Youth Sports Campaign Targets Coach Training to Reduce Early Dropout

Rick Jordan and Rebecca Wasserman ground the Most Valuable Coach announcement in a simple premise: youth sports can change lives, but too many children leave before those benefits have time to compound. Jordan says the DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation and GameChanger share the belief that “every kid deserves the chance to play, grow, belong, and discover who they can really be through sport.” The constraint, as he presents it, is duration: the average child spends less than three years playing a sport, and many quit by age 11.

The explanation offered is not that children lack talent or that families fail to value sports. Jordan points instead to the adults closest to the experience. “Coaches really matter,” he says, because they shape whether sports feel safe, worthwhile, and sustainable enough for children to keep returning.

The statistic used to support the case is stark: 95% of children who play for trained coaches stay the following year, compared with 74% of children with untrained coaches. The slide attributes the figure to Project Play, 2019.

For Jordan, that gap creates a case for support: if the goal is to keep more children playing, the point of leverage is not only access to fields, teams, or equipment. It is also the training and support given to community coaches, “the people who shape their experience the most.”

Rebecca Wasserman says the campaign is being developed with the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport, described in the announcement as CHJS. The partnership is presented as an effort to bring “resources, research, and action” to a specific coaching idea: coaches can improve athletic performance while also supporting emotional health.

That distinction matters in the way Wasserman frames youth development. Much of the coaching conversation, she says, centers on physical development. MVC asks coaches to treat emotional health as equally important. Young people thrive, in her account, when they feel safe, supported, and connected; sport is “uniquely positioned” to provide all three.

The practical mechanism is relationship and routine. Wasserman says that when coaches build positive relationships, create steady routines, and help children regulate, the outcome is not just “great athletes” but “great people.” She frames the larger purpose plainly: “The real win is not just what happens on the scoreboard, it’s what happens in a young person’s life.”

Rick Jordan describes this as the heart of healing-centered coaching: a model grounded in neuroscience, informed by CHJS, and designed to give coaches practical ways to understand how youth athletes develop and respond to stress.

The on-screen campaign materials translate that theory into coach-facing prompts: “Balance the power,” “Normalize dysregulation,” and “Be predictable.” Those phrases indicate the emphasis. The coach is not merely a strategist or motivator, but an adult responsible for setting conditions under which children can manage stress, trust the environment, and continue participating.

The effort is “social-led,” aimed at putting healing-centered coaching resources directly into the hands of community coaches. Wasserman says the goal is to help them become better at what they already do, rather than to replace their role with a formal clinical model.

MVC presents healing-centered coaching as “brain science, but it’s not hard.” Its instruction is deliberately concrete. Coaches are told to create positive relationships by learning children’s names and greeting each player. The example jokes through a roster of similar names — “Braden, Kaden, Jaden R., Jaden T., and Jada G.” — before suggesting nicknames as a practical solution.

A second behavior is repetitive movement. When children have “big feels,” MVC recommends “little patterns,” such as throwing and catching. The idea is presented as a simple regulation tool: a predictable physical rhythm that can help a young athlete settle.

A third behavior is managing stress. The line is intentionally comic — “Yell... compliments” — but the guidance is serious: avoid overwhelming athletes with criticism in the moment, and save feedback until they are on the sidelines and ready to hear it.

Together, the examples define the campaign’s operating level. It is not asking volunteer coaches to become therapists. It is asking them to use everyday coaching moments — greetings, routines, feedback, movement, tone — in ways that keep stress manageable and make the team environment more stable.

Rick Jordan and Rebecca Wasserman lean on their own identities as sports parents. They describe weekends in cars, time on the sidelines, and quick meals between games. That framing is not incidental: MVC is aimed at the adult who is already embedded in ordinary youth sports, often with limited time and limited formal training.

The “Most Valuable Coach” label recasts value away from winning alone. An MVC is a coach who keeps kids in the game, supports their development, and helps them become “better adults.” The closing call to action directs viewers to BeAnMVC.org for more resources.

The campaign’s theory is narrow but consequential: trained coaches are associated with higher year-to-year retention, and the campaign’s premise is that safe, supported, connected athletes are more likely to keep returning. The work begins with behaviors small enough to fit inside a practice, a huddle, or a sideline conversation.