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Whether it's a children's soccer league run by parent volunteers or an adult hockey team whose players spend as much time socializing as shooting pucks, amateur sports play a vital role in enhancing community engagement and public health.

A new report by Brock University researchers highlights the importance of community sport groups and what can be done at the provincial level to support them.

Published last month, Provincial Sport Policy in Ontario: Trends, Issues, and Ways Forward summarizes insights from three years of research involving discussions with sport sector organizers and provincial sport organizations that govern amateur sport in the province. The report addresses community sport groups' need for leadership and support as more responsibilities are placed on them by the provincial and federal governments as well as sport governing bodies.

These groups continue to experience challenges with sport policy that hinders their organization's ability to carry out their mandates and reach their goals and objectives, says Associate Professor of Sport Management Kyle Rich, one of three authors of the report and lead researcher on the project.

"The sport club system in Ontario is in a precarious place that is disconnected and fragmented. We don't have direction, and support within the system hasn't increased with the amount of work and expectations that's being put on those organizations," he says.

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