FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) – Leaders with Fort Wayne’s Police Athletic League, or PAL, say 2025 has been a difficult year for the program due to low attendance.

PAL offers youth programs in Football, Basketball, Boxing, and Girls’ Volleyball, but they say it goes beyond athletics.

”It’s more of a community. Our volunteers don’t just focus on athletics, but they get to the heart of the child, and they truly care and mentor them, and care about them as a person,” said PAL Coordinator Tristin Lichtsinn.

The program, established in 1956, “was founded with the vision of empowering the youth of Allen County. Through athletics, we aim to foster character development and create positive opportunities for young individuals in our community,” as written on their website.

Although football has long been their biggest draw, Lichtsinn says 2025 has been unusually slow due to more programs popping up in the community.

For the first time this year, they are offering a Spring football program, taking in registrations right now.

Her husband, Nicholas, is a police officer who has volunteered as a football coach for 5 years.

“I didn’t know that it would be something that I would truly enjoy. I thought it would just be exhausting. Watching the kids grow and learn, and accomplish new tasks, and watching them just mature into young men and women has been really rewarding,” he said.

The philosophy he brings into the gig is all about character development.

“I’m one of those horrible coaches who don’t really care if we win. I want the kids to truly enjoy it. I want them to grow up and really love this sport. Odds are they aren’t gonna grow up and play professionally, odds are they won’t even play college,” Lichtsinn said.

Boxing has recently become one of their biggest draws under Coach Alberto Lozada, who, in just a few weeks, already has a class of more than 40 people of all ages.

“The most important (thing is) they come here, try to do something, keep the kids out the streets, because the violence is more and more,” Lozada said.

To learn how to enroll your kids in PAL’s programs, you can visit their website and Facebook page through these links. You can also call them at (260) 432-4122.

Anyone interested in signing up to be a volunteer or mentor is encouraged to do the same.

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Our sector already delivers experiences that young people value: inclusive activities, strong role models through coaches and volunteers, and environments where young people can feel safe, welcomed and supported to be themselves.

When done well, sport and physical activity can be a powerful protective factor in helping young people thrive, not just cope.

Inequality remains a barrier

Youth Matters rightly highlights the need to halve the participation gap between disadvantaged young people and their peers when it comes to enriching activities.

This is an area where urgency is needed.

Our latest Active Lives Children and Young People survey shows that while overall activity levels are rising, stubborn inequalities remain.

Young people from the least affluent families are still the least likely to be active, and too often face barriers related to cost, access, safety and whether opportunities feel designed for ‘people like them’.

Less than half of young people say they are happy with the activities and services in their local area, and even fewer feel those opportunities reflect their needs and expectations.

Addressing this must be a priority if the ambitions of the strategy are to be realised.

Alignment with Uniting the Movement

The emphasis in Youth Matters on putting young people and communities at the heart of decisions, shifting from fragmented to collaborative working, and empowering local delivery strongly aligns with our long-term Uniting the Movement strategy.

Our Place Partnership approach is already focused on tackling inequalities, working alongside local partners and investing in long-term, community-led solutions.

Youth Matters validates this direction and reinforces the importance of sustained, place-based action rather than short-term interventions.

Our commitment

Delivering the ambitions of Youth Matters will require coordinated action across Government, sectors and communities.

Sport England is committed to playing our part: working with partners nationally and locally to ensure sport and physical activity are accessible, affordable, welcoming and shaped by young people themselves.

By listening to young people’s voices, focusing on the places facing the greatest challenges and continuing to address inequality head-on, we can help ensure this strategy delivers lasting impact over the next decade.

We look forward to continuing to work with Government, the youth sector and partners across sport and physical activity to turn this ambition into action for young people.
 

Editor’s note: This story was produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you’re able, WCMU encourages you to listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the LISTEN button above. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Gabe Schall: Doctors are seeing an uptick in ACL knee injuries in young athletes across Michigan.

WCMU’s Tina Sawyer recently sat down with Stefanie Mills, one of WCMU’s TV producers to learn more about this debilitating injury. Mills recently produced a TV segment of this story for WCMU’s Pressing Matters. She started the discussion by explaining what the ACL affects.

