Black Mountain Youth Basketball evaluation plan

Black Mountain Youth Basketball Evaluation Plan

Casey Conner

North Carolina State University

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Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………... 3

Stakeholders………………………………………4

Purpose……………………………………………5

Structure…………………………………………. 8

Literature Review……………………………….. 8

Population………………………………………... 9

Summary………………………………………… 11

References………………………………………... 12

Appendices………………………………………..13-15

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Introduction

Black Mountain has a population of approximately 8,000 people. It is a small town

located in western North Carolina approximately 15 minutes from Asheville. Black Mountain

Recreation and Parks Department was formed May 10, 1982. One of our Department’s primary

goals is to expand recreational opportunities for citizens of Black Mountain. Our Mission

Statement is: The Black Mountain Recreation and Parks Department, in partnership with our

citizens and with respect to our environment, will provide community-based recreation

programs, wellness opportunities, facilities, and services to enrich the quality of life in Black

Mountain. As part of our mission we offer many youth and adult sports leagues, as well as

senior activities, special events, a community garden, a swimming pool, an indoor soccer facility,

and a recreation center with diverse activities. I have chosen to evaluate our youth basketball

league for this project. This project was carefully chosen from many potential possibilities

specifically because of the drop in participation over the last several years. You can see from

Table 1 below a steady decline over the past several years. This is a particularly disturbing trend

when you look at the participation numbers nationally for basketball. Basketball has

approximately 24 million people participating with soccer a distant second at 13.6 million

followed by baseball at 11.5 million and football with 8.9 million (NSGA, 2009). With over

75% (NSGA, 2009) of all basketball participants coming from the age group of Under 18 this

would indicate that it is a strong youth sport that should be at least holding steady with

participation. Meanwhile, Black Mountain Recreation Services Youth Indoor Soccer program

has been steadily increasing over the similar time period. At first examination you might think

kids are simply switching from basketball to soccer, but with a closer look you can see that the

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numbers don’t add up. Kids are leaving our basketball program for some reason and we want to

find out why.

Table 1 Participation Numbers

ParticipantsSeason Basketball Soccer2012 152 1212011 180 1012010 207* 662009 188 542008 225 482007 225 No League2006 276* No League

*Denotes a High School league offered(Black Mountain Recreation Services, Participation Numbers Document, 2012)

Stakeholders

The stakeholders in the Black Mountain Youth Basketball League are a diverse group

with conflicting needs at times. The first stakeholder group would be the kids/participants. The

main objectives that they would have in the program would be factors like fun, sportsmanship,

team play, and friendship.

The parents and coaches are also another major stakeholder group that would have

interests similar to the participants but would also include fitness, participation, and safety. I

grouped parents and coaches together because nearly all of my coaches are also parents of

participants.

Staff is another major stakeholder in this program. Staff would include paid

scorekeepers, referees, and administration. The main stake in this for staff would be to run an

overall successful program to ensure future employment. The bottom line for staff is that

without participants for this program some of them would not have jobs and this is a pretty

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motivating factor. As Recreation Director I have a responsibility to put my staff in the best

possible situation to allow them to succeed. This evaluation tool will allow us to correct areas of

weakness and enhance areas of strength to ensure that we have a program that will stabilize

participation to ensure future opportunities.

Elected officials are also stakeholders in this program as it is a representation of the

Town government and must be run professionally. Their main concern would be that staff would

do everything that they could to continue to provide opportunities for basketball for the youth of

Black Mountain.

Coaches of the local Middle School and High School would also be stakeholders in this

program. Their stake would be to develop a youth program to best prepare players for

competitive teams in the future. The more skill development, participation, and positive outlook

on basketball there is at the younger levels the more likely they are to have future success.

Purpose

This evaluation will be a formative in nature because its purpose is to help shape the

program to perform better (Rossi, Lipsey & Freeman). These evaluation results will be used to

create a better product (youth league) than we currently have. The philosophy of our youth

league is:

Our goal for youth sports is that children shall enjoy their experience in the sport by their development physically, psychologically and socially through the activity. A quality experience can be achieved if the coach, parents and leader applies four principles. Those principles are participation, sportsmanship, team play, and teaching the fundamentals of the activity. 

