bill Clinton. As a Council insider, Tom believed its mission would benefit from an outside-the-government partner. He conceptualized the idea for a congressionally-chartered foundation to support and supplement the Council and championed the cause for 15 years, when finally, in 2010, President Barack Obama signed a law creating our Foundation. McMillen was named its inaugural chairman and still serves on the board.

“It was clear that Congress wasn’t going to come up with any significant investment for the President’s Council,” McMillen said. “So it was important to create a foundation to fill the leadership and funding gap at the federal level, and really make a full-throttled effort to get kids active.”

Although the Foundation was established to support the mission of the Council, we operate independently and are not part of the government. Our board members come from innovative companies such as Facebook, Helix, and UFC — empowering us to develop unique strategies and partnerships capable of producing tangible results. Although private-sector business leaders help drive our priorities, we work closely with our ex-officio members from the government, such as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to ground our priorities in evidence and expertise.

We need to work across sectors to make sure all children are prepared for a lifetime of health and fitness.

Freed from the constraints of tight government budgets, we’ve already earned a return on the early investment from corporate backers, with a $10 million grant from the General Mills Foundation that kick-started efforts to get kids to be more active. This grant helped us modernize the old Presidential Physical Fitness Test, remembered by generations of Americans as the blue patch test for doing pull-ups, sit-ups, and other activities. Research showed that the test was 25 years out of date, so with guidance from the CDC and the Institute of Medicine, we developed a new program that focuses on student health and personal progress towards lifelong fitness, rather than athletic performance.

Participating schools get access to expert training and professional development for physical educators; national youth fitness standards to measure endurance, strength, flexibility, and body composition; student incentives and school recognition; and grants for equipment and training, among other things. Since 2012, more than 10,600 schools and 5.3 million students have used the program, and we’ve trained over 1,200 physical educators and given out more than $3 million in grants in 47 states. We’re excited to build off that early success by teaming up with players from pro sports, the sporting goods industry, the US Olympic Committee, and others in Project Play 2020.

Of course, there will always be a role for the federal government when it comes to lifelong health and fitness, as we need a full team to deliver on our mission. We are encouraged that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price identified reducing childhood obesity as one of his three priorities, and that President Trump singled out youth fitness and sports participation in his proclamation this spring of National Physical Fitness and Sports Month.

The nation has been fighting this battle for 60 years without much success and in this unique time in our country, the National Fitness Foundation is committed to accelerating progress to finding innovative solutions by working across sectors to make sure all children are prepared for a lifetime of health & fitness.

Chris Watts is the executive director of the National Fitness Foundation. 

The story was originally posted here.

How to build multi-sport venues

Tom Farrey
Executive Director, Sports & Society Program

If you’re a parent of an active child today, you may be familiar with the dilemma. Your kid shows an interest in a sport, flashes some promise, then next thing you know – maybe even before she or he is out of grade school — the message you’re getting from coaches is the pathway to the next level flows through a focused, year-round commitment to that sport. You may even be asked to sign a contract promising to prioritize that team’s training sessions and games over any outside sport activities.

It’s not consistent with what the research says about quality athletic development. “Not one publication says specialized, intense early play will lead to elite-level success,” says Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, an Emory University professor and one of the world’s leading experts on the health implications of youth athletic training. “There are plenty of anecdotal stories” but no data to support that approach as better than just letting children do what most of them naturally want to do, which is to explore a range of activities.

Schools know not to teach kids just one subject. But this is becoming the standard in youth sports, at least among those who can afford the rising economic barriers to entry (which many cannot). In 2015, for the first time since data began to be collected by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, the number of team sports that the average child (ages 6 to 17) played dropped below two, to 1.89.

What to do? At the 2015 Project Play Summit where we introduced our seminal report, Sport for All, Play for Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game, we offered to host a follow-up roundtable on the topic that was of most interest to attendees. The winning idea, as submitted by thought leaders and voted upon via electronic, on-site polling: Conceptualize a multi-sport club. It was a response to the fact that increasingly, youth sports is influenced by private clubs that have expertise in just one sport, and if they own facilities, promote year-round play in that sport because, well, their mortgages need to be paid year-round. Structurally, it’s a model that makes sense for entrepreneurs, not kids and families.

So, last September at the invitation of the U.S. Tennis Association, we hosted a roundtable at the U.S. Open that convened senior leaders from organizations with the capacity to change the game. Actually, it was a couple of roundtables, one mostly for leaders from the professional leagues, one for leaders from national sport governing bodies, with a mix of other key groups, including the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Many had just agreed to a statement in support of multi-sport play at least through age 12, the first shared action around a strategy as identified in the Sport for All, Play for Life report. Their endorsement was featured in a PSA placed by the USTA in the Sports Business Journal.

Step Two was forming a working group focused on creating a resource that sport providers could use to create multi-sport venues. That resource was delivered at the 2016 Project Play Summit, a document offering guidance for not just sport clubs but camps, parks & rec departments, and other providers. It highlights programs from across the U.S. that we identified as exemplars in encouraging multi-sport play and have developed successful models or innovations that can be scaled. We include a brief overview of each organization, its breakthrough strategy or tact, and its financial structure. Ideas also are offered for creating multi-sport programs from scratch.

