Empower Every Coach: Building the Systems Behind Quality Coaching

In youth sports, we often focus on what happens between a coach and a young person.

A coach helping an athlete build confidence after a setback. A team learning how to communicate through conflict. A trusted adult creating a space where every young person feels valued and supported.

These moments matter. They shape how young people develop on and off the field.

But behind every transformational coaching moment is something less visible: a system.

Policies influence access to training. Funding structures determine what organizations prioritize. Organizational practices shape how coaches are supported. Cultural narratives affect how we value coaching and the role it plays in young people’s lives.

For the past five years, the Million Coaches Challenge (MCC) has focused on helping coaches build the skills needed to create positive youth experiences. Together with our partners, we’ve reached a milestone that once felt ambitious: training one million coaches in evidence-based youth development practices.

If we want every young person to experience the benefits of quality coaching, we must also transform the systems that shape coaching itself.

That’s why we’re excited to announce Empower Every Coach (EEC)—a new national initiative designed to advance systems-level change across youth sports and help make quality coaching the norm, not the exception.

A New Chapter for MCC

The Million Coaches Challenge was built on a simple belief: coaches matter. Outside of a young person’s family, a coach is often one of the most consistent and influential adults in their life—and yet coaching remains one of the most underinvested roles in youth development. That gap is exactly where focused investment can do the most good.

Research shows that coaches can play a powerful role in helping young people develop life skills, build resilience, strengthen relationships, and support their overall wellbeing. 

But coaches do not work in isolation. They operate within organizations, communities, policies, and systems that can either support or hinder their success.

The barriers that keep young people from quality coaching are rarely about a coach’s commitment. More often, they are structural.

Empower Every Coach represents the next phase of MCC’s work—one that focuses not only on coach development, but also on the conditions that make quality coaching sustainable and accessible at scale.

From Training Coaches to Transforming Systems

Empower Every Coach was designed around a central question:

What would it take to make quality coaching the default experience for every young person in America?

The answer extends beyond training.

It depends on the conditions that surround every coach and on changing those conditions deliberately, rather than leaving them to chance.

Those conditions are reflected in MCC’s 2025 Calls to Action, a field-wide roadmap that identified four areas where systems change is needed:

• Insights
• Narrative
• Organizational Practice
• Policy

Through strategic funding and cross-sector collaboration, Empower Every Coach is designed to accelerate progress across all four.

Introducing the Inaugural Cohort

With support from Susan Crown Exchange, MCC is investing more than $2 million in ten organizations working to strengthen the systems that shape youth sports. It’s an investment grounded in a clear conviction: young people thrive when the adults closest to them are prepared to support their growth, and coaching is one of the most powerful—and most overlooked—ways to reach them at scale.

The inaugural Empower Every Coach cohort includes leaders from research, policy, public health, youth development, communications, and coach education.

Their projects address a range of challenges facing the field.

Some are focused on shifting public understanding of coaching and youth wellbeing. The Ad Council will lead a national communications effort centered on youth mental health through sports and coaching, while the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport will advance healing-centered approaches through storytelling, research, and resource development.

Others are generating new evidence to inform future action. Adelphi University will pilot mental health guidelines for youth sport in the United States, and the Sport Industry Research Center at Temple University will explore policy and funding solutions through a Youth Sports Tax and Revenue Policy Consortium.

Several organizations are working to strengthen coaching infrastructure and organizational practice. The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) will integrate quality coaching standards into local parks and recreation systems. LiFEsports at The Ohio State University and the Ohio High School Athletic Association will build statewide coaching infrastructure through Coach Beyond. Positive Coaching Alliance will continue advancing positive, equitable, and accessible sports experiences, while the United States Soccer Federation will redesign its coach licensure framework around athlete-centered learning.

Other projects are focused on creating more inclusive systems. The University of Washington Center for Leadership in Athletics and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) will work to strengthen the pipeline of women coaches in high school sports.

Together, these efforts recognize that quality coaching is not solely an individual responsibility—it is a systems challenge that requires coordinated action.

Why Collaboration Matters

The challenges facing youth sports are complex, and no single organization can solve them alone.

That’s why Empower Every Coach is more than a funding initiative. It is a collaborative learning community.

Facilitated by Aspen Institute’s Project Play, cohort members will participate in quarterly convenings, shared learning opportunities, and collective problem-solving over the next 18 months.

By bringing together experts across sectors, the initiative aims to accelerate innovation, identify opportunities for alignment, and advance solutions that can create lasting impact.

Looking Ahead

Reaching one million coaches was an important milestone. Now, Empower Every Coach invites us to think even bigger.

What becomes possible when systems are designed not only for athletic success, but for youth development and wellbeing?

The answers will emerge through the work of this inaugural cohort and the broader community committed to transforming youth sports.

Because empowering coaches has never been only about coaches. It’s about creating the conditions for every young person to thrive.