How traditional sports can thrive in a changing world

Traditional youth sports like baseball and softball have seen growing competition from technology, gaming and newer sports in recent years. To address declining participation, Little League International is halfway through a five-year growth plan, which included elevating Nina Johnson-Pitt to a new position as senior strategy executive. She explains how the league is focusing on access, experience and retention to make Little League more fun and relevant for a new generation of players and fans.

Kate MacArthur: With other activities competing for kids’ time, how can we keep traditional sports relevant for the future?

Nina Johnson-Pitt: We need to make parents understand the value of having their kids participate in Little League. Then, parents are looking for ways to get their kids active and involved at younger ages. Currently, Little League starts for 4-year-olds. We're looking at ways we can offer a program even younger, so 3-year-olds. Is there a program that's engaging, where you have smaller groups of kids where you're teaching them developmentally appropriate skills? We also know from some of our research and data where kids are leaving the program. We've piloted in the last couple of years some ways to speed up and make the game move a little more. For example, you start with the runner on second, so there’s always a runner on base, so that keeps players more engaged. Once they do that, they want to come back the next year where they learn more about the actual game.

MacArthur: As a kid, I couldn’t play baseball because I was a girl. Now, we're still discussing who can play based on gender. Where would you like to see that go?

Johnson-Pitt: We were wrong in the ‘70s, and we've been working hard since then to be better. We have a plan with tactical items in place to address the discrepancy. Our goal is by 2032 — so in 10 years — we have equal opportunities for females at all levels of our program. Oftentimes we’ll hear about when a league unfortunately told a girl she had to play softball and couldn't play baseball. We have to do a better job of ensuring that volunteers at all levels of our program are trained and well-versed in our vision and values. It's going to start with that, and we intend to benchmark where we are. The next step is to put together an advisory group that is keenly focused on the initiatives that we're embarking on, and that they're holding us accountable to ensure we're doing what we said we were going to do.

MacArthur: How else are you working to build equity?

Johnson-Pitt: Thanks to the support of our partners such as T-Mobile and the T-Mobile Little League Call Up Grant, we can help offset participation fees so parents can apply directly for a grant. But there are other factors then that play into it. So yes, you paid the registration fee, but do you have someone to take you to practice and games? Oftentimes lower income families don't have as flexible schedules, so that makes such a challenge. We can continue to pick out some of these issues, but if the entire youth sports society doesn't change, it's going to be an uphill battle.

MacArthur: How could youth sports improve this?

Johnson-Pitt: The easy answer is they need to be more accessible and less costly, and that would allow us to start to close that income gap. Of course, as parents, we want the best opportunity for our kids. We want to set them on a path where they will succeed. And there's really no regulation in travel sports right now. You'll see a lot of elite and gold diamond, gold platinum teams. Little League is not-for-profit, but oftentimes, travel sports and those tournaments are for-profit. Parents will buy into that because they don't want to get left behind. As long as that keeps happening, as long as that gap where the wealthy kids continue to have better equipment, better playing opportunities, everything is better, then you have less available for lower-income families. Their opportunities may cease to exist. Oftentimes, when the travel programs take the better players, they also take the coaches. So, we have to continue to provide that supplemental support for families that need it. A lot of leaders in the industry are going to have to put our heads together to figure out the best way to address it.

MacArthur: How do you manage the balance of fun and competition so fun will still be relevant for the future?

Johnson-Pitt: It's still a game and when it's not fun anymore, that's when kids don't want to play. Everything has to start with fun; from there, as kids both physically and mentally develop to get to a point where they can understand competition. That's part of development. But what has happened and where we're failing is we've gotten competitive younger and younger. The most ridiculous travel [league] I've ever seen is 8-year-old coach-pitch travel. Unfortunately, we as adults have decided that we needed to interject ourselves and make things more competitive sooner than they need to be. It goes back to us leaders in the industry saying we have to have a reset and do what's best for the kids here and not what's best for the adults.