Aspen Institute Sports & Society

#ProjectPlay Summit 2025 was our biggest event ever - and our biggest call to action for #63X30, a movement to raise youth sports participation to 63% by the end of the decade in line with the nation's Healthy People 2030 goals. We're all in on reimagining youth sports. ALL Summit replays are available, for free, at as.pn/ppsummit25, and a recap of all the headlines, announcements and opportunities is at as.pn/ppsummit25-recap. Sign up to be the first to know dates and venue for Project Play Summit 2026 in Boston at as.pn/ppsummit26-presale. Join us?

Gary Hall, Jr. OLY was a five-time Olympic gold medalist known for trash talk and theatrics as a swimmer during this exhilarating career. He has a fresh perspective on it all after he lost his home, possessions and swim school in the LA fires. He has seen first-hand the transformative power of sports as a brash kid and athlete and more understated parent and teacher. All of it has come on his own terms, shaping his life, and perhaps even saving it. A father of two teenagers who have been through sports, Hall Jr. spoke to USA TODAY at the Aspen Institute Sports & Society #ProjectPlay Summit about his athletic journey and how looking back at it could be helpful to young athletes and their parents. (Hint: The gold medals are beside the point.)

Did you miss the Project Play Summit, or you attended but couldn't get to every session? Our Summit plenary and breakout sessions are now available to watch from our website. Enjoy! https://lnkd.in/giUTYWyH

At this year’s Aspen Institute Sports & Society #ProjectPlaySummit, I had the honor of moderating a timely conversation on the future of youth sports policy in the U.S. From NIL to federal budget cuts, the stakes have never been higher. But in the chaos, there is opportunity. We must meet the moment with steadiness and be ready when it arrives. Key Learnings from this session: ⚖️ Reform has ripple effects. Ramogi Huma (NATIONAL COLLEGE PLAYERS ASSOCIATION) reminded us that if policymakers don’t get NIL policy decisions right, we risk seeing Olympic sports and women’s sports cut in the process. 💰 Access is infrastructure. As Jared Cooper (FundPlay Foundation) reminded us, youth sports are economic development, not charity. 🏥 Health starts with movement. Kathleen (Katie) Adamson (YMCA of the USA) made it plain: If we don’t get kids moving, we’ll pay the price in our healthcare system for generations. 🇺🇸 Sport unites us. Jennifer Dionne (The Dionne Company) called youth sports one of the agreed upon bipartisan issues—rooted in community, country, and shared opportunity. 🗣️ Bottom Line Up Front. Betsy Cooper (Aspen Policy Academy) showed us how to advocate with policymakers: lead with the issue and requested action, then back it up with the details. Moral of the story first. What Can You Do: 1️⃣ Subscribe to the Project Play newsletter. Stay informed, share your voice, and help us shape the national and state policy agendas. 2️⃣ Engage your elected officials. Use tools like the Aspen Policy Academy to become an advocate for change. Sign up for their free webinars. They're great. 3️⃣ Invest in solutions. Whether through funding, storytelling, or community-building, your contribution matters. Share it with us. Let's unite in the movement. We can do this. Let's rethink and reimagine. Together. #YouthSports #AspenProjectPlay #PolicyMatters #SportsEquity #NIL #OlympicLegacy #PublicHealth #Advocacy #WholeNewBallGame #63x30 #SystemsChange #AccessForAll

Last week, I attended the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Project Play Summit and I’m fired up. So I put together a little recap of the ideas that might be interesting to my strategy peers. How did I end up at a youth sports policy summit? When I left Meta in July 2019, I planned to take some time off, do some brand strategy freelancing, and figure out my next gig. By August, I was coaching field hockey and writing a business plan for a new type of local athletic club. A major influence and source of inspiration was the Aspen Institute’s State of Play research. Knowing that so many kids drop out of sport, and so few adults were coaching, I was craving a new type of accessible, multi-sport club powered by a flywheel of adult members who earn their competitive field time by coaching kids. While organized sports were put on pause in 2020, I got a little distracted - fell in love, got married, had a baby. But I'm still dreaming of what a healthy sport ecosystem looks like. I regularly get on my soapbox about the optimal pile height of turf, pay-for-play club models, and Title IX’s (unintended) alienation of boys in sports like field hockey, gymnastics, volleyball, etc. Coming out of the Summit, I have so many ideas for mobilizing my community and improving as a coach. But there’s also lot to be learned for my strategy folks. If you care at all about Parents, Teens, Travel, or Healthcare, understanding the youth sports ecosystem is vital. As for that business plan? Stay tuned. My thinking has evolved and I’m building something for my local (hockey) community. 