 Our youth sports program strives to promote the philosophy that the enjoyment of participating in team sports is of fundamental concern, with competition a natural growth of that involvement. There must be a mutual respect for all teams and individuals involved on the leagues; because without them there would not be a program. Striving to win is fundamental to any enjoyable competition, but it must be kept in perspective. (Bmrecreation.com)

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With this evaluation we hope to improve our ability to meet the expectations of our

stakeholders by focusing on delivering a product that is consistent with our Department’s youth

sports philosophy and setting clear and concise goals & objectives for the participants, parents,

and coaches. We plan to examine all aspects of this program to determine if there are specific

reasons for people leaving our program and if so correcting those issues while remaining

consistent with our philosophy. The logic model used to determine the desired out comes is

attached as Appendix A. One example of how this logic model was developed would be to look

at our coaches as an input. In conjunction with staff, coaches have developed a curriculum to get

the coaches on the same page in regards to what they are teaching (specific fundamentals).

These are fundamentals are identified at a coaches meeting by youth coaches, staff, and high

school and middle school coaches to improve basketball skills and reduce the variability between

individual coaches. The long term outcome of this would be that we would have a larger pool of

participants to create a more competitive and more highly skilled group of basketball players for

the Middle School and High School coaches to choose from.

Another area that we have identified in our logic model is marketing. For the marketing

of our program we rely on flyers and announcements in the schools to generate interest. Another

area of the marketing plan that we would like to implement would be outreach to students in the

gym classes. Having staff meet with the kids during school hours in their gym classes would be

an effective way to not only generate interest but connect with the schools that we use as our

facilities. Our outcome of this would be increased exposure to the kids and potentially a better

attitude toward basketball in general.

Working with parents, coaches, referees, and staff we would like to define some criteria

for qualifications regarding referees. This would help us establish a policy on who can actually

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referee the games to assure that they are there for the right reasons and have the knowledge to

create a safe and fun environment for the games. This would be done by conducting a parents

and coaches meeting to help communicate any concerns that they have as well as establishing the

expectations that they have of the referees. Holding a referees clinic to not only certify the

referees but to make sure that they know the expectations of the stakeholders of this league

would develop better understanding by them of goals and objectives of league that they can help

implement. The outcome of this would be to have better quality referees.

Focusing on our own staff, the evaluation would give us answers to how responsive we

are to the needs of the stakeholders of this program. Determining if future professional

development is needed for the administration staff would potentially help us reduce the amount

of people leaving the program. The communications questions on the evaluation reflect how

well our administrative staff does in relaying information to the parents and coaches of the

participants.

Finally the last aspect of the program that we will examine will be the actual facilities

themselves. This could be a difficult area for us to rectify the problems if there is a poor result.

All of the gyms that we use are owned and operated by the County Schools. I have included it

because this is a very important aspect of our program, if the facilities are not seen as safe or

clean it could be a reason that people are leaving the program. This data could potentially be

used as boiler plate material in our capital improvement request for a new gymnasium. Also,

there may be aspects of the facilities that we may be able to improve. For example, if the floors

are slippery and not being swept enough that would be an area that we may be able to correct.

Structure

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This evaluation will be designed to focus on each of the areas mentioned above. General

questions, marketing, league competition, communication, staff, and facilities. Each of these

areas will focus on measuring the outcomes that were identified in the logic model. This

evaluation will be a Likert scale form with statements that the respondent will be able to answer

by circling numbers from 5 to 1. 5 being strongly agreed with the statement and 1 being strongly

disagree with the statement. The evaluation questionnaire is attached as Appendix B. For an

example of some of the questions from one area of the questionnaire let’s look at the marketing

question area. Questions here will include: (1) I was aware of the regular registration period for

this activity; (2) My child received information from school about this activity; (3) Email is a

good way for me to find out about programs; (4) Available sign ups at other sports leagues

would be helpful; (5) Newspapers are a good way for me to find out about programs. These

questions allow us to evaluate our marketing plan to see how effective overall communication is

as well as the means that we are using to inform people. The score of each question will be input

into a table and analyzed to determine mean scores. This will give us an idea of where we may

be having problems and possible solutions to fix these. This will also give us data to determine

if our marketing plan is effective and if it is part of the problem in our participation numbers

dropping.

