News & Events

On Wednesday PYSC hosted their last Quarterly Meeting of 2018 titled Growing Your Program. Heather McDanel, founder of Students Run Philly Style and Amethyst Consulting, led the discussion. We began with the reasons we all came to a discussion about growth and scale, and found many common themes:

Members had a busy fall at PYSC, starting with our Quarterly Meeting in September discussing data in sports-based youth development organizations. We were joined by Gulal Nakati of Philadelphia’s Citywide Out-of-School Time Initiative and by Gareth Jones of Temple University’s School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management.

SquashSmarts presented the 2018 Distinguished Youth Service Award to Beth Devine, Executive Director of PYSC, and Ann Marie and Terry Horner of the Horner Foundation on October 8th at the US.

On June 27th PYSC stood with Mayor Kenney to announce the Game On Philly! campaign aimed to create quality sports-based youth development programs accessible to all of Philadelphia’s young people.

PYSC is committed to supporting research to prove impact. We launched a pilot project in data collection this year to see who PYSC Member organizations are serving.

PYSC members had the opportunity to attend the 4th Annual Coaches Conference on Tuesday, May 15th at the Palestra.  The annual “for coaches by coaches” event was highlighted by keynote speakers Mike Sielski, a sports columnist who offered an interesting take on coaching and perspective; and Crista Samaras, founder of Brave Enterprises who offered exercises on building confidence. Panels and breakout sessions allowed the more than 150 coaches in attendance to explore specific professional development content, such as the "Thinking Outside the Box" panel featuring long-time friend of

PYSC hosted a Leadership Summit on April 23rd and 24th, exploring leading with a value-centered culture at the foundation of all you do. Pam Herath of Strive: How You Lead Matters facilitated the summit, using their collection of research on motivation, energy, and communication. The Summit included an in-depth personal exploration to see where we have strengths as leaders and where we may need to build skills.

Healthy NewsWorks featured PYSC's Executive Director, Beth Devine, in their latest book: Leading Healthy Change In Our Communities 2018. Click here to read their story on the interview and Beth's perspective.

This week the Mayor’s Office of Education hosted a meeting with members of their staff, Community Schools Coordinators, and PYSC Member organizations to explore opportunities for sports-based youth development (SBYD) programs in current Community Schools. The meeting took place at James Logan Elementary School, one of the first cohort of Community Schools announced in summer of 2016.

Back in 1997, the Anderson Monarchs celebrated the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier by piling a team of  5th graders into a vintage 1947 Clipper tour bus for a 13-day road trip, aiming to recreate the “barnstorming” experience Robinson would have had as a player in the Negro League.