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Sports teaches you character. It teaches you to play by the rules. It teaches you what it feels like to win and lose. It teaches you about life.
If you’re the parent of a young athlete, you know the benefits of playing youth sports: physical and mental fitness, personal discipline, good sportsmanship, learning to work as a team, and acquiring confidence—whether it’s from a win or a loss. These experiences help kids stay active and healthy.Yet nationwide, girls make up just 35% of youth sports participants. One of the causes might be that only 25% of coaches are women. Today, at your Park District, our story is changing dramatically because we’ve added dedicated, passionate staff to address that need. Meet Taelor Schmitz.
Taelor is the newest member of the team, and her focus as an Athletic Supervisor is to grow all of the female athletic programs that are currently successful, and create new ones to provide more opportunities for girls to participate in healthy, sports-based activities. She started working here part-time in March 2025 and joined us full-time in May.
“When I started working in park districts, I saw how closely they work with the community, especially with youth sports. They get their input and understand what they truly want,” Taelor told us. That’s something we’ve always been particularly proud of in this District: How we interact with our residents, get their advice and guidance, and build the programs that the community wants. Taelor added, “When you get to college level, if you weren’t introduced to sports when you were young, then it’s really hard to develop the tools that you learn when you’re part of a Park District program. Being able to work collaboratively with this community is really exciting for me.”
Of course, the District has always offered programs that featured or included girls, but Taelor has initiated some changes that have increased participation exponentially. One example is T-Ball, where boys and girls have always been in the same class. “T-Ball is typically the first program kids do with the park district,” she said, “and we would get 40 boys and just 4 girls.” What was Taelor’s plan? “We opened up a girls-only section for T-Ball, which is now so popular it’s waitlisted!” Good things happen when the athletic staff is open to new ideas and has the freedom to make decisions. That’s also what great leadership looks like.
We asked Taelor about some of the other ways she has been promoting female sports. Get ready. “We knew that there was a gap in the female programming, so we surveyed as many parents as we could,” she said. “Last year, as we were planning for the spring session, we had decided to concentrate on running flag football and softball programs, but 90% of the community surveys came back asking for volleyball. And, because we can be flexible, within a month we had put together a new volleyball league.”
This past fall, Taelor and the athletic team got the ball rolling with a special kickoff event: a unique co-op between flag football and softball enthusiasts. “It was a free event that drew 50 people, where players and parents made great connections. That led to the start of our fall programming, which was flag football and softball as Taelor had planned, plus the new volleyball league. “Because people were passionate about now having volleyball, they registered and filled up the programs. We ran two in the fall with 64 girls!” That’s what a passionate athletic supervisor can do to build girls’ sports in this community.
In addition to a Softball Skills Clinic, in the fall Taelor ran three sections of Flag Football: for first and second grades, third through fifth grades, and sixth through eighth. She told us, “Personally, I wasn’t expecting to love flag football, but these girls are the most competitive athletes out there. They’re awesome!”
Another important addition that Taelor has brought to the District is the other component that the national research showed was lacking: a knowledgeable part-time staff of three female coaches: Megan, May, and Kelly. “These dedicated adults have experience in multiple sports,: said Taelor, “and now they’ve built connections with the softball players, who are buying into them for flag football, and then are buying into them for volleyball, because they are working with the same 60 kids over and over again.” We know, and parents know, that young athletes look to a great coach for much more than sports advice. Mike Divincenzo, Athletic Manager for the District, said that Taelor is too humble to say it, but that “since she has been in charge of female sports full-time, the registration numbers have doubled.”
We ask for and receive a wealth of feedback from our community about what you want from your Park District’s programs and events. Asking those questions every day, every season, about what we do here sets us apart and helps us develop more of everything you want. You’re passionate, and we appreciate that!