Beyond the field: This school’s holistic approach champions wellbeing to create well-rounded student-athletes
IMG Academy, an independent Secondary school located in Bradenton, Florida, US, and its online products, fill one quarter of all US freshman college sports rosters annually. It has achieved such phenomenal success by accelerating a paradigm shift in student-athlete development, reshaping the educational landscape and empowering young adults to surpass their own limits. With their groundbreaking Athletic and Personal Development (APD) programme, the school provides a whole-student, comprehensive life skills curriculum focused on seven key life skills – Coachability, Focus, Resilience, Confidence, Handling Pressure, Leadership, and Nutrition – to create well-rounded, vibrant, and fulfilled individuals, both on and off the field.
Recognising that success in life, athletics, and academics goes beyond drills and memorisation, IMG Academy developed its curriculum and APD programme on the basis that its benefits, like leadership, optimism, focus, handling the fear of failure, and coachability, could indeed be taught through a well-balanced, well-structured approach. By immersing students in the programme, the school graduates three-dimensional beings, healthy in mind, body, and spirit.
The APD programme is built on a foundation of intuition, performance science research, and school-wide testing conducted over generations of students, coaches, and teachers. Today’s teachers, athletic coaches, mental coaches, nutritionists, and administrators work together to consistently deliver the APD curriculum in both the classroom and on the field or court, working with students to identify and address mental barriers, develop coping mechanisms for stress and pressure, like knowing when to rest or persevere, and build a positive mindset conducive to long-term peak performance.
In 2021 alone, approximately 30,000 students were successfully placed into college, and the 2022 graduating class included 209 student-athletes committed to D1 universities, 83 high honour graduates, and 6 students attending Ivy League universities.
Through its success, IMG Academy has inspired further reach through its online coaching platform IMG+. This platform provides students worldwide with access to its world-class coaching and expertise, thereby positively influencing students' lives and promoting the importance of holistic development on a global scale.
If IMG Academy wins the World's Best School Prize for Supporting Healthy Lives, it intends to continue its mission of providing great education through holistic personal development. It plans to expand access to resources, raise awareness of the importance of whole-student thinking, and allocate funds to better serve its student body. With a focus on scalability and adaptability, IMG Academy aims to extend the APD model to other schools, benefiting millions of students worldwide.