SafeSport & MAAPPs

The Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies (MAAPP) aim to help young athletes feel safe, supported, and strengthened—by limiting one-on-one interactions between adults and children, requiring abuse prevention training for certain adults, and promoting environments in which misconduct is less likely to occur.  Adult Participants who have regular contact with or authority over Minor Athletes include coaches, athletic trainers, and officials. MAAPP applies to all interactions related to your child’s participation in a sport within the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, including practices and competitions as well as events such as fundraisers, team meals and celebrations.

BE AWARE OF THESE MAAPP POLICIES ORIENTED TOWARD KEEPING KIDS SAFE:

1 | One-on-one interactions between Adult Participants and Minor Athletes must be observable and interruptible.

2 | Your consent is required for your child’s participation in individual training sessions, athletic training modalities, meetings with health professionals, transportation, and lodging. The Organization must provide you with consent forms.

3 | You must be allowed to watch your child’s individual training sessions.

4 | A second Adult Participant must be in the room during all massages, rubdowns, and other athletic training modalities—for which your child must be fully or partially clothed, with private body parts covered.

5 | Your child must have access to a semi-private or private changing area, and locker rooms and changing areas must be monitored.

6 | Adult Participants must never shower with your child, unless they are close-in-age peer athletes or it is a pre/ post activity rinse where everyone is wearing swimwear. You can request that your child not change or shower with close-in-age adult peer athletes.

7 | You, another adult family member, or another Adult Participant must be included on all electronic communications (including texts, emails, and social media).

8 | One-on-one interaction policies apply during organization-sponsored transportation and lodging.

9 |Limited exceptions to some policies (related to youth close in age to peer adult athletes, Personal Care Assistants, and out-of-sport dual relationships) are detailed in the full MAAPP document.

For more detailed information about MAAPP, please refer to https://maapp.uscenterforsafesport.org/.  

For more information about the Safe Sport Center’s efforts to end abuse in sport, visit https://uscenterforsafesport.org/

Report any concern about abuse or misconduct to the U.S. Center for SafeSport https://uscenterforsafesport.org/report-a-concern/

Divided among six episodes, these short animations introduce the most important standards and concepts for the MAAPP, required in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement.

The. U.S. Center for SafeSport recently issued a Bullying Prevention Handbook for coaches and minor athletes.  The handbook is intended for coaches and provides guidance for addressing bullying in our sports, but also includes a section on helping athletes understand bystander intervention on pages 13-14.