What

is normal is merely average, if we study what is average we will remain average - Shawn
Achor, Psychologist/Author. Attending the 2015 NAYS Youth Sports Congress was one of the most eye
opening experiences in my short professional career. I was able to network and learn from my fellow
recreation professionals from around the world. Additionally, the conference provided me with a
plethora of educational opportunities that will benefit Detroits current and future programs,
strengthening the Detroit Recreation Department entirely.
The conference hosted various educational seminars with guest speakers. Each speaker
presented a topic that provided positive insight to providing substantial recreational services. Each
seminar was interactive and that allowed the participants to engage in group discussions regarding
recreation and youth sports. The seminars that were most influential to me were; Our Role in Creating
Great Programs, Promoting Youth Sports, and the Keynote Speaker- Shawn Achor who gave an
outstanding presentation on Happiness and how it is linked to better work performance.

Dr. Rick Albrecht gave a dynamic and entertaining lecture on Our Role in Creating Great

Programs. He listed two main components to doing so which are; emphasizing performance as
opposed to outcome of performance and the need for coaches and sport administrators to first
motivate themselves before they can motivate others. Dr. Albrecht asked rhetorically, what is a coach?
He revealed that historically, a coach is a vehicle that takes someone from one place to another, and the
same concept applies to youth sports. We as coaches are there to take our participants from where they
are, to where they want to be. He went on to describe the two types of coaches, transactional (how
can you help me?) vs. transformational (how can I help you).
Transformational coaches are very important to the implementation of building positive
characteristics in our children. The participants well-being comes before anything, including winning.
As I sat there and listened to the information Dr. Albrecht was spewing, my learn-to-skate students

came to mind. I wanted to become a more transformational coach and felt the need to implement
additional methods to further engage their interest in ice-skating. I noticed that I have been making the
classes very instructional based in an effort to transition them in to competitive hockey, and some of the
students (especially the younger ones) were not very responsive to that. I had decided to incorporate
both instruction, and games to teach them how to ice skate. This in-turn will get them from where they
are to where they want to be in a more fun and recreational fashion. Since my return from New Orleans
I have been incorporating these fun activities on the ice in an effort to make learning to ice skate a more
enjoyable experience. This has been extremely successful in the few weeks since returning to Jack
Adams. Their parents have even told me that they have developed a better liking to ice-skating. I plan to
use this method of coaching for ice programs, archery, baseball and any other program that I am
coaching and/or facilitating.

I thoroughly enjoyed the session regarding marketing and promoting youth sports. When asked

how people register their participants, the entire class was shocked that Detroit registers its numerous
amount of participants without an online registration feature. Many of their departments are utilizing
online registration and maintain a strong social media presence. Detroit has a social media presence,
however, it will be most beneficial if each center was able to promote their individual programs via its
social media accounts such as Facebook and Instagram. This will limit the amount of time spent
approving a post or having to send a post to someone outside of the center. Online registration will be
less time consuming, instead of pulling staff to sign someone up, the participant can do that on their
own, allowing the DRD staff to attend to other needs of the center. It is known that most people access
the internet from a mobile device, having a mobile friendly registration service would allow patrons to
sign up for memberships and programs on-the-go. Additionally, the topic of flyers was a big ordeal
during the session. Most departments mentioned that they allow their program facilitators to create

flyers that have to be approved before distribution. I found this idea very intriguing as it saves valuable
amounts of time in comparison to requesting flyers to be made.

Shawn Achor, the keynote speaker, really touched and inspired me during his lecture, The

Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance. He began his presentation with a short
childhood story of how he distracted his younger sister from crying after hurting her already broken arm
by making her believe she was a unicorn. The moral of the story, and the lecture is that 90% of our
happiness is determined by the way we process the world around us. This means that the way in which
we perceive the world affects the way we interact in it. For instance, some professionals that have been
employed with a company or department for a long period of time may feel burned-out or exasperated
by the amount of stress they may experience during their tenure. For instance, during my short time
with DRD, the most common connotation I hear is the lack of staff and how this makes getting work
done impossible. While a lack of staff may be an accurate, however, viewing it with a level of
accomplishment can just as easily turn this in to a more positive statement. Shawn Achor sums up this
theory by stating, By changing the way we perceive the world will change the way it affects reality.
The benefit of having happy employees is that they will become more productive while at work. Shawn
Achor has inspired me to live a happier life and live by the theory, Happiness fuels success, not the
other way around, which will improve my work performance and help me to become an even better
team player. I hope to inspire my staff to do the same.

Attending the NAYS conference in New Orleans has afforded me the opportunity to improve

myself as a recreation professional. I will continue to strive to create the most enjoyable experience out
of our programs, which will help the Department to grow and flourish. I welcome the opportunity to
attend the conference again next year, which will only allow me to continue to better serve the
upstanding citizens of the City of Detroit.