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WCA selected as a 2025 winner of ESPN 'sTake Back Sports Innovation Challenge!
With support from ESPN Citizenship, WCA and AYSO will grow their partnership in Northern California from 4 to 6 communities and add an additional 12 coaches trained in positive youth development. This not only allows 75 more kids to come off waitlists but also provides players with access to visible female role models that inspire them to have fun, build skills and to stay in the game.
Together, we’re Taking Back Sports by creating access to affordable play, increasing the pool of female coaches and making sports more fun-first for every child.
More About Take Back Sports
Introduced earlier this year at the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Summit — where ESPN serves on the 63X30 committee aimed at getting 63% of kids playing sports by 2030 — Take Back Sports addresses critical challenges in the youth sports landscape and focuses on three primary areas to drive change:
- Philanthropy and investing in youth sports organizations that are breaking down the barriers to play
- A national campaign focused on helping parents, coaches and caring adults make the youth sports system stronger
- Purposeful storytelling on youth sports across ESPN platforms together with athletes and league partners
ESPN has committed $5 million to support organizations focused on removing barriers to youth sports participation in four key areas, including:
- Community recreational leagues where kids of all skill levels and backgrounds have a place to play. ESPN has made grants to Steph and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Sports 4 Life program, Special Olympics Unified Sports, among other programs that provide access to sports.
- Quality coaching training where coaches become further developed in critical competencies to better help kids thrive. ESPN is teaming up with Positive Coaching Alliance and the National Parks and Rec Association as part of the Million Coaches Challenge to provide training to coaches throughout the country.
- Encouragement of multisport play in an effort to prevent injuries and burnout, ultimately helping kids develop into stronger athletes. ESPN has invested in multisport programs through Boys & Girls Clubs of America ALL STARS program, as well as 2-4-1 Sports.
- Promoting the fun in sports, which according to a study by the National Institute of Health, children cite ‘fun’ as the primary reason for participation in organized sport and its absence as the number one reason for youth sport attrition. ESPN is collaborating to better equip kids to have fun through support of mental wellness programming with Doc Wayne, including its sport-based therapy programs and trauma-informed education for coaches, as well as Athletes for Hope CHAMPS program.
ESPN’s Take Back Sports initiative is part of The Walt Disney Company’s ongoing work to inspire the next generation. For more than 100 years, Disney has been a source of happiness for kids and families, and the opportunity to make the fun of sport more accessible to youth is just one example of this ongoing commitment.
Only 38.3% of kids ages 6-12 played sports in 2023 on a regular basis, according to data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association and the Aspen Institute’s State of Play 2024 report. And kids are quitting early, dropping out on average by age 11 (Project Play & Utah State University’s Families in Sports Lab). · This is why ESPN and The Walt Disney Company are working to make the youth sports system more accessible and fun so that kids across the country have the opportunity to play and keep playing.