Check out the first-of-its kind resource here, and please share with your networks.

Because multi-sport play isn’t just what kids need. It’s what the market wants, if given a choice.

Tom Farrey is executive director of the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program and founder of the Project Play initiative, which provides thought leaders with the guidance to build healthy communities through sport. The program has produced a series of reports, most recently State of Play: 2016, an annual snapshot of how well stakeholders are serving children and communities through sports, with grades offered in each of the areas of opportunity as identified in the Sport for All, Play for Life report.

This story was originally published here.

Play is the work of children

Wayne Moss
Aspen Institute Guest Author

During 2015 Spotlight Health, the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program released a white paper that bears consequence for the health of the nation, “Physical Literacy in the United States: A Model, Strategic Plan, and Call to Action.” Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the paper builds on research associating movement competence with physical activity.

Wayne Moss, senior director of sports, fitness, and recreation for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, is a member of the 15-person working group that contributed to and reviewed the report.

When school is out, summer camp is in for young people at Boys & Girls Clubs. Their days are filled with laughter, participating in games, informal play, and making friends while creating a lifetime of memories. Nearly two-thirds of the children we serve are eligible for free and reduced lunch. If not for the local club, many of these youth could not afford the luxury of structured activities that have tremendous benefits. While kids have a three-month vacation from school, it wreaks havoc on activity levels — and their development of physical literacy.

We believe in physical literacy because we believe that every young person should feel confidence and self-assurance to move with their bodies.

Physical literacy is defined as the ability, confidence, and desire to be physically active for life. It means being able to move with poise and confidence, being able to “read” a wide variety of physically challenging situations, and having the talent to respond with imagination, agility, and intelligence. I grew up playing tag, hide-and-go seek, sandlot baseball, basketball, and riding bikes and remain active today.

At the Boys & Girls Club of America, we believe that physical literacy is so important that we’re committing to revising the curriculum of our signature healthy lifestyles program, Triple Play, to align with these life-changing concepts. For more than a decade, Triple Play has provided sports and fitness activities, making nearly 10 million connections with kids. As we continue to improve this program, infusing concepts of physical literacy is essential for elevating our kids’ physical abilities. By investing in physical literacy for all youth in our clubs, we will be able to reach our bold goal of the youth in our clubs achieving four billion hours of physical activity by 2018.

We believe in physical literacy because we believe that every young person should feel confidence and self-assurance to move with their bodies. This can be accomplished by working on fundamental movement skills such as running, jumping, skipping, throwing, catching, and balancing. As young people increase their physical literacy they:

• Increase their knowledge, understanding, and comprehension around their physicality

• Increase the creativity in which their bodies move

• Increase their ability to move with deftness in different environments

Physical literacy also includes children and adults being able to be agile and strong and even able to navigate something like a slippery surface in a safe way. Physical literacy can also prepare young people for a physically active career, such as those of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers.

In my role as senior director of sports, fitness, and recreation for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, I see the direct benefits these young people get with a summer filled with activities like baseball, basketball, tag, and hopscotch. Some members, like ballet great Misty Copeland, received their start by running, jumping, and dancing at Clubs like the one in San Pedro, California. Copeland is now a member of the American Ballet Theatre and recently made history by becoming the company’s first African-American principal dancer.

I challenge all other youth-serving organizations to join us on this journey. Organizations such as schools, recreation and community centers, after-school and sports programs, day-care facilities, and youth scouts organizations should commit to integrating physical literacy principles in their respective programs. I invite those organizations to design physical literacy frameworks and programs by 2018 and have them fully implemented by 2020 so that together we can change the future for the next generation.

There’s an incredible urgency to move now to change the opportunity equation for our kids and our nation.

The original story was published here.

Why make room in sports for kids with developmental disabilities?

Darrin Steele
Aspen Institute Guest Author

The USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation has partnered with the Aspen Institute Sports and Society Program’s Project Play initiative to explore ways to get and keep children active through sports. Below, the USA Bobsled Federation CEO Darrin Steele reflects on what he’s learned about the power of sports in raising a child with a developmental disability.

Some people find their calling working with kids with developmental disabilities. Other people find themselves in that world unexpectedly. For parents like me, it’s the latter. 

The learning curve is steep, and to call the education an emotional roller coaster would be a gross understatement. I have to confess that when we got the diagnosis that my son has autism, I assumed there was an established path we would plug him into. The comfort we got from finally having a diagnosis was eclipsed by the realization that America was ill-prepared to handle the fastest growing developmental disability in the nation. We quickly realized that he wasn’t entering a path; he was exiting one.

My son loves physical activity and he has natural athleticism. He reminded me of me when I was young, and I was happy his motor skills were very good. I was troubled by the therapy he got, which took a lot of time and involved a lot of sitting. He didn’t do well. He was immersed in an inclusive classroom, which we supported and still do. He stays in the classroom as much as possible, but goes to the special needs room when necessary. He’s in a great school and we are lucky to have him there.

