Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: State of Play featuring Maryland Gov. Wes Moore

The Project Play Summit closed with an inspiring perspective on how one state is leading the charge of organizing and supporting the growth of youth sports. 

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore discussed the value of sports in his life and for children, along with the role of government to help provide access. Joined by moderator Greg Olsen, Moore said his passion to use his platform to benefit youth sports came from being impacted as a child through playing sports.

Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: Building a Youth Sports Policy Agenda

Project Play is creating the nation’s first policy framework for youth sports and used a panel discussion at the Project Play Summit to explore the creation of a politically durable agenda to improve safety, access and governance.

Moderated by Dr. Ashleigh Huffman, a policy consultant for the Aspen Institute Sports and Society Program, the panel highlighted the work, present accomplishments and future goals of building a youth sports agenda.

Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: Service Learning Through Sports, featuring Josie Portell and Rishan Patel

Inspired by the School Sports Equity Toolkit, the Aspen Institute’s Service Learning through Sports is a one-year program that provides micro-grants and mentorship programming to select U.S. high school students who lead, or aim to lead, a project or initiative addressing an issue of sports access. At the Project Play Summit, two high school students explained how they are making a difference for their communities and teammates.

Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: Catch Her If You Can, featuring Diana Flores

Like the trajectory of women’s sports in the U.S. today, Diana Flores seems to be faster and more elusive than anybody who can keep up with her.

The captain and quarterback of Mexico’s national flag football team joined USA Today’s Christine Brennan at the Project Play Summit for insights into ways to engage girls from Hispanic families. Hispanic girls are often the most elusive, and underserved, populations of youth in sports.

Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: Baltimore as Beacon with Kevin Plank

Baltimore may not be his hometown, but Under Armour Founder and CEO Kevin Plank is committed to the city. With an ambitious project to raise high school graduation rates in Baltimore public schools and a new company headquarters opening in the fall, Plank is using the brand he built to energize a city he loves.

At the Project Play Summit on May 15, Plank discussed Project Rampart, an initiative Under Armour started in 2017 that has renovated Baltimore school gyms and outfitted every varsity athlete and coach in the city with uniforms.

Project Play Summit 2024 Recap: Children’s rights, youth sports policy take center stage

BALTIMORE, Maryland – Maryland became the first state to sign the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports after Governor Wes Moore endorsed a framework that all youth should have the opportunity to develop as people through sports.

“Some of my earliest memories are on a basketball court in the Bronx, where it was a place of escape,” Moore said May 15 at the Project Play Summit, the Aspen Institute’s annual youth sports conference. “It was a place where you felt safe. It was a place where you met some of your lifelong friends. It was a place where you learned all the beautiful things you can learn from team sports – how to win properly, how to lose properly, the importance of being able to trust the people to your left and right and make sure you’re practicing so they can trust you back.”

Three models for organizing local sports

A handful of cities and counties have begun to pay closer attention to how sports in their areas are organized and made available to youth. While not regulating youth sports, some local governments are working to coordinate and rationalize the way sports are offered to children and adolescents in their areas. Others are providing funds to neighborhood youth sports groups. Governments in three communities stand out for their leadership in improving youth sports: Fairfax County, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland; and the city of Philadelphia.

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How Baltimore is improving sports access for children

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Baltimore has a rich history of developing its children and communities through sports – from the childhood of Babe Ruth to the proliferation of recreation centers in the 1960s and ‘70s, from the rise of decorated Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps to the basketball successes of Carmelo Anthony, Angel Reese and many others. The Aspen Institute recognized as much in State of Play Baltimore, the first community landscape analysis from our Project Play initiative, which included findings and recommendations shaped by an eight-member local advisory board that included then-City Council member Brandon Scott. Since 2017, Scott - now Mayor - and local leaders have worked hard to make Baltimore’s children active through sports.

The long-awaited Commission report on sports governance is here. What does it say, and what comes next?

Three years after it was authorized, the final report of the group seated by Congress to study the organizations at the center of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement in the United States is now out. The 13-member group took a home run swing. It hit a broken-bat double. Broken bat, because not everything connects. A double, because it sets up a chance to score.

February 2024 newsletter

Featured highlights:

  • 1,860,000 quality years of life gained if we lift sports participation rates from 51 to 63% by 2030

  • UPCOMING EVENT: Future of Sports: College Sports Reform in the Public Interest

  • Christine Brennan joins Project Play Summit 2024

  • Last chance for early bird ticket prices!

  • and more…

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Maryland pioneers model that brings soccer into high-poverty schools

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TAKOMA PARK, Maryland – It’s 3:40 pm on a fall afternoon, and as classes let out, about 40 children flood into the outdoor patio at Rolling Terrace Elementary School. They come for snacks and soccer and receive life lessons along the way.

On this day, many are antsy to play soccer, tying their free cleats and chatting loudly with friends rather than listening to their mentors discuss what optimism and persistence mean. Lukas Barbieri, a high school student who is the youngest of Rolling Terrace’s soccer mentors, eventually quiets the kids down.

“Does anyone remember what optimism means?” Barbieri asks.

“Helping your friends,” says one child. “Being thoughtful,” adds another.

“Sort of,” Barbieri replies. “Optimism means you have to believe in yourself.”

In a sense, this scene represents what optimism for youth sports looks like.