Literature Review

The benefits of physical activity are well documented in hundreds of studies. Healthy lifestyles

that include physical activity can reduce the risk of becoming overweight and developing related

diseases (CDC, 2011). On the CDC website there is extensive research links about obesity facts

and prevention. The US Department of Labor provides information on how people use their

leisure time on average in the American Time Use Survey (2008) that shows the need for

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accessible and enjoyable healthy activities. This study shows that out of an average of five hours

of leisure time per day over half of that is spent watching television with only nineteen minutes

dedicated to participation in sports, exercise, or recreation. These examples show how critical it

is that we provide as many opportunities as possible for the youth of Black Mountain to develop

healthy exercise habits for their life. We not only have to provide these opportunities but we

must provide them in the best way that we can which requires us to evaluate this program to

determine the reason for reduced participation. The number one reason for youth to drop out of a

sport that was identified in their study was “I did not enjoy it anymore” (Butcher, Linder, &

Johns, 2002). This particular article was by far the most in-depth source of information that was

located in regards to reasons why participants would choose to leave programs. It should also be

noted that in this study they also indicated that youth averaged participating in at least four

activities and referred to their reason for leaving as “sampling” different types of activities

(Butcher, Linder, & Johns, 2002). Basketball is just one opportunity for physical activity that

Black Mountain Recreation Services provides for the youth of our community. But with the

decreasing numbers in this activity we feel that it necessary to examine the reasons for the

decreasing numbers to determine if it is something that can be fixed by the way the program is

coordinated.

Population

The population that we serve for this program is ages 3-14. At times we have had high school

leagues with varying success, so I have not included them in this as an age group. Administering

this evaluation to the parents of current participants will be relatively easy. All of the

participants will be having games so the parents will be somewhat of a captive audience. We

will attempt to get a response from every parent, although this would be unlikely. An evaluation

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table will be set up at the gym entrance/exit with a drop box provided for completed evaluations.

The drop box will allow the individual filling out the evaluation to remain anonymous. This is

an important point in this type of evaluation because it allows them to answer questions that they

may not be willing to answer in person. We will also have the evaluation table set up at the end

of the year trophy and pizza party event. This may allow us to catch some of the people who did

not have time or were not in attendance of the games to fill out an evaluation. The pizza and

trophy party is usually a very well attended event.

This evaluation will also be turned into a survey monkey survey that will be emailed to

all coaches, posted on our website and on our Facebook page to attempt to catch all of our

current participants.

The second part of this evaluation will be to compare our databases of participants over

the last several years to determine exactly which people have left the program. An attempt will

be made to contact these people by email to fill out an electronic version of this evaluation. The

evaluation that will be emailed out to the past participants will differ slightly from the one that

was developed for the current participants. This will allow us to compare the data received from

the people that are currently in our program to the people that have left our program and

determine if the reasons that people left for are the same areas that were determined to be low

from our current participants. This will allow us to focus on these specific areas and potentially

address the issues.

The resources necessary to complete this evaluation will be relatively low. Staff time

will definitely be the largest resource to be used to complete this evaluation study. There will be

three areas where significant staff time will need to be used to administer this evaluation. Staff

time to input data will be the largest use of resources. The next largest use will be comparing the

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databases to determine which people have left the program, although with MS Excel this is a

relatively easy process. Staff time to create the survey monkey portion of the surveys will also

be substantial, but not so much so to cause it to be a limiting factor of the evaluation.

Summary

This evaluation plan will help us determine the reasons for participants leaving this

program whether it is because of things we are not doing, things we should be doing, or things

that we have no control over. For the Town of Black Mountain a pragmatic approach to

evaluations is necessary because of our limited workforce and monetary resources. This

evaluation will directly improve the services that we offer and improve the outlook by all

stakeholders. This will help shape our future plans for this program and hopefully can be

translated over to other programs as well.

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References

Butcher, J. P., Linder, K.J., Johns, D.P. (2002). Withdrawal from Competitive Youth Sport: A Retrospective Ten-year Study. Journal Of Sport Behavior, 25(2),145. http://ehis.ebscohost.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/ehost/detail?sid=d52f4f61-55d6-4443-9523-1bf805e9409c%40sessionmgr111&vid=2&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=f6h&AN=6649975

CDC .gov (2011). http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA), (2009). Individual sports participation reports – soccer, baseball, football, & basketball market research/demographics. Statistics retrieved February 15, 2012, from http://www.lnstatistical.com/PdfMerge?id=nnzYxEMN_3P2hjRT-Fs2CGaAR8c3WQwdsumxUuMiPDXUn2WVkjNN9J51GtCGNG68dHdGaZkwtwRgWNsR0d5HNhY1EOtgwU2Ns0mVqprFxZrPWxMpCOQSvM_Uv5PAQ7vyRhcxZqGqcmFp7PWVmB8fjQ%3D%3D

Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., & Freeman, H. E. (2004). Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, 7th Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2008). American Time Use Survey [Data File]. http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/leisure.htm

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APPENDIX A

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX B (2)