YOUNG LEADERS PROGRAM

REINVENTING YOUTH SPORTS (AND OTHER YOUTH DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS) BY EMPOWERING YOUTH TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THEIR TEAMS AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF THEIR TEAMMATES’ DEVELOPMENT: TURNING PLAYERS INTO COACHES THROUGH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PEER-TO-PEER FEEDBACK SYSTEMS

Identifying the problem

  • 50% of kids quit youth sports by age 11 & 70% quit by age 13

  • Early specialization

  • Participation is too expensive

  • Too much Stress, not enough fun

  • The wrong goals

The Solution: Youth Leadership

  • Eliminates the coach as the villain narrative

  • Empowers youth to take ownership

  • Keeps everyone engaged

  • Invests in the growth of teammates

  • Make your youth org a DDO

Why youth leadership model works

  • Teaching to learn while learning to teach: Explanation Effect

  • The importance of awareness

  • Communicating with confidence

  • Practicing Humility

  • Coaching is fun

Implementation techniques

  • Truth Reps: truth & accountability as the foundation for learning

  • Weekly Zoom lessons

  • 1-2-3 point for awareness

  • All-Youth game models

  • The new role of the adult

Project Play’s “Don’t retire me campaign and Kobe Bryant interview on why we need youth sports

Coach Geno Auriemma on the importance of body language and staying engaged on the bench

What is Steady Buckets? And our early implementation of youth leadership programs

Truth Reps in action: This play was learned in 45 minutes using truth reps: peer-to-peer feedback

Better Me (Learn) + Better You (Teach) = Better Us (Change the world)

Learn how to turn your youth sports organization into a DDO (classes/products/certificates):

  • Young Leaders Zoom

  • Truth Reps

  • 1-2-3 Point

  • All-Youth Games

“Youth sports is broken. We all know the problem, but we don’t yet have a scalable, tailorable, modular or sequenced solution. I’m convinced that the growth and implementation of youth leadership is that solution. Next Jump is my training center and Steady Buckets is my laboratory. I’m working on myself so that I’m strong enough to fix youth sports and change the world.”

Coach Macky Bergman is the founder/director of Steady Buckets and an external partner/ social capitalist at Next Jump. He brings over 20+ years of youth coaching experience to Steady Buckets. Coach Macky has trained boys and girls of all ages, top high school prosects, and NCAA student-athletes, as well as Euro-League and NBA professionals. He played four years of varsity basketball at The University of Rochester and received three all-conferance academic team honors. In 2010 he started Steady Buckets in order to bring quality skill development training to NYC youth basketball players. Under his leadership, Steady Buckets has thrived and now serves over 2,500 youth. In 2018 he was honored by NY1 as New Yorker of the Week and by the Brooklyn Nets as Jr. Nets Coach of the Year.

More recently Macky has invested his efforts into developing peer-to-peer feedback models as a way to eliminate the youth coach’s potential for harm and increase the impact of youth leadership in sports. He takes Next Jump leadership in practice (LIP) lessons and translates them into youth friendly leadership lessons every Thursday on COA at 6:30pm EST.

“Close your eyes and imagine you are at a youth sports event. What do you hear? What should you hear? What you should hear is youth participants strategizing, communicating, encouraging each other and laughing together. The reality is that you’ll most likely hear adults yelling. I want to change that.”