I recently sat in on the first webinar hosted by Project Play which highlighted three different US National Sports Bodies (NGB’s) that were promoting multi-sport participation, one of which is one of the few youth sports in the US that is growing year after year, US Lacrosse.
The insight was shared on the webinar by Erin Smith, currently the Managing Director of Education and Training for US Lacrosse and has worn many other hats over with US LAX the last 15 years.
Why is US Lacrosse one of the organizations that are bucking the trends?
Unlike many of the youth sports organization in Canada, US and globally, they continue to see increases in their membership year after year, now have over 430,000 members and continue to grow.
As a national sports organization in the US, they are still in their infancy, 9 former regional orgs merged together in 1998 to become the national sports body for the US.
In 2015-16, largely due to the great work that USA Hockey has done in terms of developing the American Development Model, US Lacrosse created their first version of their Athlete Development Model with 6 core values.
#1 – Fun and Kid Centred
HMMMM … perhaps the sports organizations that continue to experience negative comps year after year could learn something by focusing on similar core values?
As I have shared for years, kids play sports because they are fun and quit when they are not, it’s NOT rocket science and I was so happy to see that a NGB has Fun and focusing on the kids (the end users/consumers) and believe many other orgs that are suffering high rates of attrition should do the same.
#2 – Program Design for Development
Development as in skills vs. winning at all costs?
It is great to see a NGB understand that the purpose of Youth sports organizations is developing youth into adults.
#3 – Multi-Sport Participation
Promoting Multisport participation, as the President of Greater Edmonton Lacrosse shared with me last year, Lacrosse is a great complementary sport and requires so many technical skills that will transfer to other sports. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Wayne Gretzky, John Tavares, Steve Stamkos and other NHL’ers were or are pretty good?
#4 – Small Sided and Free Play
Many national sports organizations in Canada and the USA who have incorporated LTAD models have incorporated small sided games that are age appropriate, examples being USA and Hockey Canada’s cross-ice hockey for ages 5-8 years old, soccer small area games with 3, 7 players, tennis, volleyball, basketball lowering the nets etc.
What really excited me about US Lacrosse was they also are focusing on the importance of Free Play that many researchers have identified in recent years is a critical to ensure optimal skill development, decision making, handling adversity and overall fundamental skill development.
#5 – Physical Literacy
Still one of the biggest challenges that many face in the grassroots segments is having coaches understand the importance of developing all fundamental movement skills so kids are not only proficient in their respective sports (thanks largely to the pitfalls of early sport specialization) so kids are confident, competent and ultimately active for life.
#6 – Trained Coaches
In terms of trained coaches, although the course content has been revamped to educate coaches on areas like multi-sport participation it was only done last year and only 5+ Years will you see the cause and effect of updated coaching modules. I suspect in a few years you will see the changes that US LAX is aspiring for and will receive a higher grade accordingly down the road.
How do I know this?
After running Hockey Canada Clinics as one of my hats for over a decade, each time that Hockey Canada revamps the clinic materials, it takes a few years for the materials in new modules to get to the coaches that have already taken a clinic IF it gets to them.
This is why I am a big advocate for the NCCP program requiring ongoing Professional Development Credits to ensure that coaches learn the latest and greatest to be the best they can be.
The three core areas of the Project Play checklist that US Lacrosse is focusing on to promote multi-sport participation in particular are;
#1 – Working with Other Sports Organizations
Collaborating in lieu of competing for the same player so they can play multiple sports?
KUDOS to US Lacrosse for doing so.
Here is insight from Dave Newson, the executive director at Semiahmoo Minor hockey organization who spoke with us for our winter 2018 virtual event how they were collaborated with their fellow soccer association to permit scheduling so kids could play both soccer and hockey
After they did so, many other local sports organizations started to do the same, the dominoes they are falling as kids want to PLAY more than one sport.
#2 Focused on Engaging parents
In addition to providing resources to coaches to share with parents in their parent meetings, they are promoting multi-sport participation on social media and video below using the analogy of eating pizza every day would be like playing one sport every day, not good for the kid’s development overall.
INSERT QUOTE OF THE WEEK HERE
Play More (sports) to play better (as an overall athlete)
#3 – Focused on improving their coaching development
Like US Hockey, US Lacrosse now has 4 coaching levels that ties in their athlete development model, starting at the grassroots level up to the high-performance level.
Last year they redid all of their coaching courses and the Level one course now highlights the benefits of multi-sport participation so the grassroots coaches (many of which are moms or dads that get recruited to coach because their kids are playing) get educated on the benefits right from the get-go.
The added benefit, as many are parents themselves, they can share with the parents on their teams as well as others they know so the word of mouth will spread.
Probably one of the biggest issues that I have come across when I have interacted with coaches in Canada that are just getting started regardless of the sport is there lack of knowledge or even awareness of their respective sports long term athletic development models or fundamental movement skills required to be proficient at ANY sport, let alone the ones they are now coaching.
Things like balance, agility, running, falling, getting up, throwing, catching, one handed and two handed hitting, running which are all fundamental movement skills that every kid should have but thanks to PE programs being cut so much at the school levels, too much structure taking away free play, too many kids can’t perform the basic skills as our past generation did.
KUDOS to US Lacrosse for recognizing the importance of not only talking the talk (via core values, public service messages (PSA’s), Whitepapers (PDF’s) and education but WALKING THE WALK.
Let’s all work together to bring the game back to the kids … where it belongs
