The Vision

Peak performance and extraordinary personal development occur naturally when motivated intrinsically, by Love of the experience and Learning—self discovery and mastery, rather than external pressures or rewards. Athletes call this optimum state the Zone, psychologists call it Flow, children call it Play. United We Play applies what is known about this magical state to parenting, coaching and to education. Using athletics and featuring the lives of the world’s top athletes, the project will enable millions of adults achieve and maintain this optimum learning relationship with children of any age, transforming both in the process.

Our Goal: United We Play unifies the professional and amateur athletic communities with a play-based vision of optimum performance, learning and well-being and models this vision in diverse ways for children. The project consists of a public awareness campaign, representing all major sports, and an unprecedented, age-and-sport specific internet-based continuing education system for volunteer coaches, parents and young players.

The project is organized and will be promoted as “nonprofit gift from the gifted” to the world’s children and families, featuring and funded by top athletes, their clubs, leagues and corporate sponsors. United We Play represents a priceless opportunity for top athletes from each major sport field, their teams, leagues and sponsors to “give something back” to young players, their families and coaches, free of commercial pressures and agendas.

Touching the future of 40 million young players, parents and coaches, United We Play will:

• Reverse the 35% to 75% dropout rates for youth sports by age 13.
• Attract and retain new participants each year by increasing the joy and positive learning experiences found in youth sports.
• Decrease parental and coach aggression and violence on the sidelines.
• Help parents and coaches reduce feelings of humiliation and failure experienced by many young players.
• Assure that enthusiasm, fun, self-discovery and mastery are the primary motives for participation in organized sports.
• Help reverse the growing epidemic of obese and overweight children by promoting and modeling fitness.
• Model healthy life-styles and promote the lifelong health benefits of vigorous playful physical activity for both children and adults.
• Use the lives of he world’s top athletes to demonstrate that peak performance and extraordinary personal development occur naturally when motivated intrinsically, by Love of the experience and Learning, rather than external pressures or rewards.

The Package: Over 100,000 life-changing training programs, approximately 15,000 in each of seven sports, will be distributed free of charge to volunteer coaching programs and parents. Packages include a one-hour video, print media, a special edition of Magical Parent-Magical Child (see Magical), and free access to a comprehensive Internet-based continuing education resource system for kids, parents and coaches. Highlights from these seven programs will be crafted into a two-hour broadcast special to be aired on Father’s Day, 2005. The entire project will be enhanced and supported by print, radio and television public service announcements.

Collaboration: United We Play is backed by the combined resources of Touch the Future and The Institute for Play. An expanding network of collaborative coaching groups, university programs and outstanding experts have pledged their support. These combined resources are rich and diverse; brain researchers, internationally recognized leaders in early childhood development and education, original play experts, anthropologists, learning and performance specialists, multimedia, film and television producers, public relation and media professionals, and representatives of the business community.

Heroic Models: Development of individual sport packages begins by “drafting” a Most Valuable Player to represent each sport. Mike Richter, Olympic & N.Y. Rangers Star goalie, and his wife Veronica will share this leadership position for Hockey. These MVP’s will personally invite six additional players to be featured in and to support their program. Together the MVP’s and their “draftees” will invite their teams, leagues, and sponsors to match their personal pledges. United We Play is a truly nonprofit team effort, a gift from our most gifted athletes and the athletic community.

Funding: $175,000 per program will come from the athletes (an average tax deductible gift of $25,000 per athlete). This initial budget will cover the costs of media production ($140,000) and development of the on-line continuing education package ($35,000). This amount will be matched by the athletes’ teams, club owners, leagues and sponsors, generating an additional $175,000 tax deductible budget per sport for production of public service announcements, promotion and advertising, packaging and distribution. The result will be an estimated 15,000 learning packages per sport (over 100,000 total) being released to volunteer coaching programs and parents. This amount includes production of a two-hour broadcast special. Total budget: $2.4 million.

Schedule: Pre production begins October 1, 2002. Production of three sport packages, leading with Hockey, begins January 2003. The following January, 2004, four additional sport packages will begin production. Six months is needed to post all seven programs and to complete the two-hour broadcast special. Internet and CD-ROM development will begin immediately and continue throughout the three-year production cycle.

Background & Need
Focus on Athletics

The founding of Little League in 1939 ignited great interest in organized youth sports that swept the nation. Today 40 million children and adults participate in organized baseball, football, soccer, basketball, and hockey leagues. While these programs remain extremely popular, a general unrest and clear evidence of negative effects on both children and adults grow steadily.

