Empowerment Through Sports (February 2020)

Issue One- February 2020:

By Mercedes Barreto

Empowerment Through Sports is a nonprofit organization working towards the establishment of mechanisms that help to “EMPOWER” the lives of participants and their families. They aspire to be a cornerstone of supporting to help shape the lives of young participants and their families.

What kinds of sports or athletically related aspirations do you generally encounter with athletes or youth individuals who attend your organization’s events and become a part of the team?

“The athletes and parents that we encounter are usually looking for a healthy socially integrating activity to help in the development of relationships and skills.

Many of these young participants talk about the memorable experiences of practice, games, and team-building experiences.  Most of the older children in our 6-14 year age bracket talk about their favorite players and teams in the professional leagues and organizations.”

Win or lose, how does your organization strive to manage the ups and downs of a sporting team’s achievements and attempts? How do teams handle winning or not, at such young ages?

“The focal point for our child participants is to foster the growth and development of the young athlete while at the same time partnering with their parents to ensure that a support mechanism is established to reinforce their parenting. The actual sport comes secondary as our efforts are intended fully on creating a well-rounded person who can be prepared to contribute to the uplifting of our society as a whole. Our teams are taught competition and they want to win. In our experience, the competitive edge kicks in more at ages 10-14. We want to maintain the fun recreational aspect for ages 6-9.”

Would you say that the program is rigorous?

“We want to make the program fun and challenging. We, however, take into consideration that the kids need to have fun, learn, and grow; so we are intentional about balancing the paradox between “sports” and “games”.”

Even if your youth teams don’t win, or score low in competitions, how do the youth regroup, and wake up the next day, ready to play sports?

“The amount of time, energy, and effort placed into the intentional stabilization of a  young person’s growth and development are substantial.

Being an ETS’er is about being strong, practical, and consistent. I believe that “Life is a process of progression”, we are always working to get better daily.

Our children are not encouraged to hang on to outside experiences except to use as fuel to attain the goal of becoming their ‘highest self’.”