Coach Across America

More about Coach Across America

A fresh breeze is blowing in America, inspiring leaders in the youth sports field to confront three separate social issues threatening child wellness - childhood obesity, academic failure, and youth violence; this breeze is Coach Across America. Coach Across America, the Up2Us coaching equivalent of Teach For America, is a dynamic national service model that uses sports as an intentional tool to support youth in surmounting the social and economic influences that so often give rise to unhealthiness, dropping out, and high-risk behavior involvement.

To address these issues, our sports programs join forces with youth development, which guides CAA coaches in using sports as a means to teach personal and social skills that can be transferred to life, view and treat young people in the community as resources to be developed, and draw on resources in the community to facilitate community development. In practice, a daily lesson format helps to organize coach instruction to address the above mentioned social issues. Lessons include Awareness Talks (what the program is really about), Direct Instruction (sport sessions), Individual Decision-Making (about goals and choices), Group Meeting (to evaluate the lesson and suggest solutions to any problems), and Reflection Time (to think about what was learned).