Moving Beyond the Cold War Coach

Ultimate Frisbee is, in the Indian context, one of the few sports where men and women play on the same team, building gender equality through play.

An inner city Detroit program places 90 percent of graduates in well-paying tech jobs by teaching them how to code. It may serve as a viable path for Philadelphia citizens, as well.

After a young rugby player died in Northern Ireland, his family and a brain expert set about to establish concussion guidelines, looking in part to the United States.

A overview of 2014's Fixes columns - connecting the dots between 60 or so ways that people are trying to change the world.

To protect the heads of football players, it might be advisable to have them occasionally practice without head protection, according to a counterintuitive new study of a successful Division I football program.

Despite overwhelming evidence that play is vital for children’s physical, emotional and cognitive development, in recent decades, due to many factors, children’s outdoor play opportunities have declined markedly. For 15 years, KaBOOM! has been leading playground construction around the country, mostly in neighborhoods where at least 70 percent of children qualify for the federal government’s free and reduced-cost lunch program.

When adults are asked what values they think youth sports actually reinforce most, they say competitiveness and the importance of winning. The Positive Coaching Alliance provides teaching tools that help coaches redefine the idea of “winning” from something that is reflected on a scoreboard to something that is reflected in a child’s character.

Girls in India are sometimes forced into the prospects of child marriage, prostitution, or slave labor; alternatively, families often teach girls to be wives and mothers. To empower girls to make their own choices, Yuwa, an NGO based in India, introduces girls to sports for social development. Yuwa also promotes educational workshops for girls, where girls can discuss women’s rights and their thoughts about their own bodies.

The Homeless World Cup is the premier soccer tournament for homeless players. Programs around the world use soccer as a means of building a sense of community, sublimating negative energies, and encouraging personal growth.

A group called Positive Coaching Alliance is training thousands of coaches and parents to change to culture of youth sports for the better, using a "relentlessly positive" approach, and trading out the win-at-all-costs ethos of professional sports for evidence-based, age-appropriate guidance to players.