While there are many things that drive us to do what we do, there are a few key issues that fuel our fire:
- Youth sports are on the decline and social issues such as child obesity, depression, early drug and alcohol use and suicides are rising. We are concerned.
- Recent research states approximately 30% of youth ages 6-12 are inactive. Meaning that they participate in than 1 day per week of structured or informal sport/play activities. To add to that, as household income decreases inactivity increases. We want to get more young people active.
- The economic impact of inactivity is $147 billion, this is twice the federal education budget. We think that this changes with our youth.
- Youth sports has grown into a $15B industry. While the revenues continue to increase, the number of kids participating is decreasing. This suggests something is wrong.
- 70% of youth stop playing sports at age 12 and 80% at age 13. We want health, wellness, and sport to last a lifetime.
- Kids grow at different rates. We see too many kids dropping out of sports before their bodies have matured. Early developers can experience feeling awkward and uncoordinated. Late developers can feel inferior. With the increasing focus on winning and being selected for the best positions and all-star teams, kids who haven’t matured are feeling hopeless and quitting. We see the need for an increased focus on player development that includes proper balance between practice and play with focus on physical and mental training.
- We believe the value of sports extends well beyond winning and losing games. We see sports as a great training ground for life. Sports encourage healthy living habits, how to thrive on teams, how to work hard for something you want and how to treat failure as just another opportunity to grow. We want to enable the opportunity for every kid to experience the full benefits of sports.
- We worry that in today’s technology-filled environment children are finding the digital world to be more interactive and fun than the real physical world. We get it. In the digital world, a kid has the freedom to just play and interact with, no parental pressures or coaches choosing when and where they can play. The kid can get better at the games they play by just playing. The game developers have tapped into the motivation and psychology of kids in a big way. They have sophisticated incentives filled with levels of achievement, badges and currencies. They have integrated social networking and made it not only okay to fail, but fun. We see the need to bring many of the elements the digital world is offering into the physical world. We strive to make the physical world as dynamic and fun as the digital world.