Initiated by coach abuse of a young player, last January a stunned nation watched the trial of a Massachusetts’ father who killed a youth hockey coach over a disagreement regarding a hockey practice. The estimated number of violent incidents at youth league games has increased fivefold since the mid-90s. No sport is immune. Last year an AYSO soccer riot in San Juan Capistrano forced the disbandment of teams and banning of coaches. In Salt Lake City a mother was knocked unconscious with a baby carriage at a Little League game because her son had scored a winning run. In Florida 100 adults brawled at a youth football game leading to arrests and criminal charges. These and other violent incidents, though rare, reflect a mounting discontent, not with sports, but what we have made of them.

Up to 75% of kids drop out of youth sports by age 13, and many who don’t dropout are suffering silently wishing they could. Why? It isn’t fun. Parents and coaches apply too much pressure. Winning has replaced love of the game and learning, joy and self-mastery. Studies found that kids would rather play for a losing team than sit on the bench of a winning team. Fun and participation are indeed the foundation of peak performance, not the score.
The Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission found that 45%, that’s almost half of the kids, as young as four years old, have been called names, insulted and yelled at during organized sporting contest. 21% were pressured to play with injuries. 17% had been hit, slapped or kicked by adults.

Parents see youth sports leading to scholarships and financial rewards. Families invest time and money to enhance their child’s athletic opportunities. Less than 1% of kids in organized sports will qualify for athletic scholarships. Only 3-4% of this 1% will gain lucrative financial compensation from athletics.

External rewards—media exposure and money paid to professionals, peer and parental pressures—have altered the reasons many children participate in organized athletic programs. Self approval and approval of others is often equated with “the score.” Over 50% of American children experience their first feelings of public failure and humiliation while participating in athletic programs. At the heart of this mounting discontent is a deep insight that, indeed, it is how (and why) we “play the game” that counts.

Focus on Healthy Life-Styles & Fitness

Inactivity, poor nutrition, related obesity and chronic health problems have reached epidemic proportions for American children and adults. United We Play represents a powerful vehicle to reverse these trends by featuring celebrity athletes as models of play, fitness, and healthy life-style.

Approximately 45 million adults are considered obese and eight million children are overweight. The majority of overweight children become overweight adults, which contributes to approximately 300,000 preventable deaths each year, rivaling those related to cigarette smoking. Particularly alarming is this epidemic among minority children. The National Longitudinal Study of Youth found that obesity among Hispanic and African-American youth increased by 120% between 1986 and 1998.

Along with the rising rates of overweight in children are correspondingly rising obesity-related illnesses, some of which were rare in children 20 or 30 years ago: hypertension, complications in early pregnancy, unexpected osteoarthritis, and gallbladder diseases. Obesity is a risk factor for 4 of the 10 leading causes of death: coronary heart disease, type II diabetes, stroke, and cancer. Obesity cost the nation an estimated $117 billion in 2000 (61 billion in direct costs, including health care; 56 billion in indirect costs, including lost productivity and lost earnings).

Physical risk factors, while important, are far from the whole story. As early as six years old, overweight children have been described as being lazy, stupid, ugly and dishonest. The inner lives of overweight children are often dominated by depressive themes. Low self-esteem, lack of friends and support networks, humiliation in situations requiring physical skill, an overall poor sense of emotional well-being, a feeling of personal ineffectiveness in knowing how to deal with their nutritional and weight problems are reinforced by parents whose lives are also dominated by similar feelings and overweight challenges. Psychological and physical challenges contribute to depression. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death for children in the United States.

More than 60% of American adults do not get enough physical activity to provide health benefits. Approximately 25% are not active at all in their leisure time. By age fourteen, the average child in Los Angeles mirrors the average adult in their lack of physical activity and in poor diet. Only 1% of American children get all the recommended food group servings each day. Only one in five consume five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day, with french fries constituting nearly 25% of all vegetables consumed. If we don’t reverse these trends this will be the first generation in American history to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

The Intelligence of Play
A New Model For A New Generation of Children & Adults

Elite athletes understand that being in a good state rather than a bad one can make a critical difference in a championship playoff. State is there primary. It comes first and affects learning, performance and wellness. Performance research has uncovered profound similarities between what athletes call the Zone and authentic Play.

Far from frivolous or being a “waste of time,” play states are now seen as the major driving force in the development of higher brain functions. During key periods of development play appears to be a major designer of the brain. The greater the intelligence of the species, the more they play. The greater the skill of the player in nature, the larger and more intricate is their brain. Human play, like the play of animals, is necessary for optimal brain development, socialization, flexibility, and adaptability. Play cultivates an ever-renewing sense of enchantment and engagement with the world. It develops calmness, awareness, and a flexible ability to handle stress, surprise, or challenges without aggression.

Play is omnipresent in the human world and is as necessary as sleep for health and whole development. Play involves and integrates cognitive, emotional and physical capacities. Play naturally leads to greater levels of self-understanding, skill development, and mastery, confidence, adaptability, willingness to explore, curiosity, creativity, empathy, basic trust, and many other critical life skills.

