Where Kids Play, Teens Lead, and Communities Grow
Rebuilding a locally-led, self-sustaining youth sport and play ecosystem where access doesn't depend on a parent's ability to pay, availability to volunteer, or capacity to drive.
Powered by high school students trained as coaches and mentors — creating consistent, high-quality experiences for every kid in the community, regardless of zip code or family income.
Youth sports shouldn’t be a luxury
Youth sports used to be something communities built together — neighbors coaching kids on weekday evenings, parents sharing the load, kids just playing. Today it's a marketplace that private equity and for-profit models have turned into a pay-to-play system, and the resulting gap of have and have-nots is widening.
Full Circle Play believes the solution has been in our communities all along — high school students who, when equipped with training and support, are uniquely positioned to be the coaches and mentors our kids need and deserve.
How It Works
We recruit, train, and pay high school students to serve as coaches, mentors, and program operators for elementary-age kids in their own feeder schools. These aren't just kids running drills. They're trained coaches running the program.
Additionally, the operational work that is often done by parent volunteers and booster clubs at established programs — scheduling, coordination, fundraising, program management — our vision as we build Full Circle Play, is for teens to do that too. They earn real income, build transferable skills in sport and play management, and become the next generation of community leaders.
That's the full circle. Kids get access to quality play and sport. Teens get opportunity, income and ownership. Communities grow from the inside out — without depending on what parents can pay, availability to volunteer, or capacity to drive.
This summer, Full Circle Play launches its inaugural pilot at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado — anchored within the Cherry Creek School District. Teen coaches recruited from Overland will serve elementary-age kids from Highline Elementary School, delivering structured sport and play programming across four weeks.
This pilot is intentionally place-based. Spots for both coaches and campers are limited to students and families within the Overland feeder community. That's by design — we're building something locally rooted before we scale it.
The work starts this summer.
Built with partners who believe in the work.
Full Circle Play operates with the support of the Cherry Creek Schools Foundation as our fiscal sponsor and the Cherry Creek School District in their support of access to play and skill building as a must have for kids. We’re appreciative to Gary Community Ventures and the Scheuerman Family Trust for providing the initial funding to support the pilot.
Appreciation to Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport and 2-4-1 Sports for sharing their expertise and tools to support Full Circle Play’s coach training curriculum and camp program design. And to Action For Healthy Kids for their partnership in developing an evaluation framework for our pilot. we appreciate our evaluation framework is developed in partnership with Action for Healthy Kids,
This is just the beginning.
Full Circle Play is piloting in Aurora this summer — but the model is built to travel. Whether you're a funder, a district leader, a fellow advocate, a parent outside our current pilot area, or simply someone who believes every kid deserves access to play — we want to stay in touch. Enter your email below to follow our progress, hear what we're learning, and be part of the conversation about what a youth sports ecosystem can look like when our young people lead it, own it, and benefit from it.