#242: Shining Light & Inspiring Change in Youth Sport.
While much seems to be going wrong, there are sparks of hope to reverse difficult trends.
While there is ongoing news in the youth sports world about physical and emotional abuse, poor parent behavior, elitism, and reduced levels of participation, there is also a growing sentiment to increased opportunity, diversity and changes that can be considered positive developments.
Edition #242 of The Physical Movement focuses on the positive, let’s dig in.
First item of business is the news that the Australian Open pays its winners from Men’s and Women’s divisions an equal amount. While I thought this was recent news, apparently this has been the case since 2001. I find this news positive because it validates the equality of pay in professional sports where the counter argument has been that the Men’s side draws more revenue, so they should get paid more. The athleticism, strategy, skill level and fundamentals in the women’s game are different in some ways, but the competitiveness is off the charts. It is exciting to watch, and I am not the only person thinking so, as the viewership and sponsorship continue to grow.
Has anyone noticed the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in North American and its attendance? In the last month, they have broken 3 attendance records and the February 16th game in Toronto is scheduled to break an overall record for Women’s pro hockey with over 18,000 tickets sold. There are many impressive things about the business of the PWHL, including the strength of investment behind its operation. Most impressive is this league has provided young women with a viable outlet for earning a living in pro hockey, something that was elusive prior.
On the heels of professional women’s soccer growth with the National Women’s Soccer League started 10 years ago, hockey seems to be the next sport that is providing opportunities for women.
What welcome news!!
While the goal of youth sport is not to create professional athletes, participation can be improved with role models of gender in sport of choice.
Having role models for young women in basketball, hockey, soccer and tennis breaks down obstacles for young girls in visualizing that their sport does have opportunities. With the decline in participation in youth sport continued to reach alarming rates, including 1 in 3 girls dropping out of sport in their late teens, perhaps more opportunities will help reverse this trend.
While the hope is more girls will keep playing past their teens, there are also more and more organizations addressing the economic barriers to youth sport participation. No sport has been hit harder in declining participation than ice hockey. The good work of organizations like Hockey Equality and Hockey Diversity Alliance are exposing the benefits of the sport to more of the population.
While there is lots of positive steps with the above examples improving opportunities for more and more young people to benefit from youth sport participation, there is much more work to be done.
Let’s hope the tide of the last 30 years in schools of declining physical activity opportunities declining will reverse sometime soon. The reality is that all schools have gyms and spaces to move, yet the trend of reduced budgetary support started in the late 80’s has continued, and this has not been good for the collective physical and mental development of our youth.
Let’s hope youth sports organizations will continue to support opportunities exposing the sport to more and more young people by reducing financial and other barriers to participation. More and more organizations need to take a stand, like Canada Soccer, and publish a guide to inclusion and diversity. This guide provides a framework for all to follow. Now the hard part : follow these steps.
Increased pressure on government to push youth sport organizations to get their act together and provide a framework to reverse this trend can be inspired by some of the examples provided above.
The work of Matt Young and his team at FSQ Sport provide the guidelines for these organizations to run their organizations with more efficiency, transparency, competence, responsibility, accountability and opportunity than what we are used to seeing. This group is a great starting point to get your local organization on track.