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Three years into our Head In The Game program, Beyond Sport is seeing encouraging signs of what can happen when mental health becomes part of how sport is delivered.
Launched in 2023 to address the urgent youth mental health crisis, Head In The Game brings together the U.S. sports community — from community through professional sport and subject matter experts — to support teen wellbeing. The program also has a strong focus on strengthening the capacity of adults around them, particularly coaches, to respond to their experiences and needs. Through grants to youth nonprofits using sports, coach training, the Head In The Game Learning Community and diverse resources for teens, the program helps ensure that mental health is integrated into programming.
The need for these kinds of skills is clear. Mental Health America’s 2025 report found that 11.3% of U.S. youth ages 12 to 17 experienced a major depressive episode with severe impairment in 2024, totaling 2.8 million young people.
Sport offers a meaningful place to start: a setting where young people already build relationships, practice handling pressure and connect with trusted adults.
Now, Beyond Sport is proud to release Head In The Game’s first external evaluation, led by Dr. Meredith Whitley, Professor of Sport-Based Youth Development at Adelphi University in New York. The report offers the clearest picture yet of what the program is making possible in practice — for coaches, organizations and young people.
The evaluation drew from surveys, interviews and reports gathered across the program’s first 2.5 years, including responses from coaches, youth participants and organizational leaders. What emerges is a clearer picture of how sport can bolster emotional wellbeing — not just in theory, but in day-to-day environments.
Coaches should be part of the mental health response
One of the clearest findings is the role coaches can play when they are equipped with the right tools.
Across the program, 80% of coaches reported feeling more prepared to initiate mental health conversations with young people, while 75% felt better equipped to recognize mental health challenges. Those who took part in multiple trainings showed even stronger outcomes, with statistically significant increases in confidence and preparedness.
For many organizations, that showed up in small but meaningful shifts in day-to-day practice: coaches building regular check-ins into sessions, paying closer attention to behavioral changes and approaching difficult moments with more curiosity and care.
One case study followed a student-athlete who was frustrated with his soccer performance and felt he was not improving. His coach, drawing on recent training, recognized that the frustration might point to something deeper. When the student stopped attending practices altogether, the coach sat with him to talk about how he was feeling.
Over time, these regular one-on-one check-ins helped reveal issues he was facing outside the program. As he was able to open up, talk through solutions and receive guidance, he found himself gravitating back toward his teammates, who welcomed him back to training.
For Whitley, one of the clearest signals was how quickly coaches responded to the training. Even though 72% had fewer than 10 hours of prior mental health training, 80% felt prepared to start those conversations after taking part. “It shows how much hunger there is for these tools,” she said.
This is changing systems, not just individuals
The evaluation shows that Head In The Game’s impact extends beyond individual participants.
Across grantee organizations, 100% reported being better equipped to respond to youth mental health needs through changes to training, organizational practices and program delivery.
In practice, that meant emotional wellbeing was no longer treated as separate to the sport programming. Instead, organizations began embedding it into how sessions were structured, how staff were trained and how they approached relationships with young people.
Others adapted coach onboarding, clarified how coaches and staff can connect young people to additional support when needed, or created more intentional spaces for reflection and peer communication. One organization described wellbeing as part of its program culture rather than a separate initiative, with staff and students sharing a common language for talking about emotional wellbeing.
“I felt more confident in leading through an emotionally intelligent lens in our learning environment,” one grantee organization leader shared. “By aiming to empower them rather than simply give directions, students reflect a greater level of comprehension by being asked the right questions and being challenged to teach one another.
The evaluation points to an important shift: rather than relying on one coach or one-off workshops, organizations are building approaches that can last over time.
Mental wellbeing support can be learned and scaled
The findings also suggest that supportive environments do not happen by accident — they can be intentionally built over time.
This points to a cumulative effect. Coaches who engaged in both trainings and the Head In The Game Learning Community — which connects coaches and youth wellbeing advocates through resources, peer learning and discussion — showed significantly stronger outcomes in their confidence initiating mental health conversations and recognizing challenges among young people.
Coaches stayed engaged with the resources, bringing new tools back to their teams.
They responded to the shared learnings, adapting their existing models to embed emotional support more deeply into everyday practice and normalize conversations around mental health.
This shows that creating supportive sport environments does not rely solely on specialists. With the right training and infrastructure, these practices can be embedded and scaled across programs.
Young people aren’t just receiving support — they’re building skills
The evaluation highlights how young people are developing tools to navigate pressure, emotions and relationships.
Across Head In The Game grantee organizations, 75% of young people reported learning new ways to cope and express emotions, while 70% said they felt more confident in recognizing signs of emotional distress in themselves or others. Many also reported having more conversations about mental health with coaches and peers.
In practice, that sometimes looked like breathing exercises during high-pressure moments, checking in on teammates, journaling through difficult periods or feeling more comfortable talking openly about stress and emotions.
One young participant credited journaling with helping her stay focused during a turbulent time. Another described struggling with isolation during the transition from high school to college, naming the period as “rotting” — losing motivation, withdrawing and feeling disconnected. Through mentorship, community and a renewed sense of purpose from his coaches and team, he began to recognize what he was experiencing.
“The emphasis on fostering a secure environment for mental health discussions has encouraged participants to openly share their experiences and challenges,” shared one grantee organization leader. “Participants benefit from more tailored guidance, enhancing their resilience and ability to regulate emotions.”
Sport can be designed for wellbeing
A broader point runs through the evaluation and supporting research: sport alone does not automatically improve mental health.
How these environments are designed matters.
The report draws on wider research showing that structured, supportive sport settings can strengthen emotional regulation, social connectedness and self-esteem — particularly when coaches are trained and programs intentionally prioritize psychological safety, belonging and positive relationships.
Across Head In The Game grantees, that intentionality showed up in different ways.
Some programs built structured check-ins into sessions. Others created more predictable routines for stability, or adjusted activities when necessary for emotional regulation. In one example, a coach replaced a planned training session with a painting activity after recognizing that participants needed space to decompress and reconnect.
The strongest outcomes consistently tied back not simply to participation in sport, but to the environments surrounding it.
“The sector often assumes the benefits of sport are inherent or automatic,” Whitley said. “Our findings show that it’s the intentional crafting of the psychosocial environment and the training of the coach that actually drives the mental health benefits.”
What these findings point toward
Together, the findings go beyond a single model to show how sport environments can evolve to better support young people.
Across the evaluation, the strongest examples of impact were connected: coaches felt more prepared, organizations adapted their practices, young people developed stronger coping skills and environments became more intentional over time.
Whitley noted that one finding could be easy to overlook: young people were not only learning how to recognize distress in themselves, but in their friends. That peer-to-peer awareness, she said, is part of the resilience young people carry beyond the game.
The findings reinforce that how people create sport spaces day to day affects mental health. They also point to a broader opportunity: investing in support where young people already are, with adults they already know and trust.
For Beyond Sport, the evaluation highlights the critical role of intentional program design with sustained reinforcements — funding, training, collaboration and shared learning — in helping organizations build safer, more supportive sport environments.
Head In The Game is rooted in the U.S. context, but the lessons are not limited to one country. With the right investment, local adaptation and trusted partners, this kind of approach can offer a useful model for others working to make mental health support part of everyday sport and community settings.
Read the Full Evaluation
To explore the findings in more detail:
- Join the Head In The Game Learning Community for resources and upcoming “Munch & Learns” — informal, virtual sessions led by youth wellbeing experts on a range of topics
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