NFHS Voice: Find Answers at Youth Level
November 13, 2019
By Karissa Niehoff
NFHS Executive Director
Are there long-term solutions to increasing the number of participants in high school sports and improving parental behavior at high school contests? The answer to both questions might start at the youth sports level.
The NFHS hosted a first-ever meeting of about 25 leaders of National Governing Bodies and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee last week to discuss common concerns and opportunities to align and work together.
Within the youth areas of these organizations, the issues are familiar ones to high school leaders – decline in participation, parent behavior, coaches education and minimizing the injury risk. Clearly, however, reaching parents with appropriate educational messages on sportsmanship, injury risk and the values of participation is a top priority for leaders at all levels – youth, middle school and high school sports.
Recently, the NFHS formed a Middle School Committee in an effort to build interest in education-based sports at that level and to share the proper messages with parents before their kids reach high school. However, as we learned last week, middle school may even be too late!
Those educational messages will be enhanced if the process starts in out-of-school youth sports. If messages about the values of multi-sport participation, playing for the love of the game, and limiting contact in sports like football are consistently shared and demonstrated at the youth level, the education-based concept should be firmly in place by the time students reach high school.
Coaches education is another common concern. While the NFHS has created an outstanding online education program for interscholastic coaches through the NFHS Learning Center (www.NFHSLearn.com), there is no standard requirement to coach at the youth level. There should be some type of required certification for anyone to walk onto a field or court to coach. And while knowledge about teaching the proper tackling form in football or the proper defensive positioning in basketball is important, those are not the most important prerequisites for coaching.
Similar to the NFHS’ online Fundamentals of Coaching course, youth coaches should be required to take courses that help them learn how to coach the kids more so than the sport. And since many of the coaches at this level are parents of players on the team, these individuals – and all youth parents – should be presented materials similar to what is presented at preseason meetings at the high school level. This would include, among other things, the non-negotiable requirement to positively support their child while letting the coaches coach, and the officials officiate.
Lofty goals, for sure, without a collective governing organization over youth sports. However, these concepts can be endorsed and promoted within the youth areas of sport-specific NGBs. These fundamentals of education-based athletics are essential for the 2-3 percent who play sports beyond high school as well as the majority who apply the values learned in high school sports in their chosen careers.
The skills will eventually fade – even for those individuals who play sports beyond high school – but the values learned from playing sports, beginning at the youth sports level, will last a lifetime.
Dr. Karissa L. Niehoff is in her second year as executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is the first female to head the national leadership organization for high school athletics and performing arts activities and the sixth full-time executive director of the NFHS, which celebrated its 100th year of service during the 2018-19 school year. She previously was executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for seven years.
NFHS Hall of Famers: Multi-Sport Experience Makes Major Difference
By
The NFHS Voice
National Federation of State High School Associations
July 28, 2026
The theory that athletes in high school need to specialize in one sport in an out-of-school program to progress to the next level was not the theme from the five athletes inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame last month in Salt Lake City, Utah.
At a press conference preceding the 43rd Hall of Fame induction ceremony, five former extraordinary high school athletes – all of whom later excelled at the college, professional and for a few Olympic levels – delivered resounding messages about the importance of playing multiple sports within school-based programs.
Joe Carter, who was a four-sport standout in football, basketball, baseball and track at Millwood High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, long before his stellar pro baseball career, said he might never have been a successful pro baseball player without his multiple sport career at Millwood.
“If I had played baseball all year long, I wouldn’t have been a professional baseball player because I would have burned out,” Carter said. “Coaches will tell you that if you don’t come out for football in the spring instead of playing another sport, you will be passed up. This is not the case because if you’re good they will find you. I will take an athlete who played two or three sports over an athlete who just played one sport because those guys know how to take advantage of a situation and know how to adjust.”
Jordan Larson, a three-sport participant at Logan View High School in Hooper, Nebraska, before settling into volleyball and leading the University of Nebraska to an NCAA championship and playing in four consecutive Olympics, also pointed to multiple sports as a reason for success.
“I can’t emphasize it enough – playing multiple sports helped me personally,” Larson said. “It helped me adapt and adjust as I got older. I can’t recommend it enough from a young age.
“Playing multiple sports helped shape me health-wise from a longevity standpoint. There’s something to be said for the mind. If you’re on the grind in the same sport, burnout will come.”
Another volleyball standout in the 2026 class was Alisha Glass Childress, who also played basketball at Leland (Michigan) High School and who would later lead Penn State University to three consecutive NCAA volleyball titles and team with Larson on the U.S. squad at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
“Playing for your high school team is so important – it’s such a different experience,” Childress said. “Being in the same program for four years and getting to know the athletes you’re with, I felt like it was family.
“High school was a beautiful time and the beginning of a love affair with sports. I fell in love with the sport of volleyball but also tried a lot of different sports. I played basketball as well. For me, high school is when you start to have an understanding of yourself – reflecting on who you want to be or what you want to achieve.
“The life lessons you learn along the way are so important. The majority of the athletes on our team did not continue on to play past high school. The life lessons you learn as a high school athlete – being a leader, accountability, goal-setting – carry with you the rest of your life.”
Patrick Willis was one of Tennessee’s top two-way football players at Hollow Rock-Bruceton Central High School who also played basketball and baseball before his hall of fame football career with the San Francisco 49ers.
“Coming from a small town with two red lights, I would say the most fun I had growing up was playing sports,” Willis said. “Life can throw a lot of things at you, and to be able to adjust is amazing. In sports, we’re able to learn these things – the discipline, the toughness, the perseverance. I wanted to be a representative that anything is possible, and it’s not just the ones from the big cities or towns, but ones from small towns also.”
Another proponent of playing multiple sports was Krissy Wendell Pohl, the most dominant player in girls ice hockey in Minnesota history and the national record-holder in goals scored in a season who went to a stellar career at the University of Minnesota and won a silver medal at the 2002 Olympics. In addition to her excellence in ice hockey, Wendell Pohl also played tennis, baseball and softball.
“It was so special for me to be able to play multiple sports,” said Wendell Pohl. “For me, playing baseball, softball and hockey, you had different groups of friends, different roles on different teams, and all of that had an impact and you don’t realize it until later.
“High school is the purest form of sport. What you learn in high school, as you’re learning and growing and developing, those things stay with you. The people who impact you in high school – you will never forget that.”
We urge coaches today to take the message from these five outstanding athletes about playing multiple sports to heart and make that option available to athletes in their schools.
These vital programs help to shape young student-athletes into successful parents, citizens and leaders of our nation for years to come.