Key Messages & Objectives

Sports can do great things for our kids - yet a dramatic rise in poor sporting behavior from parents and coaches is adding unneeded stress to our children, encouraging the wrong values and threatening the good that can come from organized sports.

• Sports experiences can either positively or negatively affect young people's self respect and respect for others, as well as their self-esteem, discipline, courage, responsibility, integrity, honesty, teamwork, loyalty, compassion, tolerance, courtesy, fairness, and humility.
  
  
• Thirty million children play organized sports in the U.S. annually, yet far too many kids turn away from sports each year - just when they could benefit the most - because of negative experiences. Many of these bad experiences can be linked back to the adult role models around them.

Through its unique relationship with the most prominent sports organizations in the nation, the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance (CTSA) helps adults involved in youth sports put kids, teens and competition into proper perspective.

• CTSA raises awareness of the issue of citizenship in sports while offering research, resources, community forums and specific strategies that help parents and coaches create a healthy sports environment for our kids.
  
  
• CTSA also serves as a clearinghouse to direct parents and coaches to a lot of great existing resources offered by other organizations.

Here's an example of a great piece of advice from the NAIA: There are four roles for competition. You can play. You can coach. You can officiate. You can be a fan. Pick ONE. You can't do two at once, much less four.

• No other organization brings together the collective experience, perspective, passion, concern and ability to reach the public than the CTSA. Who better than an alliance of the nation's leading sports organizations to understand the power of a team approach to solving a problem?