The intelligence of Play is to keep playing throughout life. United We Play communicates this research and this understanding directly to millions of young players, to their parents and their coaches. United We Play truly is a new model for a new generation of children and adults.

New Channels of Communication

Without direct engagement and involvement of parents, childhood will continue to deteriorate and with it social and economic order. Existing channels of communication - government, schools, churches and broadcast media - have not met this challenge. New, accessible channels of communication are needed that meet and support the diverse needs of today’s children and families. Two nontraditional communication networks have emerged that touch directly the lives of most parents, educators, caregivers and coaches:

• Organized athletics
• Our nation’s network of child-care centers (see: Programs/Nurturing)

The Market, Volunteer Coaches & Parents

• Over 40 million children, under the age of 16, participate in
  non-school Youth Sports Programs.
• 4-5 million volunteer coaches each year participate in these
  activities with children.
• Most young players are coached by parents of sport/age children
  (constantly demanding new coaches).
• The coaches are estimated to be 65% male and 35% female.
• Most receive little or no coaching technique training, and are
  unfamiliar with sports psychology.
• Few receive training in safety, age specific skill activities,
  coping with competition, dealing with parents.
• Violence among parents and coaches, both on and off the
  playing fields, is increasing.
• Coaching training that is available is generally tied to seminars
  or is clinic-based.
• Most coaches use the models they had themselves in college
  and high school sports, or those demonstrated by professional
  coaches, most of which have nothing to do with motivating an
  eight-year-old.
• All the top sport psychologists agree that practice needs to be
  more “fun,” but few offer suggestions how to achieve this.

Public Awareness

Complimentary projects are being developed which address two areas, public awareness and continuing education.

The public awareness campaign consists of individual training packages for each major sport field. Featuring and funded by top athletes from diverse fields, each package consists of a sport specific inspirational training video, print media, including a special edition of Magical Parent - Magical Child, the Optimum Learning Relationship by Michael Mendizza and renowned author and educator Joseph Chilton Pearce (see apendix A), plus dynamic radio and television public service announcements, print ads, special coaching clinics hosted by MVP’s in each sport, a two-hour broadcast special, and direct access to a state-of-the-art interactive Internet continuing education system.

Continuing Education, Training & Support

The continuing education and support project involves an interactive CD/Internet based collection of age specific information and tools to help volunteer coaches in each major sport field integrate the Intelligence of Play and Love of The Game into all of their activities and programs. Filled with examples from the positive experiences of master players, the education, training and support resources will continually expand and adapt to the changing needs of a global athletic community.

Internet HyperCD Continuing Education

• On-Demand general coaching techniques (provides training when volunteer coaches are available, instead of clinic/event specific training)
• Information showing effectiveness of PLAY and its benefits of increased performance, learning and enjoyment, particularly as it relates to sports psychology (unlocks the PLAY paradox)
• Video clips of parents, kids, professional and Olympic athletes and coaches communicating the influence of coaches and the importance of a Love of The Game (creates positive role modeling from the top down to influence today’s youth sport culture)
• Parental guidelines and tips for watching youth sports (addressing the number one reason coaches do not return)
• Resource listing of local Youth Sport Organizations that provide local training and seminars
• Links to sport, gender, and age group specific FUNdamentals
  

Website

• Addresses top three reasons children drop out of youth sports
• Includes “Kid’s Choice” rating of most fun sport, gender, and age group specific FUNdamentals (streaming video and diagrammed examples)
• List of sport specific information can also be sorted and displayed by coach effectiveness rating
• Allow for submission of new FUNdamentals to constantly update information available (creates a resource that is dynamic and highlights the best instruction from around the country)
• Receive nominations for Volunteer Youth Sports Coach of the Year, by age group and sport
  · Allow for entry of players’ names and email addresses to create mailings of team information and creation of season “GamePlans”

Affiliations

• Content and concept developed by the Institute For Play & Touch the Future
• General coaching content provided by Positive Coaching Alliance, Bob Bigelow, a national youth sports speaker, and John Kessel, USA Beach Volleyball Head Coach and USA Volleyball Director of Education; Andrew Oser of the The Joy of Sports Foundation; Billy Strean, PhD, Custom Coaching, Alberta, Canada. USOC Athlete Development Department, USA Swimming, USA Volleyball, USA Beach Volleyball, and Positive Coaching Alliance, Louisville Recreation Department, Boulder Recreation Department, CARA (Colorado Athletic and Recreation Association)

Touch the Future

Athletes call it the Zone, researchers call it Flow, children call it Play. Our goal is to help adults rediscover and share this Optimum Learning Relationship with children. We accomplish this by designing learning tools that connect the visionary research and education community with adults who nurture and mentor children; parents, teachers, coaches and childcare providers. By supporting and inspiring these adults we Touch the Future of every child they serve.

