Encourage Sport Sampling: Taking Next Steps

Since launch in 2013, Project Play has been a national leader in establishing the benefits of multi-sport play and addressing the trend of early specialization that can heap undue pressure on children and unsustainable costs on families. “Encourage Sport Sampling” was one of the eight strategies identified in our seminal playbook on how to get and keep kids active through sports, and in 2015 more than 40 organizations — from national governing bodies to the professional leagues, media companies to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — endorsed multi-sport play through age 12, at a minimum.

In 2018, we took next steps, working with the Association of Chief Executives for Sport (ACES) to help national sport organizations develop more policies and partnerships that are supportive of sport sampling. It’s a key step, as it is difficult for any one organization to find success on its own. In today’s youth sports arms race, telling kids to play other sports can feel like an act of unilateral disarmament.

ACES distributed a nine-question Project Play checklist for National Sport Organizations to advance sport sampling — a key priority of the Project Play 2024 advisory group and a core concept of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s American Development Model — and encouraged members to participate.

As a result of this commitment, ACES was honored as a Project Play Champion at the 2018 Project Play Summit.

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The commitment was announced by Darrin Steele, CEO of USA Bobsled & Skeleton, which created a bobsled with the Project Play logo and tagline, Sport for All, Play for Life. That bobsled, seen here at the 2017 Project Play Summit, was used for racing on the bobsled professional circuit.

In 2019, Project Play almost tripled the number of organizations participating in the initiative (from 11 to 30) and tripled the number of boxes checked by organizations, detailing commitments to further programs and practices in support of multisport participation.

Below is a current list of organizations participating in our sport sampling initiative, and the boxes they check on our checklist:

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HOW CAN MY NATIONAL ORGANIZATION Encourage sport sampling?

On Thursday, May 9, 2019, Project Play, in partnership with the National Council for Youth Sports, hosted a webinar entitled, Encourage Sport Sampling Webinar: Spotlight on National Organizations. This webinar highlighted the efforts of three key organizations — U.S. Lacrosse, Disabled Sports USA and U.S. Youth Soccer — and their best practices in implementing sport sampling into their policies and programs.

Slides from the webinar are available for download here.

HOW ORGANIZATIONS ARE ENCOURAGING SPORT SAMPLING

Disabled Sports USA

  • Disabled Sports USA training and education resources

  • Disabled Sports USA event calendar

  • Youth-specific resources for adaptive sports

  • Sport-specific how-to guides to make sports adaptable

  • Challenge Magazine: a publication of Disabled Sports USA, providing adaptive sports information to adults and children with disabilities, including those who are visually impaired, amputees, spinal cord injured (paraplegic and quadriplegic), and those who have multiple sclerosis, head injury, cerebral palsy, autism and other related intellectual disabilities.

  • Adaptive equipment supplier listing, which identifies adaptive sports equipment

  • Find your local Disabled Sports USA chapter through the local club listing

U.S. Lacrosse

 Interested in how your national sport organization can participate in this program? Contact Martin Fox (martin.fox@aspeninstitute.org) for more information.


More REsources

Encourage Sport Sampling: How to Use the World’s First Healthy Sport Index

Released in October 2018, the Healthy Sport Index offers recommendations on complimentary sports for health promotion as well as skill development, along with an assessment of the health-related benefits of playing the most popular sports. This panel from the Project Play Summit explores how to use the data-driven resource. Companion content: Healthy Sport Index website and TIME coverage.

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