Ken Streater is doing at least 20 things. He is always doing at least 20 things. He’s a dad to three kids. He is working in commercial real estate (and trying to build fun and compassion into the industry). He is coaching two soccer teams, bringing his total number of youth sports teams coached to THIRTY. He is writing another book. He rafts. He runs a website and community innovation program. He gives TED Talks and organizes non-profit fundraisers.
Streater is also on his fourth professional career. As an international adventure travel and river rafting guide, he shepherded groups through dozens of countries and safely home. When a back injury confined him to dry land, he went into education. Originally from California, Ken got his teaching credentials and moved to work in Seldovia, Alaska, a little town of fewer than 300. His teaching career afforded him the time and security to finally get back surgery and Ken started to get the itch to get back into rafting. Following his dream to own his own rafting company, Ken and his wife drove all around the Northwest, in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, searching for a place to call home.
“We could have lived anywhere in the Northwest,” Streater recalls, but “the friendliest place was Central Oregon.” Settling first in Sisters in 1997, he describes, “the folks at the Albertsons were friendly, the server at Papandrea’s Pizza would chat with us.” One night, Streater was flying into the Redmond Airport late at night after a long work trip. He had stored his vehicle out in Terrebonne and hadn’t figured out how he was going to get from Redmond out to pick it up when they landed. Chatting with the lady next to him who lived in Bend, he happened to mention his dilemma and she offered to drive him out to Terrebonne, around midnight in a snow storm, to drop him off before heading home herself.
Although the offer surprised him at the time, Streater has come to expect this kind, community spirit from Central Oregonians. “The people who have lived here for awhile have that Community First perspective,” Streater observes. “And then new people choose to live here because of that. Then, when they are here for five or ten years, they also fold into that feeling.” In his international rafting career, Streater says, “I’ve been to 50 countries, and seen every type of community imaginable. There is no better place to raise a family than Redmond, Oregon.”
Streater and his wife started their family in Redmond in 2003, with the birth of their son, now a teenager. His 10-year-old daughters are twins, and between basketball, spring and fall soccer, and football, Streater guesses he has coached around 30 seasons of his kids’ sports. He came to RAPRD the way many people do, bringing his kids in to Cascade Swim Center for swimming lessons when they were little, then was drawn into youth sports. “Our very first sport was soccer,” Streater recalls. “My son had a super focused, super nice, high energy coach that year and I helped out a bit on that team.” Streater acted as assistant coach for one more year before striking out on his own as one of the hundreds of volunteer coaches that make RAPRD’s sports teams possible.
Streater had coached a little in Alaska when he was a teacher, but hadn’t immersed himself in it so he didn’t have a deep background of experience to draw on in those early years. “RAPRD makes it easy to become a coach,” he notes, “that really encourages the participation of community members. I had good mentors and good teaching and guiding skills – a lot of the same psychology applies on the soccer field. It worked in the raft and it has worked on the basketball court and the soccer field. You celebrate successes. It is super important to just be goofy,” he says, describing using Michael Jackson’s moonwalk as a break from shooting drills.
The freedom to be silly is what keeps Streater and his kids coming back to RAPRD programs. What makes RAPRD youth sports unique, he says, is “So simple: The understanding of the value of fun. And honestly, how well organized it is. You run thousands of people a week through these kinds of things. Kids are encouraged to play and to learn while they’re having fun.” He cites children’s sports research that reports a high number of kids stop playing sports around 13 because they’re not having fun anymore. But Streater says that RAPRD’s programs not only emphasize fun, they develop a love of sports that encourages kids to stay active long into adulthood.
Streater, an occasional lap swimmer himself, appreciates the role of RAPRD programs in providing opportunities for everyone. “Another thing RAPRD does that appeals to me is trying to create a lifetime association with recreation for community members. There’s a palette of offerings for all age groups and different types of interests.” Providing opportunities to community members of all ages, Streater observes, bridges generational divides and forges stronger bonds between people from all walks of life. “RAPRD gives 4 year old kids and 40 year old fathers and 80 year old senior citizens the opportunity to find something fun to do in a trusting community. If you have that operating in your town, your town will flourish. When you come in to swim at lunch time, you are a part of a friendly community that recognizes you. That creates trust.”
Streater is now a partner in a commercial real estate company. As a parent volunteer coach and a local business owner, he stands at the nexus of two groups of community support that make it possible for RAPRD to offer affordable, quality youth sports programming. Business owners are drawn to support RAPRD programs, Streater thinks, for a couple of interrelated reasons. “Most business owners understand the value of teams – to start with. They understand the value of a culture that is collaborative, in this day and age especially.” The skills kids learn playing sports will help them as adults in the working world when they need to communicate and create together, when they need to show leadership and when their leaders turn to them for support. But it is something more than just instilling positive skills and values that draws local businesses to support RAPRD, Streater says. “Ethical business owners feel an obligation to give back to the community,” he describes, “which goes back to the RAPRD mission to lift people through recreation.”
As his kids get older and coaching no longer demands so much of his time, Streater already has a plan for how he will continue to give back to the community: launching a national movement to restore and recognize good in the world. “We just started a new media organization to reinvent media by focusing on all that is good in the world.” Streater’s organization, Hooray Café aims to turn the national media narrative of fear and division on its head and instead emphasize acts of kindness and trust. His Goodness’ Sake Project is a program that salutes those who give to their community, provides tools for encouraging spur-of-the-moment generosity and features a platform similar to classified ads listings to help community members exchange small good deeds.
When asked why, with his business and philanthropy taking up so much of his time, he has chosen to volunteer with RAPRD all these years, Streater doesn’t hesitate: “More than anything else, I fully believe in the RAPRD mission from top to bottom, side to side. Mostly, I like for kids to believe they can do whatever they set their mind to do. To create an environment where they walk off the practice field or the court and know that their best mattered. And they can take that to anything in their life.”