Transforming Childhood by Transforming Adults

Optimizing the adult-child relationship represents the most powerful catalyst for personal, cultural and global change. Our programs do this by reducing conflict and resistance in this fundamental relationship. Helping adults rediscover the ”childlike” genius of their own nature, as they guide, learn from and mentor children, awakens and develops in adults new capacities and possibilities. Changing the adult changes the environment we call childhood. Changing the environment affects the full spectrum of a child’s development. United We Play develops this theme by applying the psychology of optimum experience to parenting and to volunteer coaching.

The adult being in an optimum state presents to the child a very different model-environment than authority and threat, punishment and reward. Not needing to defend themselves the child is free to give selfless attention and energy to perceive, engage and learn from the moment, deeply and completely. The resources that are traditionally invested into self-as-self-defense are available to participate in optimum learning, performance and wellness, as nature intended by design. The result, more well rounded and richer development.

As a Non-Profit Learning Design Center we bring to this challenge:

Twenty-five years in producing film, video, print and interactive media programs for public education, medical research, corporations, national and international television broadcasters, UNESCO and private foundations.

A distinguished advisory group including national figures in early childhood development, education, birth, bonding, original play and the brain.

A twenty-year history designing educational programs for parents,
caregivers, early childhood educators and coaches.

Programs

In 1987 Touch the Future began collecting interviews with visionary educators, authors, scientists, researchers and performance specialists. Many of these are featured at www.ttfuture.org, one of the richest sources of information on child and human development on the Internet. We publish a quarterly newsletter, organize and videotape invitational symposiums, host national educational conferences, produce audio and video tapes, publish books, host dialogues, organize a speakers bureau featuring leading specialists in early childhood and collaborate with other organizations in support of their efforts to serve children and families.

Two major programs are being developed: Nurturing the Early Child, Family & Caregiver, targeting infants, the early child and adults via the preschool, Head Start and childcare community, and United We Play, which serves the middle child, teens and adults.

The knowledge, depth and inspiration of our visionary community has never been greater, nor has the need. The majority of young children are in institutional care, beginning in infancy—many for extended periods. Professional child-care has replaced the extended family as the source of nurturing and emotional security for most children. Many of today’s parents were the product of child-care themselves, and are often uneasy caring for their own children.

• Families, especially single parents, feel isolated and unsupported.
• Most mothers of young children choose or out of necessity remain in the workforce.
• There is a critical shortage of quality, child-centered care programs.
• The demand for even custodial-based facilities exceeds the supply.
• There exist confusing, often conflicting models for appropriate child-care and parenting.
• Few resources are available, at the local level, for continuing early childhood education for parents and professionals.
• There is growing awareness of research which links child abuse and neglect during the formative years to brain damage, depression, aggression, learning disabilities, and later adult patterns of addiction and violence.

We Touch the Future by addressing these other needs, by the development of proactive, programs that nurture and support the adults who are nurturing and mentoring our children.

In Collaboration with The Institute For Play
Mission: To Understand and Communicate the Role of Play

The IFP is founded as a nonprofit 501c(3) organization chartered to be a discoverer, developer, and deliverer of new knowledge and change in the field of play. Through its activities, the IFP is helping to awaken and express greater human potential through enactment of the power of play. The IFP collects, integrates, and helps people and organizations internalize the rapidly expanding play knowledge base to unlock their personal and collective assets through the power of play. It serves as a bridge between science and society by tracking the exploding play-relevant basic research on the relationship between play and human learning and development, well-being, appropriate social behavior, and productivity/creativity. The IFP is committed to effectively communicating play insights and innovations to the public and policy makers through a variety of media vehicles and projects.

IFP PROJECTS
PLAY | United We Play

In conjunction with the Touch the Future Foundation, the IFP is developing a project to unify the professional and amateur athletic communities with a play-based vision of optimum performance, learning, and well being, and to model this in diverse ways for children.

PLAY | Education

Helping individuals and organizations create empowering, playful learning environments where people can best express their human potential.

PLAY | Consultants

Play based activities offered to varied research, educational and commercial enterprises in need of and desirous of deploying the IFP knowledge base and team.

PLAY | Coaching

Designing and implementing a program directed to volunteer youth sport coaches and organizations to incorporate PLAY principles to transform athletic performance, participation, and enjoyment.

PLAY | Telecourse
The Modern Discovery of Play and What It Means for Human Development

The telecourse will consist of 26 half-hour-long video programs integrated with a dynamic web page, other multimedia, an edited text and other modules. It is designed for national broadcast and as a distance learning for-credit series of college courses. Individual programs will be available for parents, preschool teachers, as integration of play throughout the course of human development enhances the quality of life. This project will demonstrate, for the first time, a unique synthesis of information, which compellingly reveals the full story of play.
For further information see: www.instituteforplay.com

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