ONE LAST BOLD WEEK: SPORTS LAB
And after 3 incredible weeks… There was only one bold week left.
After months of coordinating and refining, and weeks of programming and transformative excursions, our One Bold Summer program came to a close. Over the span of three incredible weeks and 64 hours spent with 35 remarkable LGBTQIA+ youth, this was the boldest OBS program we, as staff, had seen at the lab in the last 6 years. And to end our final week with a focus on our Sports Labs was intentional!
Statistically speaking, roughly 22.5% of LGBTQIA+ youth play sports, compared with 49%-68% of youth nationwide. Because there's a lack of support in these athletic spaces, we want to encourage our youth to know that their presence and identity shouldn’t limit them from participating in a game or league.
At Rainbow Labs, our Lab has only one rule all must follow: Come as you are.
When our Sports Lab was designed back in 2022, we wanted to ensure that all youth had the freedom and access to participate without judgment and be their authentic selves, which has now evolved into a monthly after-school sports clinic, a gender expansive softball league, and a Sports Leadership LabLeadership,a cohort program for sports leadership development. As anticipated, our youth were apprehensive leading up to the sports week because of their prior unpleasant experiences in sports-focused environments (which is valid!). But at OBS, we prepared to introduce them to different sectors of sports where their curiosity could thrive, and their uneasiness could take a lap around the block and never come back!
And the perfect way to kick off our sports week was a 45-minute yoga movement facilitated by longtime collaborator and friend at the Lab, Rebekah Rose. For many of our youth, it was their first yoga class, so hesitation was high, but with ease and a looser grip on teaching, Rebekah encouraged them to work through the tension. And throughout the session, laughter spread around the room, along with smiles of support, and the joy of community grew as the day came to a close.
The following day, we wanted to lean further into the joys of movement, and what better way to accomplish that than through our Sports Lab! Given that movement can be very limited in our office space, we decided to take a trip to a small park outside the Lab headquarters and give our youth a play-by-play of their favorite, the Inclusive Sports Clinic.
Broken up into groups, we had our youth rotate through 3 different sports —soccer, volleyball, and softball—over the course of the session. A little more active the period day's program, our students were apprehensive about participating, and though they were given the opportunity to sit out some of the activities, they embraced the Lab!
Even our most notorious wallflower at the program was starting to get competitive at times!
By the end of the session, the nervousness we saw at the beginning of the week had been replaced by laughter, encouragement, and healthy competition. As designed, our youth were beginning to realize that sports didn’t have to look or feel the way they had before, which is why we pride ourselves so much on our Sports Lab: you truly get to see an impact where the disproportionately represented finally get a chance to play.
And to further this theme of being bold and trying new things, we did something very special—and very impromptu — at the Lab. We had a BALL! As part of our curriculum for the week, we had planned a waacking dance class for our youth, a dance genre born in the ballroom scene among black and brown LGBTQIA+ community members in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
To segue into the activity, we decided to throw a Rainbow Labs Ball where our youth broke into 4 legendary houses, competed in a 15-minute design challenge using only recycled materials from the office, and then took their creations down the runway to be scored by our Rainbow Labs judges!!
A highlight for many of our youth, they leaned into the competitiveness ignited the day before and brought it to the runway.
And that’s what made our final week of One Bold Summer so special. Even joy can exist in impromptu moments and is often the most memorable.
After three incredible weeks, 64 hours of programming, countless memories, and 35 bold young people who reminded us why this work matters, One Bold Summer came to a close. And while the program may be over, the confidence, community, memories, and joy our youth created together will continue far beyond this summer.
Here’s to another bold summer…and to every young person who continues to choose to come as they are.
