This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
We hosted a live webinar in partnership with Ankored last week for premium subscribers, focusing on compliance and safety in youth sports.
The panelists:
Ankored CEO Seth Lieberman
Lower Merion (Pa.) Little League President Wally Orlov
Unrivaled Sports Senior Director of Health and Safety Meredith Thompson
The full webinar is now available below for all subscribers in video and podcast form, as well as some takeaways from the conversation.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
📺 Watch The Webinar
📝 Key Takeaways
Perfection is not attainable. An operator may have to juggle federal, state and local standards -- both actual laws and policies -- plus whatever their overarching organization or governing body requires. And all of these needs may contradict or overlap each other. Even major organizations will never achieve 100% compliance. And no policy will stop all negative outcomes, from abuse to injuries. The goal is create a culture that uses every tool at its disposal to prevent them and acts responsibly when they do happen.
Teamwork helps. Operators will encounter many "gray areas" when it comes to compliance and safety. Being able to consult internal peers or tap into a larger network makes it easier to navigate these situations when they are presented. Wally offered a particularly insightful story about how his organization dealt with a volunteer candidate who had a non-violent, but recent, criminal record.
Safety is a culture. “From my perspective, safety is when we are in an environment as humans where we feel like we can breathe, we feel like we can be present, we feel like we can have the experience that we're there to experience,” Meredith said. "I'm incredibly blessed to work for an organization who is invested in that, being a part of our customer service experience, having plans for when unfortunately things do go wrong, we know how to respond in a really graceful way that makes people continue to feel safe.”
On the back burner. There is a lot of attention surrounding youth sports right now, including from Capitol Hill. But the focus is on costs, private equity, NIL and other matters. Seth said he believes there will eventually be federal legislation that streamlines standards — remember, U.S. SafeSport only applies to the Olympic system — but it will not happen anytime soon. “I think we will get federal legislation at some point. … But we're not passing much legislation as a country these days,” he said. “I don't think it's coming anytime soon. I do think at some point we'll get something, but I don't know what it'll be.”
An easy place to start. Compliance does not guarantee safety — the former accounts for liability while the latter is more science than art. Meredith suggests "The Rule of Three," which means there are at least three people and two adults involved in any interaction like applying ice, putting on the catcher's gear, stretching, etc. That way each moment is observable and, if necessary, interruptible to maintain safety.
🎧 Listen To The Webinar
🤳 Follow Buying Sandlot on Social
We’re new— help us build up our social media accounts by following along:
Good game.