MESSAGE FROM NIKE: JUST EXERCISE

Nike's $10 million P.L.A.Y. promotes fitness, exercise and sports for kids.

What would the world be like without sports?

Would schoolchildren play cards instead of dodgeball?

Would playgrounds be full of children standing around eating snacks?

Would violence on the streets increase because kids have no other way to vent their energy?

Workers at Nike pondered those same questions when they researched the state of kids' fitness in the United States. Here's what they found:

Only a third of grammar and high-school children have daily physical education classes.

More than half of the children participating in organized athletics cannot pass basic fitness tests.

Half of all elementary school-age kids are already at risk for heart disease; one in five children ages 6 to 17 is overweight.

Youth at risk

"Teen obesity is really at an all-time high, and in general kids are not at the fitness level that is really healthy," said Melinda Gable of the Nike Public Affairs Department.

"These are the kinds of facts that really are scary because kids that young shouldn't be having these kinds of problems."

Concerned that children would get to a point where exercising was more pain than pleasure, Nike launched P.L.A.Y. (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth). This $10 million project aims to ensure that young people have access to sports and fitness programs in their communities.

Through P.L.A.Y., Nike has donated $1 million to Boys & Girls Clubs of America for developing and expanding programs that motivate youth to participate in sports - including sponsorship of races, tournaments, clinics, camps and after-school programs. In addition, Nike is mounting a multimillion-dollar effort to provide sports and fitness opportunities to kids throughout the United States.

Recycled shoes

Nike also has joined in a partnership with Dodge-Regupol Inc. to construct play surfaces made out of Nike recycled shoes. The basemat is made entirely of recycled tire rubber and athletic footwear particles and the surface is a seamless, self-leveling polyurethane wearcoat.

This low-maintenance surface is made for different sports ranging from basketball to volleyball to soccer and is designed to reduce long-term injury.

"I think what got us interested in this whole P.L.A.Y. initiative initially is the fact that so many programs across the country are being cut from schools, so kids don't really have access to sports and fitness programs like they used to," Gable said.

"Nike looked at that as a real problem, and since we are a real expert in the sports and fitness world, it is a perfect kind of issue for us to take up as a company."

Fitness summit

In June 1993, Nike sponsored a summit in Washington, D.C., and invited sports and fitness experts as well as children from all over the country to brainstorm the issue of fitness. After publishing their results from the summit, Nike introduced the P.L.A.Y. project and launched a communications campaign with Olympic track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee and basketball greats Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley to inspire people to develop more sports opportunities for kids within their own communities.

"Nike can't be the answer," Gable said. "It doesn't have the answer to this problem in total, but we wanted to be kind of a catalyst to inspire people at the local level to really take this issue on and try to develop solutions.

"We are doing a couple of things, too, to solve the problem," she added. "We are creating 10 play court surfaces in 10 different cities across America made out of recycled Nike shoes. We are upping our level of funding to kids for some fitness programs through our sports marketing department. We are focusing our sponsorship dollars very heavily on kids' sports."

Gable stresses that it is not too young for overweight, inactive children to change their habits.

"If something isn't fun, then kids don't want to participate, so we are trying to create programs with the Boys & Girls Clubs that are fun.

"One of our programs that we are going to introduce this fall is called our Just Do It Daily program," she continued. "It's going to be 20 minutes of physical exercise that the clubs provide and (the kids) will keep a log and record of how many times they participate a week. They will be given incentives, like free T-shirts, or free caps once they reach a certain level of participation.

"If you make it fun for kids, I think you can change behavior, but I think really the key is to start at a young age and get kids to include fitness and sports as a part of their lifestyle, and it's just kind of a natural thing."

A chance to brainstorm

Nike will sponsor five Youth Summits in New York; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; and Los Angeles this September. In them, kids can brainstorm ideas to create and preserve sports and fitness programs in their communities.

"We want to bring kids together from different communities to really try to talk about the problems in their communities and to develop solutions," Gable said. "We really want to try to be the catalyst for change, and we hope to be able to give them some tools that they can use within the community to really create change.

"Kids have a lot more power than they think they do sometimes, and we want this to be a really empowering thing for kids in different communities."

Jordan and Joyner-Kersee have donated money and time to the P.L.A.Y. program. But they have provided much more, too.

"(Kersee) is a great role model for kids," Gable said. "She is a former member of a Boys & Girls Club and is really a success story that kids can look to as somebody who had a hard time in her youth. She came from very poor circumstances and turned into an Olympic gold medalist."

The program benefits, too. "I think that Michael and Jackie really give credence to it because they are the best athletes in the world. Michael is the best male athlete and Jackie is the best female athlete, and we have always used our athletes to our advantage to really help kids.

"It helps to have Michael and Jackie head it up because you get a visibility with them connected to the program that you obviously wouldn't get without them there."

Gable says Nike is in the project for the long run.

"We look at this whole project as not a 100-yard dash, but really a marathon," Gable said. "I don't think that these problems are going to go away tomorrow, and it is something that Nike is really in for the long term. We look at this as a very big corporate initiative over the next few years."

"P.L.A.Y. is a really fun, fun project to work on," Gable added. "I've never had a job where I actually was a big catalyst for change and for good, even if it's in a small way."

EDITED BY: Robin Potasnik, 18