A director I work with runs one of the largest soccer clubs in his region. Thousands of players, dozens of teams, and one of the healthiest cultures I've encountered in youth sports. When I asked him what changed the trajectory of his program the most, his answer came without hesitation.
"We built a mentorship ladder for our older athletes. That single decision changed everything."
I assumed he was exaggerating. Programs always have a "silver bullet" story. But then he walked me through the details, and I realized he wasn't overstating it at all.
His club had the same problem most programs face: teenage athletes were drifting away. By 14 or 15, kids who'd played since kindergarten started disappearing. Some quit for other activities. Some burned out. Some just seemed to lose interest without any clear reason.
The conventional response would be better teams, more competitive opportunities, fancier tournaments. His club tried something different. Instead of giving older athletes more as players, they gave them more as contributors. They created structured roles where teenagers could lead, teach, and take ownership of the program itself.
The results weren't incremental. They were transformational.
Why Teenage Athletes Disappear
Before building solutions, it helps to understand the problem. Teenage attrition in youth sports isn't random. It follows predictable patterns.
As kids enter adolescence, their needs change. The intrinsic joy of playing that sustained them at eight or nine isn't enough anymore. They need identity, status, and belonging in ways that younger children don't. Sports programs that offer only "keep playing, maybe make varsity someday" struggle to compete with activities that offer more immediate social rewards.
Teenagers also develop a sharper awareness of hierarchy. They notice that they're still being told what to do by adults, still following the same basic structure they followed at age seven. For some kids, this starts to feel childish. They want agency, responsibility, and recognition as emerging adults, not just bigger versions of the little kids on the field next to them.
And teenagers crave purpose beyond themselves. Pure self-development stops being motivating for many adolescents. They want to matter to other people. They want to contribute to something larger. A program that only asks "what can we do for your development" misses the opportunity to ask "what can you do for others."
The mentorship ladder addresses all three of these needs simultaneously. It gives older athletes status and identity through visible leadership roles. It provides agency by putting real responsibility in their hands. And it creates purpose by connecting their contributions to the experience of younger players who look up to them.
The Three Roles That Changed Everything
The club built their ladder around three distinct roles, each offering a different type of contribution.
Junior coaches work directly with younger teams. They assist with warmups, lead specific drills, demonstrate techniques, and provide encouragement during practices. They're not replacing adult coaches. They're supplementing them, adding energy, relatability, and extra attention that adult coaches can't provide alone.
The junior coach role works because younger kids respond differently to teenage mentors than to adults. A 15-year-old demonstrating a move isn't just showing technique. They're showing what's possible, what the younger player might become in a few years. That aspirational connection is powerful in ways that adult instruction can't replicate.
Referees get trained through the club's officiating program, earn certification, and work games for younger age groups. They get paid, which adds legitimacy and accountability. They learn to make decisions under pressure, manage conflict, and maintain authority, all skills that transfer directly to their own development as athletes and as people.
The referee pathway also addresses the officiating shortage that plagues most programs. Instead of scrambling to find adults willing to ref U8 games, clubs with strong teen referee pipelines develop their own supply. The teenagers benefit from the income and the experience. The program benefits from reliable coverage.
Program helpers take ownership of the operational environment. They set up fields before games, organize equipment, welcome families at check-in, and help with breakdown afterward. These roles might seem mundane, but they teach something important: the program doesn't run itself. Someone has to care for the details that make everything work.
Helpers also gain visibility with families across the club. Parents notice when a teenager greets them warmly, helps their confused six-year-old find the right field, or hustles to set up goals in the rain. That visibility creates reputation and recognition that athletes don't get from their own team alone.
What Changes Inside the Athletes
The director told me he could see the shift in older athletes "almost overnight." Responsibility accelerated maturity. Visibility gave them purpose beyond their own development.
This tracks with what developmental research suggests about adolescence. Teenagers rise to meet real expectations when those expectations are paired with genuine trust. The problem is that most programs don't give teenagers meaningful responsibility. They treat them as passive recipients of coaching rather than active contributors to the community.
When you hand a 14-year-old the whistle and tell them they're responsible for the U10 game running fairly, something changes in how they carry themselves. When you ask a 16-year-old to lead warmups for a group of eight-year-olds who are watching their every move, they become more conscious of their own behavior. The role shapes the person.
Athletes in mentorship roles also develop skills that pure playing doesn't build. They learn to communicate clearly, adjust their approach when something isn't working, manage their frustration when younger kids don't listen, and take pride in someone else's success. These are leadership skills, and they're transferable far beyond sports.
The club director mentioned that several of his current adult coaches started as junior coaches at 14 or 15. The mentorship ladder became a talent pipeline. Young people who might have drifted away instead stayed connected, developed through various roles, and eventually became the staff the program needed. They came pre-trained, pre-acculturated, and deeply committed because the program had invested in them for years.
What Changes for Younger Players
The impact on younger athletes is equally significant. Kids look up. It's what they do. The question is who they're looking up to.
In most programs, the default role models are adults, professional athletes they'll never meet, or social media personalities who have nothing to do with their actual lives. The mentorship ladder inserts a different kind of role model: actual teenagers from their own community who were recently in their position and are now visibly further along the path.
When an eight-year-old sees a fifteen-year-old leading their warmup with confidence, they're seeing a version of who they could become. That's more tangible than any poster on a wall or highlight reel on YouTube. The role model is right there, knows their name, and shows up every week.