2025 Aspen Institute Sports & Society Project Play Summit 📸 Earlier this week, we joined hundreds of other leaders, advocates, and changemakers from the world of youth sports at the University of California. The summit was a place for exchanging ideas and working in collaboration towards the shared vision of getting 63% of young people playing sports nationally by 2030. It was a time for re-imagining what the future of youth sports could look like, and gathering with like-minded people driven by the vision of transforming lives through sport. Thank you to everyone we met in the Bay Area, and to all the incredible partner organizations who had a role to play in the event's success. It was our pleasure to attend, and we cannot wait for the next one! 👏

Spoke on the State of Play panel at the 2025 Aspen Institute Project Play Summit in Berkeley, CA—and one stat I can’t stop thinking about: based on their survey, more kids are currently participating in recreational or free play than in club sports. A little hope. A little balance. Still a long way to go. Grateful to share the stage with others deeply invested in making a difference in youth sports—Melissa Jacobs, Ian Goldberg—and to learn from the standout stars of the session: researchers Jon Solomon (Aspen Institute), Travis Dorsch (Utah State), Jordan Blazo (Louisiana Tech), and Nicole Bolter (San Francisco State). The data and insights they presented were powerful and thought-provoking. Big thanks to Project Play Summit and the Aspen Institute for continuing to lead this important work. 📊 Here's a link to the survey results:  https://lnkd.in/gp3YkS6n 📊 And State of Play 2024 https://lnkd.in/gFYq6yVV Tom Farrey

Our president and CEO, Kristine Stratton, had the chance to speak at The Aspen Institute's Project Play Summit this week. This summit focuses on the big ideas that can help pave the path to 63X30, a call to action to get 63% of youth playing sports by the year 2030. Check out NRPA’s new Youth Sports Framework to see how you can help pave the path: https://bit.ly/3DPAzhJ #PowerOfParks #ProjectPlay #YouthSports

This week, #AspenLatinos Executive Director, Domenika Lynch, moderated a panel at the #ProjectPlay Summit, a leading forum for innovating healthy community and youth sports initiatives since 2013. This high-energy event brings together cross-sector leaders who are committed to enriching children's lives through sports. The panel focused on "Getting Latinas in the Game," addressing underrepresentation of Hispanic girls in sports. This community represents a vital opportunity to boost national participation rates in #youthsports. The discussion acknowledged the distinct challenges these young athletes face while exploring targeted strategies to engage and sustain their involvement in sports. A special thank you to Aspen Institute Sports & Society for including us in this important and ongoing conversation. We will continue to build on the momentum from these discussions to drive meaningful change in our communities. 📸 PC: Aspen Institute Sports & Society The Aspen Institute

Little League is the trusted entry point into not just the game of baseball and softball, but to the entire youth sports experience for families around the world. To increase access into our program, and to all youth sports, we need to be innovative and collaborative in the ways we reach those children, their families, and their support systems, how we identify the barriers of entry these children are truly facing, and then how we work together to start removing these barriers. After another incredible Aspen Institute Sports & Society #ProjectPlay Summit, we have the momentum to move forward, as we collaborate with our great partners across the industry to drive to our collective goal of raising youth sports participation in the United States to 63% of all kids by 2030. As part of this year's summit, Little League President and CEO, Patrick Wilson, joined fellow leaders in this movement to kickstart these efforts. We are looking forward to working together to achieve this goal, which includes amplifying our partners at ESPN's Take Back Sports efforts this summer, and finding even more ways to support and grow Little League and youth sports in our communities.