A Change at Play It Smart

In February 2007 Len Stachitas joined the Play It Smart family as Executive Director. Over the last two years he has been a valuable asset to the program, providing experience and leadership. Len recently decided to pursue other career opportunities and will be leaving his position at the end of the month.
 
Charles Gomes will assume the position of Interim Executive Director on March 30. Charles has been a part of Play It Smart since its inception in 1998 and brings a wealth of experience and passion to the position.
 
We'd like to thank Len for all that he's done to help Play It Smart in the last two years and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

SIDELINE REPORT

 Play It Smart National Service Week
"The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service."
      -Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
 
The 8th Annual Play It Smart National Service Week will run from April 20-26, 2009.  We are asking member schools to keep the Play It Smart tradition by volunteering in their communities during this week. 
 
Please let your Program Officer know what your plans are for this week of service.  We want to publicize your efforts on the national stage. 
 
Also be sure to update your ORBIT account with events completed during this week, as we will be rewarding schools who participate in service events during this week at the National Conference in July. 
 
Service is a wonderful opportunity for student-athletes to learn and give back to their community.  Thanks for all you do for your communities! 















Students from Portland HS (Portland, ME) shovel the driveways and sidewalks of the elderly in the Portland community.

Play It Smart Annual Conference to Touch Down in Houston
 
From Wednesday, July 29, 2009 to Sunday, August 2, 2009, the city of Houston will play host to Play It Smart's 12th Annual National Conference.  The conference will bring together hundreds of Academic Coaches and school administrators under one roof with leading professionals in youth development, secondary education and college academia.

Although the conference is in July it is not too early to begin making preparations.  We would like to have each member school represented at this event.  Registration information will be released in the coming weeks.  We look forward to seeing you in July. 

Options for Sustaining the Academic Coach Position

In these challenging economic times sustaining Play It Smart in our member schools takes commitment and creativity.  Upon returning from school site visits, our Program Officers reported that many school administrators were interested in hearing about the variety and creativity in funding scenarios being employed among our member schools.  Accordingly, we want to share some of those with you.
 
The following link contains a brief description of some of the methodologies and sources of funds being used to sustain Play It Smart in schools across the country:

Sustaining Options
 http://www.playitsmart.org/pdf/Play It Smart Academic Coach Sustaining Options.pdf

Making the Case for Title I
http://www.playitsmart.org/pdf/Play It Smart and_Title_I.pdf

We hope these will spark some ideas for those of you deciding how best to fund the program in your school. If you would like more detail on any of these alternatives, please do not hesitate to contact your Program Officer in the national office.

PLAYBOOK

Pace Self-Evaluation

The PACE Self-Evaluation due April 1st is an opportunity for the national office to gain more insight on programming at individual campuses.  The most important aspects of the PACE Strategic Planning Process are:  evidence of a team involved in the planning process and administration of the program; concrete, measurable goals are being set, and progress tracked throughout the school year to ensure a better self-evaluations, and, the team evaluates their progress routinely and makes adjustments as they see fit; the team submits planning documents and evaluations on time to the national office.
 
This insight helps us develop and improve resources that we offer to member schools.  It also helps us in preparing for the annual training conference because it reveals to us areas in which schools are thriving as well as experiencing challenges.  Thus we use this information to assess appropriate topics for the training conference as well as to establish stronger best practices.

As we seek to develop and improve our resources and conference your feedback is greatly appreciated and extremely valuable to us.  Please contact your Program Officer if you have any questions.

Play It Smart and the N4A - Update

Play It Smart continues to have an ongoing partnership with the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N4A).  The N4A offers a vast network of collegiate professionals in the field of student-athlete development and hosts a National Convention and 5 regional conferences each year.  This year's National Convention is in Miami, FL, June 11th-14th.

Play It Smart has begun to work collaboratively with the N4A in developing high school tracks for their conferences.  Please see the links below for more information about the N4A.  Any interested Academic Coach can join throughout the year at a 50% discount.  Please contact your Program Officer if you are interested, or contact the N4A directly, and let them know you are part of the Play It Smart program!

www.nfoura.org

http://nfoura.org/convention/

Region III
Conference Dates: April 21 - 22, 2009
Hosted in: Iowa City, IA
http://nfoura.org/regions/region3/

INSIDE THE HUDDLE

  STUDENT-ATHLETES OF THE MONTH