Colorado Springs joins Project Play initiative to up youth sports involvement
Barely over half of children played in sports in 2021 in a COVID-19 setback, but on Wednesday, Colorado Springs joined local and national efforts to reverse that trend with the Children’s Bill of Rights Initiative.
The pandemic curtailed an upward trend of youth athletic involvement by 5 percentage points, hampering a national campaign to have 63% of kids playing sports by 2030 — but Project Play is out to address it with their mission of “Sports for All, Play for Life.”
Youth sports has individual long-term health benefits, family and community connection and lessons in sportsmanship, but the model is broken; it does not make room for all children, according to Tom Farrey, executive director of Aspen Institute’s sports and society program, who said as young athletes grow up and teams become more competitive, some kids — smaller, weaker, younger, less skilled, lower income — get left out.
Project Play, which celebrates 10 years since it was initiated by the Aspen Institute this month, wants broader access that allows all children to play sports in safe and healthy environments lead by qualified coaches. The multisport play campaign identifies access gaps and shares information across programs to build quality communities around sports, but the work is far from over.
“COVID hit and disrupted everything, and our most vulnerable youth were hit the hardest. In 2021, only 1 in 3 kids from low-income homes played sports. That’s half the rate of kids at the opposite end of the income spectrum,” Farrey said.
Between Project Play’s inception and 2013 and the pandemic, youth involvement climbed to 56% and more qualified coaches became nationally involved following what Farrey called a “steep decline” in youth involvement between 2008 and 2013.
Now, they’re turning around pandemic trends (51% youth involvement in 2021) with the help of communities across the country.
The approach includes scaling community solutions, giving a purpose to school-based sports programs, leaning into policies and governance and deploying the “power of the permit” by restricting access to publicly funded sports facilities if programs have unqualified coaches or exclusive practices.
A simulation generated by Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research shows that if 63% of youth were involved in sports — the end goal of the objective the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services undertook in 2019 — millions would see lifelong preventive health benefits, saving the economy billions of dollars in health care.
The first day of the Project Play Summit Wednesday at the Ent Center for the Arts coincided with the Colorado Springs adopting the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports, an initiative that will grow participation and access to sports for all children. The city’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department is expected to incorporate this initiative through training sessions with volunteer coaches and staff.
In 2021, a city project called Gamechanger waived a $78 youth sports registration fee in Colorado Springs. The initiative more than doubled spring soccer enrollment between 2019 and 2021, when the program launched.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers spoke on local recreational sports community and features — like Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, the Manitou Incline and Olympic Training Center — that make Olympic City USA attractive for athletes.
Chloe Johnson is a 17-year-old track athlete and partner with Unified Sports. For her, the biggest challenge in youth sports is competitiveness over enjoyment.
“I think right now in sports, we’re really focused on the outcomes and the wins and the losses and who gets the playing time, but the really unique thing about Unified Sports is we don’t care about the outcome. We don’t even keep score,” Johnson said.
“It’s all about getting the experience.”
Moderator Tom Farrey, executive director of Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program (right) with panelists (from left) Chris Snyder, senior vice President of operations for i9 Sports; Tyrre Burks, founder/CEO of Players Health; and Caitlin Morris, vice president of social and community impact for Nike.
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers at the Project Play Summit on Wednesday.