PROJECT PLAY SUMMIT 2020 | DAY 1
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The Opportunity of Now
The Story We Can Tell by 2024
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver played a lot of baseball as a child. Reflecting all these years later at the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit, Silver said he learned the wrong message at the time that playing sports only mattered if you were a great athlete.
“There was so much emphasis on winning, and I grew up in a household where my father wasn’t present, and I frankly misunderstood why I was participating,” Silver said on a panel with ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro, retired NBA star Vince Carter and WNBA player Chiney Ogwumike. “It seemed like you were playing to win, and if you didn’t win, you lost and were potentially a loser.”
Silver’s message for kids today: What you learn from playing sports matters more than winning and becoming a star – now more than ever as mental health challenges grow during the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down many sports opportunities for kids. “We’re in a very difficult time for youth sports right now,” he said. “Health and safety are understandably the top priorities. But it’s also a health issue if kids are not participating in life.”
The No. 1 outcome parents said they want from their child playing sports is positive mental health, according to a recent Aspen Institute/Utah State University survey. A study by the University of Wisconsin found that 65% of adolescent athletes have reported anxiety symptoms during the pandemic, with 25% suffering moderate or severe anxiety. Team-sport athletes who come from high-poverty homes reported higher levels of anxiety and depression than those who live in wealthier households.
“Access to youth sports can really be a way of addressing the problem of implicit bias. It can help young people develop an awareness of other backgrounds than their own, which they then bring into life."
— Dan Porterfield, Aspen Institute CEO, on the societal value of sports
In recent years, more pro athletes let the world know about their mental health challenges. Several NBA and WNBA players including DeMar DeRozan, Kevin Love and Liz Cambage, publicly shared their stories about anxiety and depression while encouraging people to ask for help. The Jr. NBA’s youth basketball programming now includes mental health on the curriculum.
“There’s nothing wrong with speaking up as a kid and saying, ‘I’m struggling in these areas,’ or ‘I’m anxious. I’m sad all the time,’” Silver said. “When we look back to the question about outcomes and what we’re able to do in youth sports, I think (mental health is) one we may be talking the most about. That’s training young people to be more connected with their feelings and the confidence that, to the extent they’re feeling things that they think make them different than their classmates, that it doesn’t make them abnormal in any way. They’re perfectly normal, and in fact, those are very likely thoughts that seemingly confident kids are having too.”
Carter, an eight-time NBA All-Star, said the popularity of social media and YouTube are helping kids hear this message from NBA stars. “These guys are speaking out on their issues, which gives these young kids confidence to be able to talk about these issues,” Carter said.
The term mental health used to mean fighting through depression and anxiety silently because speaking up would be viewed as a sign of weakness. “I wish kids could understand that you’re like everybody else,” Silver told Carter and Ogwumike. “You’re incredible because you’re so committed to (basketball), but your values are no different.”
New Project Play Champions pick up on Kobe Bryant’s legacy
No one athlete alone can replace the late Kobe Bryant as a Project Play ambassador. He made Project Play a focus of his post-NBA career, speaking at the 2018 Project Play Summit, launching our #DontRetireKid campaign, offering sports parent advice in a series of videos, and sharing his sport sampling suggestions in our Healthy Sport Index. He also strongly advocated for girls playing sports, wrote a series of sports-themed fantasy books for adolescents, supported the Mamba League for low-income kids, and created the Mamba Sports Academy, where he shared his training ideas with young athletes.
“It’s mind-boggling to me to see kids focusing on one particular sport at a young age when all of these other sports can help you develop your go-to sport. I knew basketball was something I wanted to do professionally, but I wanted to enhance my abilities and skills anyway possible. Volleyball was perfect for me."
— Vince Carter, retired NBA star/ESPN analyst, on the value of playing multiple sports
Building on his legacy will take a team. The Aspen Institute today announced that six-time Olympic track and field gold medalist Allyson Felix, U.S. women’s soccer player Crystal Dunn, Pro Football Hall of Famer Terrell Owens and 17-time Paralympic medalist Tatyana McFadden are new Project Play Champions. The athletes will serve as ambassadors for Project Play and promote its mission of providing quality sports opportunities for all children, regardless of race, gender, income or ability.
“I get emotional just thinking about all that (Bryant) did for youth sports, particularly for women,” Felix said. “Being that girl dad, you just saw his face light up coaching and being courtside with his daughter. … His legacy lives on and we now have to continue that work and uplift girls in sport and carry it on.”
Carter said he decided to retire from the NBA in June in part because of a conversation he had with Bryant about how much fun he had watching his children play. “Just seeing how happy Kobe Bryant – with the Mamba Mentality who didn’t have many friends and didn’t talk to anybody – turn into the father figure girl dad (helped his decision to retire),” Carter said. “His excitement for helping (Gigi) grow, you could see him just melting right there in front of everybody. It’s great to watch my kid play.”
Felix: U.S. should study Norway’s sports model
Norway has dominated Olympic podiums and grown youth sports participation since it created a Children’s Rights in Sport statement that places a high value on the voices of youth. “I think it’s so interesting,” Felix said in a featured conversation. “The learnings that Norway has found, it’s working for them. I think we have to explore that because we are having such issues (for youth sports participation in America).”
“I remember watching the 1996 Games and (gymnast) Dominique Dawes, and here was this young girl who looked just like me, and I was just fascinated by her. I had no aspirations to play sports whatsoever. But by her being out there and competing, I was at home trying to order a balance beam for my backyard."
