TPH Academy released its 2025-2026 Impact Report, a 52-page annual outcomes document presented by LeagueApps, the youth sports operations platform that has partnered with the academy since 2018. The report covers 900+ families served across what the company describes as 20+ international and domestic campuses.
It lands in the middle of a 25-year anniversary year for TPH, which is the frame the whole document benefits from. The report cites 12+ years of the TPH Academy experience specifically, meaning the school-plus-training model is roughly half the company’s life. The first 12 or 13 years were hockey development. What the 2025-2026 report shows is a business that has spent the second half of its run turning that into an academy platform, and is now taking it well beyond ice.
Six takeaways for operators, brands, and investors.
See the full report here
1. Total Package Hockey is now a multi-sport academy operator
The name still says hockey. The 2025-2026 roster does not.
According to the report, TPH Academy student-athletes competed across 15+ sports, including soccer, volleyball, taekwondo, tennis, equestrian, figure skating, lacrosse, dance, softball, and gymnastics. The Fall 2026 expansion class makes the shift explicit: of four announced campuses, only TPH Academy Columbus at OhioHealth Chiller North is ice-only.
The other three are TPH St. Louis Soccer Academy at World Wide Technology Soccer Park in Fenton, Missouri, built with St. Louis Scott Gallagher Soccer and serving grades 4 through 12; TPH Academy Virginia at Ion: The Rinks at Compass Creek in Leesburg, developed with Craig Desjarlais and Doug Shepherd of 23 Hockey; and TPH Academy Kansas City at Homefield in Olathe, a baseball, softball, volleyball, and basketball campus with a 3,000-square-foot learning center and 324 hours of sport-specific training built into the school day. TPH Academy Austin also announced AV Academy, a volleyball program for girls in grades 6 through 8, opening Fall 2026.
2. Cost is the lever, and school choice funding is how TPH is pulling it
TPH says its academy runs at roughly one-third the cost of comparable full-time academies while holding the same academic and athletic development standards. That price position, not the outcomes data, is the most consequential number the company is working with.
The company is layering state education funding on top of it. TPH has taken a voucher-and-scholarship approach in North Carolina and Arizona, with five additional states on the roadmap for the 2027-2028 school year.
Both current states are unusually favorable. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program went universal in 2022, and as of early 2026 more than 100,000 students are using ESAs, roughly 9.8 percent of all Arizona K-12 students. The annual award for a general education student runs roughly $7,000 to $8,000. North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship opened to all households regardless of income in 2023, enrollment has risen to 104,599 students, and awards for 2026-2027 range from $3,578 to $7,942 per year across four income tiers. Arizona Department of Education + 2
TPH already operates NC RISE Powered by TPH in Bermuda Run, North Carolina and TPH Academy Phoenix, which reports 45 student-athletes and a 3.60 average GPA. Applied against a tuition base set at a third of category pricing, an award in that range covers a materially larger share of the bill than it does at a traditional private school. That is the mechanism that turns a premium product into a mass-market one, and it is the piece worth watching over the next two enrollment cycles.
3. The licensing arm, Powered by TPH, is the scalable revenue layer
The report dedicates a full spread to Powered by TPH, a four-tier partnership menu that lets outside programs license the model rather than build one: Directorship plus Academics, Academics Only, Off-Site Support, and TPH Academy Online.
Licensees named in the report include the OHL Kitchener Rangers, the International Development Academy in Valencia, Spain, NC RISE in Bermuda Run, North Carolina, RELM Sports Academy in Kingston, Ontario, and Windy City Performance Academy at Orbit Ice Arena in Chicago.
The scale is real. Summing the enrollment figures published on each campus page, licensed sites account for at least 145 student-athletes against roughly 631 on TPH-operated campuses. The International Development Academy in Valencia alone reports 84 student-athletes, 6 college commitments, 22 club affiliations, and 7 team advancements, which would rank it third-largest in the entire system.
4. Two leagues now buy academics wholesale
TPH Academy Online is the primary high school academic provider of the United States Hockey League, according to the report, and TPH Academy is the official academic provider for the OHL Kitchener Rangers, who won the 2026 CHL Memorial Cup. Beginning in 2026-2027, TPH becomes the official academic partner of Southwest Academy Girls Prep in London, Ontario.
Selling into a league office rather than family by family is a different acquisition structure than the rest of the category runs on. Per the report, USHL member teams supply onsite study space, technology, and academic supervision, TPH handles admissions, planning, NCAA guidance, and pre-collegiate advising, and partner Subject Virtual Schools provides accredited curriculum, certified instructors, grading, and school-of-record services.
5. Enrollment is concentrated in three campuses
Nashville, St. Louis, and Valencia account for 309 of the roughly 776 student-athletes disclosed across all campus pages, about 40 percent of the published total.
TPH Academy student-athletes by campus, 2025-2026
Student-athletesUse the arrow keys to move between data points
Nashville, at 135 student-athletes, is more than 50 percent larger than the next campus and is also the most sport-diverse site in the system. St. Louis, at 90, carries the strongest academic and advancement profile: a 3.87 average GPA, 6 AP courses, 33 students at 4.0 or higher, 70+ athletes at Tier 1 AAA or above, and 30+ signed, drafted, or playing junior hockey.
