The Tao of Koa

Here at Koa, we pride ourselves on being more than just a sports outfit. We like to believe we’re helping build community. Click here to view our FAQs!

After home and school, it’s often athletic fields and facilities that become the “third place” for so many kids. As such, we take our responsibility as community organizers very seriously. The text included below is a take on how we view our role and what we mean by “The Tao of Koa.”

Before Koa Sports had a name, a logo or a website, it was one man (Tony Korson) coaching a group of neighborhood baseball players. While our 501(c)3 has grown significantly over the last five years, our culture, customer service and central mission — ‘shaping kids’ lives through sports’ — hasn’t changed. That can only happen with a full-time staff who live, eat, breath, play, train, compete, sleep, don’t sleep, question, listen, improve, celebrate and champion Koa Sports. Everything we do starts with our full-time staff — from answering the phones to setting your schedules to hiring our coaches.

Click here to read our Founder & CEO, Tony Korson’s, thoughts on Shaping Kids Lives Through Sports.

Koa Sports League is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Our Mission

Koa is committed to shaping kids’ lives through sports. Through the following approach, Koa aims to develop each child to his or her full potential as an athlete and a person:

-Employing trained and dedicated professional coaches and instructors who operate under the supervision and management of our full-time professional staff.

-Providing a positive community for our young athletes and their families.

-Using sports as a vehicle to teach life lessons like hard work, sportsmanship, self-discipline, and coping with adversity.

While many of our young athletes will enjoy long, successful playing careers in high school and beyond, we recognize not all are destined for professional, college, or even high school competition. Whatever the sport, activity, or level of competition, Koa’s basic philosophy is the same – shaping kids’ lives through sports. Consistent with this philosophy, Koa affords its young athletes the opportunity to develop in their sport of choice and, ultimately, in the game of life.

Our Core Values

After locking ourselves in our own “situation room” (aka drinking coffee on the couches in our office), we decided Koa needed a set of core values. Yes, our mission statement articulated our operational approach and organizational standards, but mission statements are for board-meetings. We needed something we could use in the field.

As we train our coaches, introduce ourselves to parents, and psych ourselves up before leaving our heated cars to coach on frosty November mornings, what was the point? Who did we want to be? What were the things we needed to embody in order to achieve our mission?

Thus, our core values were born…

POSITIVE. DEDICATED. TEAM-FIRST. FUN.

They’re beautiful, aren’t they? They’re also universal.

From our full-time staff to our coaches to our athletes and their parents, these are the core values we ask everyone in the Koa organization to embody. If we can look at every component of the Koa operation and say we’re meeting these four core values, we’ll know we’re succeeding. If there’s a problem along the way, we can go back to these values and pin-point where it is we’re underachieving.

“But what do those values really mean, Koa? What does this look like in reality?”

The good part about these core vales is they’re obvious and really need no explaining. That said, here’s what these values mean to us internally:

POSITIVE means approaching things in a constructive way. Letting our athletes know if they’ve done something wrong, but also outlining the way to remedy the problem and instilling in them a belief that they’re capable of doing so.

It means showing up to work with the right energy, championing projects of real importance, and seeing our “problems” as “opportunities.”

DEDICATED means committing ourselves to the job at hand. It means showing up on time, with both a plan and the proper energy to execute it.

It means controlling the controllables.

TEAM FIRST. Sports is about team. Yes, sports teach discipline and sacrifice and instill kids with the habits of proper exercise, but the competitive advantage sports offer is the opportunity to function as a team.

In good times, we enjoy and share in the celebrations with everyone. In bad, we stick together as a group and pick each other up.

FUN. Because if we’re not having fun, what are we doing?

Our Concussion Action Plan

Our Trophy Policy