In 2014, I joined a nonprofit organization in Paraguay that worked through churches in communities with very few resources. I was asked to start a sports program. We had little money and no established network of coaches, but there were people willing to give their time. Within three years, 72 football schools were serving around 2,600 children.
The experience changed how I understood the role of sport. The fields and training sessions mattered, but they were not the whole story. What many children were looking for was a place to belong and adults who would continue showing up.
The numbers mattered, but they were not the whole story.
Seventy-two schools and around 2,600 children showed that there was demand. They also showed what can happen when people are willing to contribute their time around a need in their community.
Those figures did not tell us everything. Participation is evidence that people value an opportunity. It does not, by itself, explain why the opportunity matters or what it produces over time. For that, we had to pay attention to what was happening around the football.
The question became larger than football.
A training session gives people a reason to gather. A team gives them a place and a shared identity. A coach can become a consistent adult in a young person's week. These things are easy to treat as secondary to the sport. In many communities, they may be among its most important results.
This did not make the football less important. It made the responsibility around it clearer. If sport creates attention and participation, the organization has to decide what that access will be used to build.
A program depends on the structure around it.
The growth of the football schools also taught me to look beyond the activity itself. A program needs people who know what they are responsible for, places where the work can happen, schedules people can rely on and enough trust for families to keep participating.
That is one reason I now think about sports ventures as organizations and ecosystems, not only as teams or competitions. The experience on the field depends on decisions made away from it. If the structure is fragile, the opportunity for players, coaches and families is fragile too.
What should a sports organization look for?
Start with the people it is meant to serve. What do they actually need? Who continues showing up? What happens when one key person leaves? What result is the activity producing beyond attendance? Can the organization keep producing that result over time?
These questions do not replace sporting ambition. They help define what the ambition is for.
A sports program should be judged by more than how many sessions it delivers. The better question is what those sessions make possible—and whether the organization can keep making it possible.