Research has shown that kids just want to have fun when they’re playing sports. But for many young athletes, fun is nowhere to be found. Between social media surveillance, elite training regimens and increasing commercialization, children and adolescents are being pressured to either perform at the highest level or walk away completely.
Meredith Whitley, PhD, professor of health and sport sciences at Adelphi University’s Ruth S. Ammon College of Education and Health Sciences, believes youth sport culture has reached a breaking point. As one of the country’s leading scholars in youth sport, Dr. Whitley has spent years working to restore what she calls an “ecosystem in crisis.” She’s particularly concerned about the mental health of young athletes, which often buckles under the weight of expectations from coaches and parents. Yet youth sport participation should be a protective factor for mental health—not a risk factor. Dr. Whitley’s solution to this crisis is a road map for systemic reform.
For the past two years, Dr. Whitley and her research partner, William Massey, PhD, of Oregon State University, have been developing the United States’ first-ever comprehensive youth sports mental health guidelines. In the absence of federal regulations or a dedicated government ministry, these guidelines close a problematic policy gap. They’re the product of input from more than 100 athletes, families, coaches and experts, translating both scholarly research and lived experience into actionable, evidence-based guidance for youth sport leaders.
Rethinking the Youth Sports Ecosystem
In many youth sport settings in the United States, any adult can show up and volunteer to become a coach, no prior experience or training required. Dr. Whitley wants to change that. “We need to make sure volunteers are coaching in ways that are physically safe,” she said. That means, at the very minimum, conducting background checks and sport safety training.
But training coaches to support mental health is trickier. “How do we help coaches understand how to build psychologically safe, developmentally appropriate environments where kids can flourish? How do we help coaches cultivate a sense of inclusion and belonging?”
Dr. Whitley’s guidelines lay out a clear path forward—not only for coaches, but for parents, too. As her research revealed, parents’ behavior can make or break their child’s experience. “Time and again, we heard from young athletes that the worst part is the car ride home after the game.”
“Reclaiming the game: Challenges and opportunities to address mental health in youth sport” (Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, May 2026), a related article Dr. Whitley co-authored with Dr. Massey, recounts young athletes’ frustration with their parents’ postgame critiques. Parents becoming critics rather than caregivers, even when their feedback is well-meaning, only adds fuel to the fire. Much like coaches, Dr. Whitley believes, parents have to be trained how to “show up.”
A Landmark National Initiative, Supported by $450,000 in Grant Funding
Dr. Whitley’s research has been supported by high-profile organizations across the country. A $200,000 grant from the Movember Foundation powered phase one, with another $100,000 from Movember powering phase two—along with a $250,000 grant from the Susan Crown Exchange. For this most recent grant, Adelphi was selected as just one of 10 inaugural partners in its Empower Every Coach (EEC) program, enabling Dr. Whitley’s work to be connected with a national portfolio of other systems-level youth sport projects.
“Mental Health Guidelines for Youth Sport Across the United States” kicked off in early 2025 with an intensive literature review, encompassing 20,000 research papers and programming from 80-plus programs and organizations, as well as a series of national focus groups and an Adelphi study, which allowed her team to get feedback from 22 experts in the intersection of youth sport and mental health. Later in 2025, Dr. Whitley and her team held a two-day expert advisory panel at Nike’s headquarters in New York City to finalize the guidelines and develop a plan for dissemination.
In July 2026, the project entered a new, much-anticipated phase: implementation and testing. Dr. Whitley and her team began working with a cohort of “anchor partners,” spanning grassroots, school-based and performance sport settings from coast to coast.
The Seven Guidelines Making Real-World Impact
For the next 18 months, these anchor partners will serve as an important proving ground. As they put the mental health guidelines into practice, they’ll be reshaping their sport programs from the ground up, turning potential pressure cookers into the safe havens they were always meant to be.
The first three guidelines set a developmental baseline: prioritizing young athletes’ physical, psychological and social growth over performance. The rest address mental health directly, covering subjects like crisis response training, clear access to mental health resources and emergency preparedness plans.
“Lots of programs have emergency plans for physical injuries, but what about mental health?” Dr. Whitley said. “If there’s a collective trauma in the community, or something really hard has happened for one athlete on the team, we don’t want program leaders to be figuring out what to do on the fly.” She’s also determined to enhance mental health literacy. Coaches should be able to recognize early signs of distress and, critically, gauge if their athletes are just having a bad day, “or if it’s something more serious that needs to be escalated.”
A Healthier Future for Youth Sports
During the testing phase, Dr. Whitley’s team will be collecting data from their anchor partners, working in real time to refine the “Mental Health Guidelines for Youth Sport Across the United States.” “We’ll be learning as we go,” she said. “Where are the friction points? What is and isn’t feasible? How can we make sure the guidelines are ready for a broader rollout?” At the end of 2027, they’ll synthesize their findings into an open-access tool kit that can be accessed by any sport program leader, anywhere.
Though the guidelines will remain a work in progress for some time, Dr. Whitley is excited about the possibility of real, systems-level change—especially as some states are finally beginning to legislate mental health training and coach requirements. “I hope our guidelines will help shape those policies,” she said. “And eventually we’ll have a clear foundation for rebuilding youth sport as a healthier, more inclusive ecosystem.”