Stefanie Mills: It’s a band of tissue inside your knee that connects the femur thigh bone to the tibia or the shin bone to the knee joint. But as I discovered, I was hearing more stories about ACL injuries and tears, and it wasn’t just boys, and it wasn’t just a specific sport. It was all different sports. There is a lot of research that shows that girls are significantly more susceptible to injuries.

Tina Sawyer: In the episode of Pressing Matters, the topic was, you know, why girls? And they had brought up hormones are changing in younger people, younger women.

SM: Yeah, the incident rate, it depends on an activity. Boys versus girls, girls are actually 4 to 8 times more susceptible to ACL injuries. And again, depends on sports, but there’s other factors too. And one of those factors includes monthly cycles, hormone levels. It’s also about girls’ knees are built different. Biological factors and physical factors, right? Girls’ bone structures are not the same as their male counterparts.

TS: Why are they on the rise now as opposed to say 10 years ago? And I know that’s a very broad umbrella.

SM: I think there are many reasons. What I learned by talking with Dr. Crawford and Kyle Mason is that the seasons are longer, the expectations are just more demanding overall. But seasons are stretching year-round, right? And so there’s just more demands being put, especially on younger bodies that are still growing. So it’s all about finding balance and also nutrition, getting enough sleep, stretching, all those things. They’re pushing themselves more.

TS: The intensity is there.

SM: The athlete that was featured, her name is Grace. She’s a soccer player. And through her journey, I kind of learned more and more about ACL injuries. You know, oftentimes require surgery that’s going to keep you out of competition for at least a year.

TS: She was a soccer player. Now, are you seeing those tears in like basketball players as well?

SM: Absolutely. There’s basketball players, there are soccer players, there are volleyball players, there are football players. It’s no one. Sure, one, some sports might have higher risks of it, but it can happen to anybody. And I think the biggest part for me when I started doing the story and researching it was this information has been out there, but you don’t know what you don’t know until you’re really, you know, until you’re going through something like this, until you get injured.

TS: What are ways that people can get support, protection for these young people when they’re going into a certain sport?

SM: There’s no one way to prevent an injury, but here are some ways that could maybe help. One thing the doctors talked about was sports sampling. And that is basically, at younger ages, playing multiple sports, because that allows your body to use muscles in different ways, as opposed to using the same muscles over and over in the same sport. Now, not everybody may want to play extra sports, so that’s where it’s really important to focus on strength training, core training, that you can support your whole body.

TS: That makes sense. I understand also that another component of getting support is mentally, because they feel as though they’re starting back at square one or they don’t feel like a part of the team anymore. What did you learn from that?

SM: Yeah, that was a really important piece. I think mental health, especially for younger athletes, is so, so important right now. It’s also important to be active, right? But then the mental health aspect, especially when you’re injured, you can find yourself in really dark times. So that’s where the whole teamwork comes in. And I really like how a lot of teams, they include those injured players in some capacity, right? Like from team managers maybe. So that’s all really important to just feel that camaraderie with your teammates and your coaches and your family and your friends, you know, to have a good, strong, solid support system there.

TS: Stefanie Mills, thank you so much for joining us.

SM: Thank you so much for having me, Tina.

Earlier this month, a special action day for Para Cross-Country skiing took place at Europa-Park–Germany’s largest theme park, suited for year-round activities.

On 14 December, children with disabilities were given the opportunity to experience Nordic skiing for the first time at the Skitty World Nordic, the course of the German Ski Association.  

A fixture of the park’s winter season since 2016, the Cross-Country course was specifically designed for introductory purposes to assist those with no prior experience by providing a low threshold to skiing.

It was developed by Georg Zipfel, former national coach and current FIS Race Director for the discipline, and Anja Haepp who was crucial to the organizing of this project. The idea was supported by and brought to life with the commitment of Europa-Park and the German Disabled Sports Association.

Over the course of the event, 14 children with visual impairments, arm or leg amputation, or young participants who rely on wheelchairs, were involved on the day. For many, it was their introduction to the world of snow sports.

With the guidance of experienced coaches, such as Markus Sommerhalter, those in attendance enjoyed their first experience in a safe environment with a focus on joy, movement, and inclusion.