Coaching Kids? The New CPR and Background Check Rules You Need to Know

The Bottom Line

If you coach, volunteer, or manage a youth sports league in Colorado, the rules of the game are changing. This bill requires stricter, more frequent background checks—including for overnight trip chaperones—and mandates that a CPR-certified adult be physically present at every single practice and game.

What This Bill Actually Does

Right now, Colorado law requires youth sports organizations to run a background check on coaches before they are hired. But if you've ever spent a weekend at a travel tournament, you know the head coach isn't the only adult with unsupervised access to the kids. This bill closes a number of loopholes in how youth sports leagues handle adult supervision, starting with chaperones. Anyone acting as an official chaperone on a trip with an overnight stay must now pass the exact same background check as a coach.

The background checks themselves are getting a significant upgrade. Under this legislation, organizations must run a seven-year criminal history check that explicitly searches for aliases. Crucially, it's no longer a 'one and done' requirement—the checks must be renewed every three years. The bill also introduces an international background check requirement for any coach or chaperone who has lived outside the United States for more than 180 days in the past decade. Furthermore, it expands the list of automatic disqualifiers; anyone convicted of specific violent crimes, alongside previously listed sexual offenses and child abuse charges, is barred from these roles.

Beyond background checks, the bill tackles on-field safety by requiring at least one adult with a valid First Aid, CPR, and AED certification to be present at every youth athletic activity. This isn't just a basic online CPR module; the required training must specifically cover how to identify and treat heat and cold emergencies, external bleeding, skeletal injuries, and head, neck, and spinal injuries. Finally, the bill holds leagues legally accountable. It creates a specific legal pathway to sue a youth sports organization or local government if they show deliberate indifference or reckless disregard for these background check rules, resulting in a child being harmed by an adult who shouldn't have been there.

What It Means for You

If you are a parent with a kid in club soccer, travel volleyball, or local rec league baseball, this bill is designed to give you some serious peace of mind. You won't just be dropping your kid off hoping the coach knows what to do if someone suffers a heat stroke or a concussion. By law, a trained adult must be on the sidelines of every single game, practice, and training session. Additionally, when you send your teenager off to an out-of-state tournament, you'll know the parents volunteering to chaperone the hotel rooms have been fully vetted.

If you are the parent who casually volunteers to help out—maybe you shag fly balls, manage the dugout, or haul equipment—you don't necessarily have to jump through the background check hoops. The bill provides an exemption for adults offering "occasional assistance" in a general or nominal manner. However, there is a catch: you must be supervised at all times by a fully cleared coach or volunteer. You cannot be left alone with the kids. If you want to step up as a formal volunteer coach, especially for a city or county rec league, you will need to complete the background check and get your First Aid, CPR, and AED certifications.

Keep an eye on your registration fees and timelines. Because leagues will now have to absorb the administrative cost of renewing background checks every three years—and potentially paying for international background checks, which can be both expensive and slow—those costs will likely be passed down to families. If you've recently lived abroad for work or military service (more than 180 days), you should factor in extra time for your volunteer application to clear, unless you are currently in the U.S. on a work visa, which exempts you from the international check.

What It Means for Your Business

If you operate a youth sports organization—whether you run a private gymnastics center, a martial arts dojo, a massive travel basketball program, or a city parks and recreation department—this bill fundamentally alters your compliance and operational landscape. You can no longer rely on a one-time background check when you hire an employee. You will need to implement a robust tracking system to manage three-year renewal cycles for every coach, employee, and overnight chaperone under your umbrella.

The logistics of the CPR and First Aid mandate will require significant planning. The law mandates a certified adult be present at each youth athletic activity. If you run a facility with four different basketball courts hosting four simultaneous practices, having one certified facility manager at the front desk likely isn't enough to meet the spirit of the law, especially if teams travel off-site. You will need to ensure your coaches—whether paid employees or volunteers—are keeping their certifications current, and that their training covers the specific head, neck, and skeletal injuries outlined in the bill. You'll likely need to start hosting facility-wide certification days to keep everyone compliant.

The most critical change for your business is the shift in liability exposure. The bill explicitly creates a civil cause of action if your organization fails to perform a required background check and a child is harmed by an ineligible adult. While the legislation notes that "ordinary negligence or unintentional oversight" is not enough to trigger this liability, acting with deliberate indifference or reckless disregard is. This means if you ignore the three-year renewal rule, or look the other way when a chaperone doesn't complete their paperwork before an overnight trip, your organization is highly vulnerable. Now is the time to audit your hiring protocols, strictly define the boundaries for "uncleared" casual volunteers, and make sure your liability insurance is up to date.

Follow the Money

According to the nonpartisan fiscal note, this bill doesn't cost the state government a dime—but the financial impact lands squarely on the shoulders of local governments and the sports organizations themselves. City and county parks and recreation departments will have to absorb the increased administrative costs of running deeper, more frequent background checks, as well as footing the bill for the required First Aid, CPR, and AED training for their staff and volunteer coaches.

Local governments also face potential increases in legal and liability costs to defend against the new civil lawsuit provisions, though state analysts assume most municipalities will comply closely with the law to avoid this. While taxpayers won't see a new line item on their state tax returns, families should expect local rec leagues and private clubs to raise their registration and tournament fees slightly to cover the overhead of this new administrative and medical training burden.

Where This Bill Stands

SB26-100 is currently Dead. The latest official action came on 04/30/2026: Senate Committee on Health & Human Services Postpone Indefinitely.

That means the bill is no longer advancing this session. In practice, measures that are postponed indefinitely or otherwise declared lost generally stay dead unless they are reintroduced in a future session.