Opening up to the Dual Purpose Mindset

By Matt Amerlan

Director of Workforce Development

To this point, we've talked about the dual purpose concept of the athlete journey quite a bit. How what you learn through sport can transfer for success in life and career. While this is an intuitive concept, sometimes we need to be explicit and intentional about communication with young athletes around this and how we educate our athletes to connect what they are learning and how it applies to other settings.

In my career, in addition to the sports industry, I've spent over a decade in the corporate world in human resources and organizational development, but also spent some time as a school counselor. While in that setting, I once heard a well-respected Douglas County School District High School Principal (Chaparral High School, Colorado), Greg Gotchey, say something that seemed so simple but has stuck with me in a profound way.

He once shared that one of the most valuable ways we can impact young students is by teaching them transferable skills that will help them in everyday life. Yes, we need to learn core academic competencies (math, literature, history, etc.), but it is the skills learned around resiliency, adaptability, time management in juggling their sports, work, or other extracurricular activity schedules, navigating relationships, etc., that might have the most valuable impact on their lives.

This always made me think about approaching opportunities with a dual purpose mindset. How can what I'm doing, learning, or participating in in one setting, provide value for me in another setting?

Putting the Framework into Practice

At Positive Athlete, we have a dual purpose workshop where the framework discusses the importance of helping student-athletes connect the dots that what they are learning in their sport can impact their school, work, and community. While sports have a tremendous built-in opportunity for this, these opportunities can be leveraged elsewhere.

Our team recently converted this workshop and delivered it to the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles Youth Development summit. The idea was that every YMCA of the USA activity can have two goals: one for today's performance and one skill young people can recognize and carry into school, work, and community. Nearly 1,000 youth-serving YMCA staff team members attended the 2026 Summit, and we worked with staff to help them translate everyday program moments into transferable skills their young people can name, own, and use long after their time at the Y.

Expanding Opportunities and Resources

We think of dual purpose when it comes to most aspects of our Positive Athlete program. For instance, every nominated Positive Athlete is eligible for scholarships but at the same time gets free lifelong access to our digital platform (mobile and desktop) featuring resume building, unique opportunities, and career awareness and exploration resources.

Additionally, we can apply the dual purpose mindset when it comes to resources and opportunities. For student-athletes that are recognized and celebrated in our program, we try to open up additional resources and opportunities that can have even further impact on them.

Also, there are a lot of great scholarship programs out there in addition to ours. As an example, local to where I'm at in Colorado, there is an amazing scholarship program available to high school students through the Boettcher Foundation (Boettcher Scholarship), or nationally there are a lot of wonderful programs including the Coca-Cola Scholars Program Scholarship to name a couple.

A Real-World Example: The Michael Ray Lee Foundation

An example of a Colorado Foundation that has a dual purpose mindset is the Michael Ray Lee Foundation. A tremendous young man, Michael Ray Lee lost his life in December of 2020 at the age of 28 due to complications from Covid. Michael excelled not only in the classroom but on the golf course, and was proudly awarded the "President's Senior Scholar Athlete Award" from the Colorado School of Mines upon graduation. The candidates for the scholarship that is part of the Michael Ray Lee Foundation, named the Integrity Scholarship for High School Student Athletes, align very well with who Positive Athlete celebrates. The Michael Ray Lee Foundation decided to open up the opportunity for their nominees and in fact nominate all of their deserving applicants who also met the Positive Athlete criteria last year. For them, it was the opportunity to change the narrative for their candidates from, "Sorry you did not win our scholarship, we went in another direction" to, "We were so moved by your application we nominated you as a Positive Athlete."

Join the Movement

What if we approached these opportunities with a dual purpose mindset? Something that makes Positive Athlete different is not only are nominees eligible for awards and scholarships but it is free for any adult to nominate a high school age student athlete. It takes just 5 minutes to nominate, and every single kid that gets nominated gets lifetime access to our resources whether they win an award or not. So if you know of a high character, leadership-oriented student-athlete that is up for a scholarship like the ones mentioned above or others, tap into your dual purpose mindset and consider also nominating them as a Positive Athlete expanding their opportunities and resources further.

Dual Threat Playbook Tip:

Challenge yourself to approach your opportunities and experiences with a dual purpose mindset.