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To be honored as part of SI Good Sports, a community must host a summit on how to improve its youth sports programs. So on Sept. 29, parents, parks administrators and guest speakers gathered to resolve why more girls weren't playing St. Andrew's youth sports. The group concluded that girls use sports to access different social experiences than boys, so this winter St. Andrew's is letting girls sign up in groups to play basketball, rather than trying to place kids to achieve competitive parity. "Numbers for girls' programs are nowhere near the boys," says St. Andrew's rec and parks director Kevin Walsh. "We're going to continue to meet with leaders in the girls' community and continue to work on it."

If a solution exists, St. Andrew's will find it. The program, based in Charleston, benefits from its heritage. Moms and dads played in the same leagues their children now populate, and many coaches have been in the program for 20 years and have no children of their own; they simply love working with kids. Even in the older leagues, in which coaches aren't required to play every player, many still do so. And once a year, parents must enroll in training courses to better understand their role.

On a balmy day in late September, the fall sports festival marked the parks and playground commission's 60th anniversary with a pig roast followed by dunking booths in which folks like Walsh wound up soaked. "We also give out our coaching awards at that time," he says. "The criteria isn't who won the most games. It's who was the best coach."

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