Kids 7-12
​Play with purpose.
A space to move, think creatively, and figure things out together—without constant instruction or pressure to perform—room to explore their strengths while they're still discovering who they are. They'll:
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Build confidence by solving problems
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Develop resilience working through low-stakes challenge and frustration
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Forge real connection working toward shared goals in a fun, high-energy environment.
Play. Grow. Transform. Repeat.
Teens 13-18+
What's your NextPlay?
Real responsibility. Real impact.
Not just showing up—contributing.
Because colleges don’t need participation lists and employers don’t need passengers. They need people who take initiative, adapt, build, lead, contribute, and make value.
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​Junior Coaches (13-15)
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Lead warmups and challenge games
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Assist younger participants
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Learn coaching and communication skills
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Build confidence as a leader
​Senior Coaches & Program Leads (15-18+)
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Help design activities and challenges
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Contribute new ideas for sessions
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Assist with event planning and operations
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Gain hands-on leadership experience
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NextPlay in Depth & Our Story
About NextPlay
At NextPlay, we believe movement and play are the most powerful tools available for helping young people discover who they are, how they connect with others, and how they contribute to the world around them. While many youth programs focus primarily on performance, competition, or specialization, our focus is human development. We use sport, movement, play, leadership challenges, and guided reflection to help kids and teens build confidence, resilience, self-awareness, adaptability, and connection. Every activity becomes an opportunity to learn something deeper—not just about the game, but about themselves. Because the goal isn't simply to create better athletes. The goal is to help young people become capable, connected, adaptable humans.
How are you different from youth leagues?
Parents want their children to be confident, resilient, healthy, socially connected, and capable of navigating challenges. Sport often develops these skills. But many families feel caught between two extremes. On one side are highly competitive programs that demand year-round commitments, increasing specialization, and constant pressure to perform. On the other are programs that provide activity without much intentional growth or development. We exist to fill the space in between. We believe young people benefit from challenge without burnout, structure without rigidity, and growth without tying their worth to outcomes. We believe childhood should include ambition and achievement, but also curiosity, balance, belonging, joy, and time to simply be a kid. We're sports-adjacent & athletics-focused, but our success isn't measured in stats so much as it's measured in your kids' growth.
Our
Philosophy
We believe human beings learn by making connections. Before young people specialize, they benefit from a broad range of experiences that help them discover interests, develop adaptable skills, understand how they learn, and build meaningful relationships. Broad exposure creates connections. Connections create understanding. Understanding creates adaptability. Adaptability creates long-term multi-dimensional excellence. We are not opposed to depth, mastery, or high achievement. We simply believe there is tremendous value in allowing children to explore broadly before narrowing deeply. For those educationally minded, rest assured that this program pulls from well-known and well-studied developmental theory, cognitive frameworks, and youth and teen pedagogy best practices. We pull from Arthur Chickering's 7 Vectors of Student Development, Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development, Tuckman's Stages of Group Development, Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development, Bloom's Taxonomy, Kouzes & Posner's 5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership, and more!
What's experiential learning?
Every NextPlay session follows a simple principle: Experience first. Meaning second. Application third. Movement and play create the experience. Reflection extracts the learning and transfers that learning into everyday life. We use a simple but powerful debrief framework: **What?** What happened? What was the challenge? What worked? **So What?** What did you learn about yourself, your teammates, or the situation? **Now What?** How can you apply that learning at school, at home, in friendships, on teams, or in future challenges? The activity is the laboratory. The conversation is where the learning is uncovered. The application is where the growth transforms.
Specifically, what are my kids learning?
While every session looks different, the outcomes remain consistent. Participants develop: * Confidence * Resilience * Self-awareness * Leadership * Communication * Teamwork * Adaptability * Problem-solving * Growth mindset * Connection and belonging We emphasize progress over perfection. Not "be the best." But instead, "keep growing." Not "win at all costs," but instead, "do better than yesterday." Not "we must win a trophy," but also not "everyone gets a trophy." Not "I've achieved success." or "I failed" but instead, "what'd I learn here and what's my next play?" We want young people to learn how to pursue excellence without attaching their worth to outcomes, how to contribute to a community without losing themselves, and how to navigate setbacks with resilience and perspective.
Why It
Matters
At its core, NextPlay is about helping young people discover who they are. It's about learning when to push and when to rest. How to lead and how to follow. How to contribute. How to recover from mistakes. How to build meaningful relationships. How to face challenges with courage and curiosity. And how to continue growing long after the game is over. Because leadership is not the starting point; it's what emerges when people develop the confidence, awareness, character, and skills to intentionally shape how they live, connect, and contribute.
About
Jess
For more than a decade, I've worked in higher education helping students navigate some of the most formative years of their lives. My work has included leadership development, student success, academic coaching, student conduct, Title IX investigations, and student affairs administration. Along the way, I've facilitated workshops on leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, accountability, conflict management, resilience, and personal growth. Across those very different roles, I found myself asking the same question: **How do people grow?** How do they build confidence, develop resilience, learn accountability, navigate setbacks, and become the people they want to be? Working with college students taught me something I saw again and again: many of the skills that determine success in adulthood are the same skills young adults often wish they had begun developing much earlier. Then I became a parent. Watching my own children grow reinforced what I'd already begun to believe—that confidence, resilience, self-awareness, leadership, and healthy relationships aren't traits that suddenly appear in college. They're built over years of experiences, reflection, encouragement, and practice. That realization became the foundation for NextPlay. NextPlay brings together my professional background in leadership and human development with my passion for movement, play, community, and experiential learning. Through sports-adjacent experiences, the program helps kids and teens build the confidence, resilience, self-awareness, connection, and leadership skills that serve them both on the field and throughout life. Because leadership doesn't begin when someone receives a title. It begins the moment a young person starts discovering who they are, how they relate to others, and how they can positively contribute to the world around them.