About
Where it all began
Transformational Sports (TS) was formally registered in 2016 as a non-profit organization in the state of Michigan in the United States of America, but unofficially, TS had already seen its beginnings through sports and gender-based camps in India since 2014. The need to streamline the process and leverage its potential with active funding was a result of the success seen in those early camps, where sports became a powerful tool to talk to both young women and men about gender roles and gender equity, especially in societies where women are traditionally not encouraged to play sports, or where sports is considered a predominantly male endeavor.
Our mission is to advance gender equity through mixed-gender sports.
Our Philosophy
Why Sports?
Because it connects us to our bodies, gives clarity of mind and teaches resilience. It instils confidence and helps us learn how to be part of a team, and how to lead. More importantly, it teaches us how to interact respectfully, sensitively and empathetically with those different from us. And that we are infinitely stronger than what we have been told.
Why Ultimate Frisbee as our sport of choice?
We use Ultimate Frisbee – a mixed-gender, non-contact, self-refereed sport – as our sport of choice for our programs because its foundations are steeped in equality. This sport, created by high school students in the U.S. in 1968, is a rare sport indeed, based on the premise that anyone can play, that we do not require referees to solve our issues, and that after the match we can come together in an honest discussion and review. We believe it gives youth an incredible, life-long tool to build more egalitarian communities. In fact, we can take the principles of Ultimate Frisbee and adapt it to any sport to make it more equal and inclusive, without the usual focus on competition and winning.
Our Method
At Transformational Sports, we build each session, program and event by layering the following elements:
Fun + physical MIxed-gender activities
Why mixed-gender sports?
We are asked this question many times, especially in India, since our programs are designed as mixed-gender programs amidst a vast sea of single-gender programs. Gender stereotypes and inequities persist across the world and we believe that gender-based programs these days have become synonymous with empowerment of girls and women, rather than all genders. In order to change ingrained mindsets in society, we need youth to play together, to take up the same space, and to learn from each other, rather than play separately. Mixed-gender sports, if facilitated well, teaches us how to interact respectfully, sensitively and empathetically with those different from us. It means we can move society forward, together, rather than separately.
play + reflection
Why play + reflection?
As we have outlined above, the benefits of playing sports are numerous. Yet, when we combine play and reflection, these benefits increase manifold. We’ve learned this through experience by working with the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, which includes a post-match component called a Spirit Circle, in which the two teams come together to reflect on the match. Spirit Circles become the perfect ground to build self-awareness, resolve conflict and learn positive communication with people we aren’t familiar with. We base many of our opening and closing session activities on the concept of the Spirit Circle, specifically adapting it to address gender and mixed-gender team dynamics.
Spirit over competition
How do we teach spirit over competition?
Without clear guidance from coaches, youth naturally gravitate towards competition, wanting to know the score of a game and if they have won. At Transformational Sports, youth understand from day one that their coach prioritizes sportsmanship and team spirit over competition and winning. We accomplish this through coach training and curriculum design, such as using “all-touch” passing where everyone on the team must touch the disc or ball before a score is made or tournaments with round-robin style matches instead of a traditional winner/runner up format. Our tournament winners are teams who have shown the most spirit, rather than scored the most points.
Our Team
We work with a talented and passionate project-based staff, along with equally passionate and committed volunteers across India, the U.S. and Australia who take part in our programs as sports coaches, facilitators, and organizers.
Liz Haynes, Founder/Director
Aside from founding and directing Transformational Sports, Liz is a writer, athlete and life coach (www.lizhaynes.com). A graduate of the University of Michigan (BBA ‘03, MAcc ‘04), Liz worked in accounting and finance in New York before moving to non-profit management in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina and working with disaster relief agencies and charter schools. Liz was an Education Pioneers fellow (Los Angeles, 2013) before moving to India to work in sports for development and peace. She has played and captained competitive Ultimate Frisbee teams in India and abroad and spends her free time contributing to its growth, seeing the power of its mixed-gender and spirit-based format to change the mainstream inequalities facing Indian society. Liz was also the assistant coach of the under-20 Indian national Ultimate Frisbee team competing in Poland, 2016.
Thilaga Palani, Program Manager
Thilaga graduated from the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam in 2010 as one of the first-ever female Kattaikkuttu performers, breaking the stereotype that this athletic and dynamic traditional theatre-form is in the domain of men only. After working in Chennai in non-profit after-school programs for many years, she took part in Bridging the Gaps camps and learned to play Ultimate Frisbee. She then joined the Transformational Sports Fellowship in 2017-18 where she became a gender and sport instructor in a number of rural Tamil Nadu schools. She founded a youth center in her own village in 2018 to bring her learnings back home. She now serves as Transformational Sports’ Program Manager in rural Tamil Nadu.
Benoy Stephen, Program Manager
Benoy is a passionate Ultimate Frisbee player with an active interest in the development sector. He got introduced to Ultimate during his undergraduate days at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He worked as a Teach for India fellow for two years in Hyderabad where he became part of the Transformational Sports Fellowship in 2017-18. The fellowship helped pilot Ultimate Frisbee in low-income communities in Hyderabad to bring about changes in values and mindsets. After the fellowship, he shifted to Delhi to set up Y-Ultimate, a not-for-profit that imparts social and emotional learning to children and young adults through the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. He has worked with Transformational Sports as a Program Manager for the two projects run in association with the U.S. Consulate in India. He loves to play Ultimate, coach Ultimate and live Ultimate. He also likes long distance motorbiking and the company of dogs.
Venkat Krishna, Program Manager
Venkat is a management consulting professional and founding board member of the Smart Village Movement in India. The Smart Village Movement leverages open innovation to bring government institutions, corporates and communities together to create value in society. He consults on projects related to livelihood, health and education. He firmly believes that better access to these three things can help us make this planet a better place to live in. He has travelled extensively through conflicted areas of India and he enjoys new cultures and interactions with people. He has worked with Transformational Sports as a Program Manager on the Volunteer for India Project in association with the U.S. Consulate, Chennai. In his free time, you can find him either playing badminton or reading books (mostly physics).
Volunteers and Supporters
Over the years, our programs were built solely through the hours and hours of dedication of volunteers who simply believed in the mission that sports could make change. We would like to thank those volunteers and supporters from Chennai, Auroville, Ahmedabad, Surat, Lucknow and Sikkim, among others, especially program mentors such as Dev Tayde and Jaidip Patel (91 Ultimate); and coaches and players from the Ultimate Players Association of India, Australian Flying Disc Association and the New York Rumble.
Liz Haynes
President
Mahesh Ramamurthy
Director
Lauren Abro
Secretary
Arun Chidambaram
Treasurer
Olivia Chen
Director