One reconciliation note for anyone modeling the business. The campus-level headcounts in the report sum to roughly 776 against a headline of 900+ families served, implying additional enrollment from the Kitchener Rangers, NC RISE, standalone TPH Academy Online students, or mid-year turnover that is not broken out.
6. The academic numbers hold up. The performance numbers need a methodology.
Two of the report’s biggest claims survive a check against its own campus data. Weighting the 12 US campuses that report on a 4.0 scale by enrollment produces a 3.76 average GPA and an 84 percent honor roll rate, effectively matching the reported academy-wide figures of 3.73 and 85 percent. The stated 30+ college commitments is conservative: the master list names 37 individuals across 34 institutions, from Yale University and the University of Notre Dame through NCAA Division III and ACHA club programs.
The performance testing data is less settled. The report says student-athletes complete 12 assessments across three benchmarks per year using Hawkin force plate technology and Swift laser gates, and reports these system-wide gains:
Reported system-wide performance improvement, 2025-2026
% improvementUse the arrow keys to move between data points
The campus pages tell a less uniform story. Detroit reports a 4.2 percent skating speed increase, Denver 9.9 percent on push shot speed, Grand Rapids 11 percent on 30-meter skating speed. Huntsville, meanwhile, reports a 100 percent increase in 30-meter backward skating sprint speed, an 87 percent speed improvement, and a 95 percent improvement in transitions, figures that almost certainly describe the share of athletes who improved rather than the size of the improvement. Kansas City uses a similar 100 percent figure attached to three separate claims.
The report also does not publish sample sizes or survey instruments behind its 99 percent student-athlete satisfaction, 98 percent parent satisfaction, and 94 percent likely-to-refer figures.
Year 25 Is About the Adults, Not the Draft Picks
TPH is framing its 25th anniversary around alumni who did not turn pro. In the company’s words, the milestone is about the teachers, business owners, nurses, soldiers, tradespeople, parents, coaches, and college graduates who carry TPH in their history, alongside the professional athletes.
That framing is a deliberate counterweight to how the report itself is built. The 2025-2026 document leads with Nick Suzuki at 100 NHL points, Travis Konecny at 500, and Kirsten Simms taking 2026 Olympic gold, an NCAA title, and the eighth pick of the PWHL draft before being named the first official TPH Impact Ambassador. Those are the outcomes that sell an academy. They are not the outcomes that describe 25 years of families.
The pricing and voucher work is the same argument stated in numbers. Running at a third of category cost and stacking state education funding on top of it only matters if the thesis is volume, and volume only matters if the product is meant for the kid who becomes a nurse. Four campuses open in August 2026 and only one of them has ice. Five more states are targeted for 2027-2028. Year 25 is where TPH finds out whether the model travels past hockey and past the families who can already afford it.
Source: TPH Academy, 2025-2026 TPH Academy Impact Report, presented by LeagueApps
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American families spend approximately $54 billion annually on kids’ sports and recreation, according to the YSBR and Kinetica Group Youth Sports TAM & Parent Spending Report, with organized sports alone representing a $40 billion-plus market. The average family spent $1,016 on a child’s primary sport in 2024, up 46 percent since 2019, per the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, and market research projects the global youth sports market will reach approximately $114 billion by 2032 (Business Research Insights).
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Approximately 27.3 million children ages 6 to 17, or about 54.6 percent, played organized sports in 2022-2023, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health as reported by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play. High school sports participation reached a record 8.26 million athletes in 2024-25, per the NFHS.
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Youth Sports Marketing Questions, Answered
Where can brands sponsor youth sports? Brands can sponsor youth sports through local leagues and clubs, tournaments and events, facilities and complexes, governing bodies, and national platform programs. Sponsoring a child’s own program is the most powerful entry point: 81 percent of parents say it captures their attention, outperforming TV, social media, and pro sports sponsorship, per a 2026 Priority Partnerships study conducted by YouGov Sport.
How much does youth sports sponsorship cost? Youth sports sponsorship costs range from a few thousand dollars for a local league or team sponsorship to six and seven figures for regional facility naming rights and national platform programs. The environment is welcoming at every level: 84 percent of parents hold net positive sentiment toward brands sponsoring youth sports, with negative sentiment under 5 percent, per YouGov Sport research. Most brands start with a pilot activation, measure engagement, then scale.
What is the ROI of youth sports marketing? The data is striking: 80 percent of parents say they would choose the brand that sponsors their child’s youth sports program when comparing two similar products, per a 2026 Priority Partnerships study by YouGov Sport. A 2026 EMARKETER and DICK’S Media survey found 84 percent of sports parents say that role influences their purchase decisions, and 60 percent spend more on game and practice days, driving loyalty across categories from dining to travel to automotive.
Ready to build a youth sports strategy? Vertical Sports is an Advisory+ delivering integrated expertise across all levels of sport. Youth, College, Pro. Every Fan, Every Level. Brands and youth sports organizations can reach the team at info@verticalsports.us.