— Allyson Felix, Olympic track and field champion, on representation in sports
Research shows that the average child quits sports by around age 11 because it’s no longer fun. Felix, the most decorated female track and field athlete in American history, said the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and National Governing Bodies could help by educating more coaches on how to grow the personal development of youth. Adults should be having holistic conversations with kids, not simply focusing on sports skills, she said.
If kids had a voice in designing their sports activity, “maybe the focus would not be so much on winning or intensity,” Felix said. “We might see some of those things that really draw a lot of kids into sports – having fun and making friendships. For me, I was drawn to sport because of that. It wasn’t because I wanted to be this excellent runner. I wanted to have friends.”
Lessons learned in local communities during COVID-19
San Antonio lost $35 million in direct economic impact due to cancelled amateur sports events, plus another $25 million due to the NBA shutdown, said Ron Nirenberg, the city’s mayor. One positive in San Antonio: 150,000 citizens used the city’s hiking and biking trails over the past six months, compared to 75,000 last year at this time. “The lesson learned for municipalities coming out of the pandemic is we have to do a lot more in regard to health infrastructure,” Nirenberg said. “Our parks and rec infrastructure has to be maintained or increased.”
“We spend $60,000 over the lifespan of sports hoping for a $10,000 scholarship to some of our colleges. I think we need to put that in perspective and have youth focus on what’s important, and that’s playing, having a good time and hanging out with their friends."
— Gabe Albornoz, Montgomery County (Maryland) Councilman, on the pay-to-play model
Project Play’s platform for action, released last week, calls for leaders to ensure that new federal funding for outdoor recreation projects reaches communities with the highest need. It also calls for additional funding for providers and new mechanisms for sports governance, topics that speakers on our “Historic Challenge for Communities” panel covered.
Montgomery County, Maryland recently approved $1.55 million to help “sports deserts” – entire zip codes in the county with fewer kids playing than more affluent areas due to costs and lack of coaches. The county will form a task force that it hopes will transition into a sports commission so there’s an entity focused on the initiative over the long term.
“What we have found in the sports sector is there’s a missing middle,” said Montgomery County Councilman Gabe Albornoz. “You go from zero to elite and club with almost nothing in the middle, and that exasperates those communities that can’t afford and have barriers to access sports. This is a profound problem. Those inequities will proliferate each children’s lives if they don’t have access to the same quality sports programming.”
In South Florida, Miami Dolphins executive RaShauna Hamilton hopes the pandemic results in more free play for kids in local parks – including those in adjacent communities. “Because as we know, you can go to the zip code right next to yours and you can experience something different than your own,” she said.
Announcements and Actions
Project Play announced a new four-year effort by 21 leading sport, health, media and other organizations to grow national sport participation and related metrics among youth. The initiative, Project Play 2024, mobilizes industry leaders to develop shared goals and take actions around making sports accessible to all children. This is the second phase of the initiative, which was previously called Project Play 2020. Project Play 2024 will especially focus on low-income youth and girls, while consolidating efforts around how to bolster quality, affordable, community-based sport options.
With support from ESPN and Under Armour, Project Play released a redesigned Teamwork Toolkit that will empower community leaders to build healthy communities through sports. The free, user-friendly, online platform supports data collection, building and mapping a local network and customized advocacy tools for quality sport access for children in their communities. Users can select from a menu of activities based on their community needs and priorities to support equitable sport experiences for all youth in their community.
TopYa!, a learning platform that uses video challenges to grow participation and skill development, announced a “1% for Play” commitment to donate 1% of net revenue from future subscription products to Project Play, specifically to support the use and expansion of Teamwork Toolkit. Also, TopYa! will provide scholarships to at least 1% of its subscribers to access free content and coaching on the online platform.
ESPN said that at least 60% of its social investments related to access to sports will benefit Black youth, totaling $1 million. “We know that Black children have less access to sports than their White peers. Hard stop – just a fact,” ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said. “Yes, in my opinion, this is a social justice issue.”
TeamSnap announced that it is offering its youth sports software for free to any organization that can’t afford it. “We’ve spent $1 million toward improving access to sport for disadvantaged youth,” TeamSnap CEO Dave DuPont said.
Call for Leadership — Fund Community-Based Play
In a Zoom room co-hosted with the PLAY Sports Coalition, more than 140 attendees discussed opportunities to Fund Community-Based Play, one of the four areas of opportunity elevated in Project Play’s Call for Leadership. In a live poll, participants identified the following sector-specific idea within that plank as the one they are most enthusiastic about:
Community Recreation Groups: Cities with parks and recreation departments should be open to new business models, such as revenue-sharing agreements with private operators who want to use your facilities – and are sufficiently committed to providing access to all children in the community. They should also host seminars for providers on fundraising strategies, from how to apply for grants to how to use technology to attract sponsor support from national brands.
Leaders from the PLAY Sports Coalition, a new Project Play Champion that advocates for the youth sports industry, highlighted the overlaps with their policy platform which includes calls for policymakers to develop opportunities to make sports more affordable to children from all backgrounds. That includes the development of transportation solutions, tax incentives for the development of play spaces, and policies that ensure access for youth who are disabled.
In the group discussion, attendees encouraged more innovative partnerships with schools, “pay what you can” program fee models, and sport-based youth development organizations collaborating more closely with private clubs.
“State government can incentivize increased access to and subsidized use of public facilities through strong joint use agreements (between schools and parks)."
— Julie McCleery, director of reseach and partnerships, University of Washington Center for Leadership in Athletics and member of the King County Play Equity Coalition
Each day during the Summit, attendees can explore a new plank in Project Play’s platform for action and share ideas with the PLAY Sports Coalition on policy actions. Coming Wednesday: Embrace Sports Governance. The Zoom rooms are open to all Summit registrants.