“Sports Academies” program
“Sports Academies OPAP” is a pioneering Corporate Responsibility program for the Greek standards that aims to instill in children the principles they will follow throughout their lives, whether they become athletes or remain friends of sports.
The program involves 128 amateur football academies, 50 amateur basketball academies and totally 18.000 athletes up to 13 years old from all over Greece.
Philosophy
The main guideline of the program is the continuous and interactive training of the coaches, children and parents of the academies in order to:
- To highlight the educational and recreational side of sports.
- To strengthen the values of sports.
- To create strong bonds between the participating clubs.
- To improve the services provided by the clubs.
Through the above it aspires to ensure that today’s young athletes will become better people tomorrow and that the future of Greek sports is based on solid foundations.
The program’s pillars:
Scientific support
Scientific support
The program stands on the side of many thousands of parents and guardians with its scientific team and offers them education and guidance in the fields of children’s psychology, nutrition, pediatrics and physiotherapy throughout the pioneering and innovative online platform “Sports Academies Online”.
There the children’s parents/guardians can read articles, watch educational videos and participate in competitions related to the aforementioned pillars.
Coaching support
Coaching support
The program continuously enhance the technical training of the approximately 800 academies’ coaches by implementing online educational activities (educational videos and activities) upon the instruction of the program’s coaching teams heads in football (Kostas Tsanas) and basketball (Mixalis Kiritsis), in order to offer the best educational and training support to the children emphasizing to the their soul and emotions.
Our philosophy is based on three basic guidelines concerning:
- Τhe coach’ s educational role in the ages up to 13 years old
- The children’s code of conduct
- The parents/guardians’ code of conduct
Safety and medical care
Safety and medical care
All athletes participating in the program are provided with insurance coverage during their training or games but also one hour before and one hour after their performance.
They are also provided with full coverage of the costs for their medical rehabilitation in case of injuries.
Sport equipment
Sport equipment
All academies receive on an annual basis sport equipment which aims to meet their basic needs and improve the safety and training standards of their athletes.