MCC State Brief: ‘Advancing State-Level Work to Support Youth Sport Coaches’
Youth sports can be a powerful setting for young people to build skills, confidence, relationships and a sense of belonging. But coaches are often asked to play an increasingly complex role without consistent preparation or support. Strengthening coaching requires coordination across the systems in which coaches work to improve the entire ecosystem and ultimately the youth sports experience.
A new brief from the Million Coaches Challenge, developed in partnership with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), ‘Advancing State-Level Work to Support Youth Sport Coaches,’ looks at how seven states—California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio and Washington—are approaching this challenge.
While their starting points and pathways differ, four themes emerged across the states:
- The importance of partnerships and coalitions
- Using data and evidence to understand needs and build momentum
- Iterating on training and implementation based on feedback and experience
- Aligning efforts with existing systems, governance structures and the realities of implementation.
The brief outlines a set of practical lessons for building from where a state is today. Across the seven states, progress often began by anchoring the work in a trusted organization, bringing partners together around shared priorities, understanding coaches’ needs, and starting where implementation was feasible, then building toward greater alignment, policy, funding and scale.
Because youth sports in the United States are fragmented, no single organization can meaningfully improve coaching quality at scale. These experiences underscore a core lesson: lasting change depends on collaboration. Stronger youth sports systems can emerge in many different ways when leaders build on what already exists and expand those efforts over time.
Thank you to all of our Million Coaches Challenge Partners whose work has helped advance this field, and especially to the partners and state leaders who contributed their experiences and insights to this brief. Their work offers a valuable roadmap for others looking to strengthen the systems that support coaches and, in turn, the young people they serve.
Read the full state brief here.
