I was skeptical it would become another Infrastructure Week, but the Trump administration made good on announcing details of a working its youth sports initiative. Introduced during the May 30, 2018, White House Sports and Fitness Day, the Youth Engagement in Sports: Collaboration to Improve Adolescent Physical Activity and Nutrition (YES) Initiative officially launched on Sept. 19, 2019, with announcements of $6.7 million in grants to various health- and sports-related entities, and a video starring Ivanka Trump.
A centerpiece of the initiative, growing out of an executive order President Trump issued in February 2018, is a 112-page document called the National Youth Sports Strategy (NYSS), issued by the office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
If you've followed this blog and/or the work done the past five years by the Aspen Institute, much of what the report says sound familiar: that most American kids don't get enough exercise (only 20%, by the document's count), that youth sports participation is relatively stable but on a slight decline, and that both of those trends are particularly acute among children from low-income families, as well as girls, rural youth, racial and ethnic minorities, and youths with disabilities. It also acknowledges that youth sports has moved to a "pay-to-play model" as it's grown into an estimated $15 billion industry.
As the report notes: "The NYSS is an important first step to reorient U.S. youth sports culture around a shared vision: that one day all youth will have the opportunity, motivation, and access to play sports, regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex, ability, or ZIP code."
To which I say to them: good luck.
I don't doubt the sincerity of those involved, and I fully support their goals. I think it's great that the federal government wants to elevate the issues and importance of youth sports so that all kids can participate and receive all the benefits they can provide. I don't mock participation trophies because anything we as adults can do to encourage kids to exercise, play sports, and find activities they love for a lifetime is a much more laudable goal than squeezing out anyone and everyone possible, or restricting participation to expensive travel teams, in the name of a chase for scholarships. (From a practical point of view, the whole youth-sports mindset is going to have to recruit more participants to survive as declining birth rates means fewer available kids.)
Turning the youth sports ship to emphasize participation to all is going to be a long, slow turn, as the NYSS itself acknowledges. But it won't just be about sports.
A big part of what has driven the growth of travel sports is the aforementioned gotta-get-a-scholarship culture, which has morphed into gotta-play-travel-to-make-the-high-school-team culture. And part of the reason why both are important is that as income inequality expands and generational increases in wealth are no sure things, even high-income parents are willing to do anything to ensure their kids either get access to paid school through scholarships, or use sports as a means to get their kids into a name-brand school. (You might have heard of this in the concept referred to as "opportunity hoarding.") It's easier to do something just for fun, and have a culture where just for fun is its own reward, if people aren't panicked about the future.
Also, it helps in this light if political and business leaders pursue policies that give families, particularly those of lower incomes, access to health care and opportunities so that there is some sort of equality in opportunity. When I wrote about Trump's youth sports initiative in 2018, my concern (other than whether it would exist) is that his administration specifically pursues policies that do the opposite of what I just spelled out.