Even though this might be as good as it gets, the reality is that the system wasn’t built for kids like him and he really doesn’t belong there. All too often, we are reminded that kids like my son don’t really belong anywhere. He makes too much noise, he doesn’t follow directions, he can’t keep up with his peers, and he gets in the way.

This is where sport comes in. I experienced the power of sport as a child and quickly figured out that my social stock rose due to my achievements in sports. That was great news for a shy kid like me. Sport has the unique ability to not only provide an experiential education that serves real life, but it is one of the only possible experiences that rewards heart, drive, and teamwork. 

Sport offers something else that no other experience does: the concept of the “personal best.” There is a universal understanding in sport that a personal best is something special because in sport, you compete against yourself. Sure, there are other competitors, but they are there to help bring out the best in you. Sport allows us to define success at an individual level.

These kids with disabilities are reminded of their weaknesses on a daily basis. While most kids gravitate toward their areas of strength, the Individualized Education Program process for kids with special needs is primarily focused on areas of weakness. What would happen if these same kids were introduced to sport? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. I had the pleasure of studying one of the few sports organizations on the country that provides sports programs for kids with developmental disabilities. Sports Plus, in Montgomery County, Maryland, allowed me to observe the programs and talk with the parents of participants.

Sports Plus quickly realized that having positive coaches — who had fun with the participants while demanding incremental sport improvement — was an absolute requirement for success. The kids took pride in their improvements and experienced social gains from both engaging the coaches and feeling a sense of belonging with their peers. More than 95 percent of participants are repeat customers. 

I have seen the impact of physical activity on my son Darrin Khan as well, although he’s never participated in organized sports. This is a kid who has been on the move since he came out of the womb. He is a lot like I was as a child and we both fit the definition for ADHD. Dr. John Ratey, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has studied the outcomes of exercise on those with ADHD and regularly prescribes exercise rather than drugs to his ADHD patients. Not only does physical activity make my son happy while he’s doing it, but he’s much calmer and less inclined to have meltdowns after.

I have yet to find a sports program that can handle him. Although he has a high level of athletic ability, mainstream sports require too much cognitive application and team sports require too much communication and social interaction. For now, he swims, climbs, and dances for fun. I recently took him to a martial arts class because I trusted the coach and the coach knows my son. He certainly enjoyed the experience, but he didn’t understand why he was punching and kicking the heavy bags and he doesn’t like to stand in line.

Above, watch Steele’s son in his first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) class.

Kids like my son need much more one-on-one instruction at the beginning and they will learn faster if they are shown what to do rather than told. The other kids will accept these kids, strange behavior and all, if the coach sets the tone. Those aren’t major modifications and they could make all the difference. 

I have seen some resistance to creating programs specific to kids with developmental disabilities. I certainly think we should include them in mainstream programs where, when, and if it makes sense. Sports are fun when the challenge is reasonable and the athletes and teams are evenly matched. Yes, there should be winners and losers because there are important life lessons to be learned. If evenly matched means that teams are exclusively made up of kids with developmental disabilities, then we should encourage it. If we can include them into mainstream programs with some adaptations to their training, then we should most definitely do that.

The thing that we should remember about all sports is that we are ultimately competing against ourselves. It’s much easier to define success in general terms that we can all understand, but all participants should celebrate the idea of personal struggles and personal bests.  

A few weeks ago, I was able to see a video that my son’s 3rd grade teacher took. She does a great job of including music and dance in class throughout the day. This is a regular inclusive classroom and we worry about how he’s doing when we’re not around. This video showed him leading the class in a dance to the song Ghostbusters. This is something he’s good at and his teacher recognized the opportunity to play to his strengths in front of his peers. It’s something that kids like him don’t get to experience often and it brought tears to my eyes to see it. That is what sports can do if we get it right.

This school is an exception, unfortunately, but the experience above is one of the reasons he has kids saying, “Hi” to him constantly and why he feels like he belongs.

An estimated 10 million children in the United States between the ages of three and 17 have a developmental disability and that number is rising. These children often have physical, emotional, social, and cognitive challenges that result in a lower health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and much lower sport participation rates than neurologically typical children. Youth sports have proven to increase the HRQoL in children.

Often-overlooked aspects of inclusion are the benefits to the children without disabilities. These children have been found to not only increase their social skills when in the same classroom as diverse students, but also see improvements in leadership, self-esteem, and confidence.

So, why make room for kids with developmental disabilities? Because every kid deserves to feel like they belong somewhere. Sports are uniquely capable of offering this to kids who have more challenges than solutions, more questions than answers, and more places where they don’t belong than those where they do. In short, because everyone wins.

RELATED CONTENT:

• 7 Charts that Show the State of Youth Sports in the US and Why it Matters

• Why Do Kids Play Sports? Back to the Basics

• Seven Steps to Improving Youth Access to Sports

• A New Vision, Platform for Youth Sports in America

The story was originally published here.