More Than a Game: How High School Sports Build Essential Workforce Skills

At Positive Athlete we think it is important to explicitly and proactively think about the athlete journey as being a dual purpose for life. We lean into the fact that our sports climate today is more intense than ever with nearly 10 million high school age student-athletes putting a substantial commitment into optimizing their ability in sport and that for roughly 95% of these athletes, they will stop competing after high school. Even for the 5% that go on to compete after high school their career will end at some point. Positive Athlete’s very own Champ Bailey, who is a college and pro football hall of famer, retired at the age of 36 with so much to give in the arena outside of football. There is an exciting opportunity here.

Today’s workforce leaders are telling us that there is a soft skill gap in the workforce talent pipeline. A General Assembly survey found that more than a quarter of executives would pass on hiring today’s entry level employees. When they were asked why, it is because they feel that entry level workers are unprepared, with nearly half of the executives pointing to the lack of soft skills. Further, many executives and employees feel that new hires had the wrong attitude or mindset for their roles further contributing to skill gaps.

Additional to this, Forbes shared that, managers don’t want to hire Gen-Z workers, citing a lack of soft skills, sharing that the lack of soft skills in younger workers is leading to companies hiring fewer college graduates which is having a ripple effect on the broader American workforce. Further sharing that while hard skills (technical skills) are necessary; without soft skills, those same employees have a lack of understanding on important things like how to coordinate with colleagues, or when or how to communicate their questions.

With this in mind, you may be asking, what exactly is the exciting opportunity here? Highly sought after soft skills such as: work ethic, communication, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, adaptability, and other skills are typically developed through first hand experience

and are vital to professional success as discussed above. Here’s the really exciting part, innate in the athlete journey is the development of these highly sought after soft skills learned first-hand through sport.

What if we empowered the nearly 10 million high school age athletes to “connect these dots”? To understand that the work ethic, resiliency, adaptability, collaboration, communication they are refining everyday in their sport, as part of a team, as part of communicating with their coaches, is shaping them to be a “dual threat” for life. These skills are helping them optimize their athletic ability while at the same time giving them a skill set that transfers.

Having this context offers us an opportunity for reframing. What has the traditional (stale) message been for a young athlete? “Make sure you have something to fall back on”. This means nothing to the young athlete except for potentially reinforcing an insecurity, a thought that I better have something else, but that is hard to find because of my commitment to my sport.

How might we reframe this? “Go pursue your athletic goals, because if you try to optimize your athletic ability, you will have no regrets or wonder “what if”, at the same time this pursuit will give you a skillset that is needed, and transfers for life”. The next step is to educate and empower young athletes with this understanding.  

Dual Threat Playbook Tip: Icebreaker/Team Discussion, Your Skills Transfer