What tokenism looks like in kids’ sport

Tokenism in sport is rarely malicious. In fact, that is partly why it is so common. It often emerges from good intentions: a desire to include children, to be progressive, to show funders that young people matter, or to create a more welcoming environment. The problem is that participation can look convincing from the outside while feeling hollow to the children involved.

Maybe it’s about a child being asked to deliver a message about opportunity without having been asked to shape the narrative themselves. Or parading, cherry picked children in kit at a launch event, being used to signal inclusion without being part of the conversation. Tokenism might look like a single youth representative expected to speak for every child in a club, programme or community.

It can also look more subtle. A feedback survey is circulated, but children never hear what happened to their answers or a youth board is created, but it can only discuss topics adults have pre-approved.

None of these examples mean adults do not care. But they do show how easily youth voice can become ‘for show’. The test is not whether children were asked (I’m quite sure many don’t even ask!). The test is whether their views had consequences.

This is especially important because sport is hierarchical by design. Coaches, parents, selectors, club committees, schools, governing bodies and funders all shape the environment children enter. Children often learn quickly that adults reward compliance: turn up, listen, train hard, do not complain, show commitment, accept selection decisions, respect authority. Those messages can be positive when they build trust and discipline. But they can also make it harder for children to question poor practice, name discomfort or suggest change.

If children are only invited to speak in adult-designed spaces, using adult language, at adult-approved moments, we should not be surprised if we hear only a narrow version of what they really think.

Which children are heard?

In a sports setting, the children most likely to be heard are often the most confident, articulate, selected, older, high-performing or already comfortable in the environment (or the child of the coach). They may be excellent contributors, but they cannot stand in for everyone. The child who is new to the club, rarely selected, less confident, disabled, anxious, younger, financially stretched, travelling a long distance, or unsure whether they belong may experience the same environment very differently.

This matters because tokenism can hide behind representation. Having a young person in the room is not the same as hearing the range of children affected by a decision. If youth voice always travels through the same few confident children, it can unintentionally reproduce the very exclusions sport says it wants to tackle.

We need to constantly be asking, ‘did we create conditions where different children could safely and honestly tell us what sport feels like for them?”. And be bold enough to hear the answers and consider what this means for theirsport.

Don’t forget the safeguarding issues (but don’t hide behind them either)

Listening to children is often framed as an engagement exercise: a way to improve retention, satisfaction, enjoyment or programme design

BUT, children are more likely to raise concerns when they believe adults will listen and act. They are more likely to name discomfort when speaking up is treated as normal rather than difficult. They are more likely to challenge unfairness, bullying, excessive pressure or unsafe practice when they have experienced adults responding constructively to smaller pieces of feedback. They have to trust us and trust the system. They have to feel emotionally and psychologically safe.

Conversely, if children learn that their views disappear into a survey, that adults become defensive, or that nothing changes when they speak, they may also learn that silence is safer. That is a dangerous culture for any sport environment.

This does not mean handing every decision to children. Adults can and should hold boundaries. They must make decisions about welfare, risk, fairness and protection. But safeguarding is not only about adults protecting children from above. It is also about building environments where children have trusted, meaningful routes to influence what happens around them.

What meaningful participation could look like

So what would it look like to move beyond tokenistic youth voice in sport?

It might mean children helping to shape a club code of conduct, rather than simply signing one written by adults. It might mean young players influencing training themes, warm-up choices, reflection questions or team values. It might mean asking children what makes them feel welcome, safe and confident and then changing practical details such as arrival routines, changing arrangements, communication styles or social activities. It probably won’t mean change to the training times to be during school hours or leaving your false and weaponised long nails on during netball practice.

It could mean involving children before decisions are final, not after. It could mean telling them clearly which decisions they can influence and which decisions adults must hold. It could mean closing the feedback loop with simple ‘you said, we did’ updates, so children know their input did not disappear. It could mean making feedback part of everyday coaching, rather than saving it for an annual consultation.

Above all, meaningful participation requires adults to be willing to hear things they did not expect. Children may talk about feeling sad about beirng shouted at, not knowing why they are on the bench, being scared to make mistakes, finding travel stressful, feeling left out socially, wanting more fun, or not understanding what adults expect from them.

Those insights are not soft. They are data about the quality of the sporting environment.

Five questions for clubs, coaches and organisations

Hart’s Ladder is useful because it gives adults a way to diagnose their own practice. For anyone working in youth sport, five questions are a good place to start:

1.      What decisions are children actually allowed to influence?

2.      Are children involved before decisions are made, or only afterwards?

3.      Which children are we hearing from and which children are we missing?

4.      How do we demonstrably show children what changed because of their input?

5.      Are we prepared to change our plans if children tell us something uncomfortable?

Above all, we need to ask ourselves ‘are we calling something youth-led because it truly is, or because it sounds good or we wish it was?

The challenge is to build cultures where adults are prepared to listen, respond and share power appropriately. Hart’s Ladder reminds us that participation is not measured by how visible children are, how often they are consulted, or how confidently adults describe their work as child-centred or youth focused.

If nothing changes after children speak, we should be honest with ourselves: then we have not listened well enough yet.