This connection also shifts the culture around younger teams. When older athletes are present and engaged, the environment feels different. More serious but also more fun. The younger kids want to impress the teenagers, which often means better focus and effort than they'd give for adults alone.
And when those younger players eventually become the older athletes, they already understand what's expected. They've seen the mentorship roles modeled. The ladder becomes self-reinforcing, each generation of mentors preparing the next.
What Changes for Parents
Parents can feel the difference even if they can't articulate what's causing it.
A program where older athletes are visibly investing in younger kids feels more intentional. More connected. More like a community and less like a service being purchased. Parents notice when a teenager helps their child with their shin guards, cheers for them from the sideline, or high-fives them after a good play.
This changes how parents relate to the program. They see that their registration fee isn't just buying field time and coaching. It's buying participation in something larger, a community that develops young people across the entire age spectrum.
Parent behavior often improves too. When the referee is a 16-year-old from the club, parents are less likely to scream at them than they might be at an anonymous adult official. When the teenager setting up fields is clearly working hard, parents are more likely to help than to stand around waiting. The presence of young people in visible roles raises the standard for adult behavior.
Building the Ladder in Your Program
This system isn't expensive or complicated. It's intentional. The difference between programs that have mentorship ladders and programs that don't usually isn't resources. It's whether anyone decided to build the structure.
Start by identifying the roles you could offer. Every program has tasks that teenagers could handle: assisting coaches, refereeing younger games, helping with setup and breakdown, welcoming families, running equipment, supporting registration events. Make a list of everything that currently falls to adult staff or volunteers that a trained teenager could do.
Create real job descriptions for each role. What are the responsibilities? What's the time commitment? What training is required? What supervision will be provided? What do participants get in return, whether that's payment, service hours, recommendation letters, or recognition? The more legitimate the role feels, the more seriously teenagers will take it.
Recruit intentionally. Don't just announce opportunities and hope teenagers sign up. Identify specific athletes who would be good fits and ask them directly. A personal invitation from a coach or director carries weight that a general announcement doesn't. "I think you'd be great at this" is a powerful message for a teenager to hear.
Train before deploying. Don't throw teenagers into roles without preparation. Junior coaches need basic instruction on how to lead activities, manage younger kids, and support the head coach. Referees need certification and mentoring during their first games. Helpers need orientation on procedures and expectations. The training investment pays off in performance quality and in making participants feel valued.
Provide ongoing support and feedback. Check in regularly with teenagers in mentorship roles. What's going well? What's challenging? What could the program do better? This feedback loop helps you improve the system and helps participants feel like their experience matters.
Recognize contributions publicly. Mention junior coaches and teen referees in newsletters. Thank program helpers at end-of-season events. Create visible acknowledgment that these roles are valued parts of the program's success. Recognition reinforces commitment and signals to other teenagers that these pathways exist.
The Retention Multiplier
The director's club saw retention skyrocket once the ladder was established. Kids stayed because the program offered a pathway, not just a season.
This makes sense when you think about what retention actually requires. Athletes stay when they feel like they belong, when they have status within the community, when they see a future for themselves in the program. The mentorship ladder delivers all three.
A teenager who's "just a player" might drift away when playing stops being enough. A teenager who's a junior coach, a referee, and a recognized leader has an identity tied to the program that goes beyond their own athletic participation. Walking away means losing more.
The ladder also creates switching costs. An athlete who's invested years moving through mentorship roles has relationships, reputation, and experience that wouldn't transfer to a new program. Even if another club offers a "better" team, the mentorship investment creates loyalty that pure athletic development doesn't.
And when those teenagers eventually age out as players, many stay connected as coaches, referees, and staff. The ladder extends the relationship with the program potentially for decades. Some of the most committed adult volunteers in youth sports are people who grew up in the program and never fully left.
Beyond the Season
The director said something that stuck with me: "If all we do is coach the season, the program dies. If we develop leaders, the program outlives all of us."
Most programs think season to season. Registration, practices, games, playoffs, repeat. That cycle is necessary but insufficient. Programs that only cycle through seasons without building something larger remain perpetually dependent on whoever happens to show up each year.
The mentorship ladder builds institutional depth. It creates a pipeline of future coaches trained in your culture. It develops referees who understand your program's values. It produces adult volunteers who've been connected since childhood. Each cohort of mentored teenagers becomes a resource that compounds over years.
This is how programs become institutions. Not through better marketing or nicer facilities, but through decades of developing people who stay connected and eventually lead. The club that started building a mentorship ladder ten years ago has advantages today that can't be replicated quickly. Their culture is carried by dozens of people who grew up inside it.
Starting now means those compounding benefits begin now. The 14-year-old who becomes a junior coach this spring could be a head coach in your program at 24. The teenager who refs this summer could be your referee coordinator in a decade. You're not just filling immediate needs. You're building the program's future leadership.
The system isn't complicated. Identify roles teenagers can fill. Create structure and training around those roles. Recruit intentionally, support continuously, and recognize publicly. Watch what happens to the teenagers who step up, to the younger kids who look up to them, and to the culture of your program overall.
The best programs don't wait until kids are adults to teach leadership. They start with the athletes they already have.
Ian Goldberg is the CEO of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He's been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee's Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
