2019 Lead Sports Summit wrap
The 3rd annual LEAD Sports Summit was held in Atlanta, GA over Labor Day weekend. LEAD stands for (Leadership Empowerment Athletic Development). It is a 4-day summit for teenage girl swimmers (ages 13 to 18) and is dedicated to empowering them with leadership skills, confidence coaching, nutrition training, sports psychology education and so much more. LEAD was founded by 3-time Olympian Kara Lynn Joyce in 2016.
Research has shown that when teenage girls are active in sports, they are 68% more likely to apply for leadership positions in their careers. When young women have mentors in their life, they are 96% more likely to hold leadership positions in their careers. This is why the LEAD Sports Summit was founded.
The 2019 LEAD Summit hosted 146 teenage girl swimmers who flew in from 32 states and 4 countries. They worked with Olympians Elizabeth Beisel, Maya Dirado, Missy Franklin and McKenzie Coan and national teamers Natalie Hinds and Madisyn Cox. In addition, LEAD provided keynote and breakout sessions with industry professionals like Dr. Megan Cannon (Sports Psychology); Christen Shefchunas (Confidence Coaching); Alicia Glass (Nutrition) and Toni Armstrong (Performance Leadership).
2019 Lead Summit recap
In 2019 we saw the addition of the LEAD Coaches Track and LEAD Parents Track. This provided parents and coaches access to our entire Leadership Staff and industry professionals, delivering educational resources and content just for Coaches and Parents. This included keynotes by Madisyn Cox; Christen Shefchunas; Dr. Megan Cannon and a brilliant college recruiting seminar led by Toni Armstrong and Ali Miller.
In 2017, LEAD was held in Austin, TX. In 2018 and 2019, LEAD was held in Atlanta, GA. In 2020 LEAD 2020 will be moving to DENVER, CO! We are extremely excited for this new move and it will absolutely be our BEST LEAD Summit yet.
A huge thank you to our LEAD sponsors:
- Under Armor for providing athletic apparel to all attendees, and outfitting our entire all-woman staff.
- Arena USA for providing suits, swim caps, warm ups, robes, hoodies and backpacks.
- BSN Sports delivered big time for our coaches and parents in attendance, as well as our girls. BSN provided LEAD branded tumblers, half-zip sweaters and coaches backpacks.
- TriSwim for keeping the girls clean with amazing hair care gift cartons and samples of innovative products such as Skin Slick.
- DMC FINS provided EVERY girl with a pair of amazing DMC Fins to use during our swim clinic and take home. You have never seen a group of swimmers this happy:)
- FINIS who gave every girl the opportunity to never have to take a breath (with the turn of the head, that is) during each of the pool sessions by providing a new training snorkel.
- DASANI sponsored the LEAD closing keynote breakfast speech by Missy Franklin. Part of their sponsorship included a co-branded LEAD/DASANI photo-booth which ended up taking around 5,000+ printed photos.
- Gr8nola has been a LEAD sponsor since our inception and one of our closest partners. Founded by former Stanford swimmer Erica Liu, Gr8nola is the exclusive granola sponsor of LEAD and has been keeping girls well nourished at LEAD for the past three years.
- Skinny Dipped Almonds sponsored our snack breaks and provided hundreds of snack packs of delicious Skinny Dipped Almonds. They were a huge hit among the girls, staff and Olympians throughout the weekend.
- Speedo returned for the second year and sponsored the nutrition dinner evening and also gave each girl a speedo mesh bag and goggles.
- NUUN provided over 200 tubes of NUUN hydration tablets for the girls to use and stay hydrated with during the weekend.
- Coola was our exclusive sunscreen sponsor and saw a lot of action during many of the LEAD activities that took place outside in the hot Atlanta sun. COOLA has been with LEAD since we first started in Austin, TX in 2017 with just 75 swimmers.
- Yoga Outlet returned for year 3 as the exclusive yoga mat sponsor. Yoga outlet provided several hundred colorful yoga mats and sponsored the "sunrise yoga in the park" activity which was taught by professional yoga instructor Channing Hixon. We had our professional video production and photography team on site for this activity.
