Imagine a higher percentage of children and youth choosing to stay active through the school years. Imagine a higher percentage of adults and seniors pursuing a sport of their choice or being physically active for life. A successful, positive experience in sport can make that happen.
The goal of quality sport is to create positive experiences in supportive environments. Ultimately, if sport participation and physical activity isn’t fun, progressive, positive, or welcoming, children, youth, and adults alike will turn to other activities that may be much less healthy.
Quality sport is developmentally appropriate, safe and inclusive, and well run. Another way of saying this is that quality sport consists of good programs, led by good people, in good places.
- participant centered,
- progressive and challenging,
- designed with planned and meaningful competition.
Simply put, improving the quality of sport means more physically active kids and adults, holistically developed. Healthy individuals, in turn, can make positive contributions to society.
This is why we created a video series, to educate and inform anyone involved in creating positive, quality sport experiences for athletes, young and old, for communities and clubs at all levels across Canada. We are grateful to the RBC Learn to Play project for funding this initiative, resulting in a unique collaboration of like-minded sport leaders from the Sport for Life Society, Synchro Canada and the Repsol Sport Centre.
We hope these videos will remind you of all the great ways you already support your athletes and gives you some new ideas to build upon as well. The videos can be accessed through the Sport for Life Vimeo channel or in this document through the buttons below.
For more information on quality sport, see:
- Quality Sport for Communities and Clubs – a guide useful for sport leaders, coaches, municipal recreation leaders, PTSOs, and funders.
- Quality Sport Checklist – a tool to assess and improve the quality of sport programming in a club or community setting.
- Quality Sport for Communities and Clubs Workshop
- Quality Physical Literacy Experiences Workshop & Online Evaluation
- Quality Sport Videos
- Long-Term Athlete Development Key Factors
- Long-Term Athlete Development Stages
- List of quality sport programs for children ages 2-12 developed by national sport organizations.
- Indigenous Communities: Active for Life – a resource to support individual champions as they embark on a journey to develop sustainable quality sport and physical activity programs.
