The Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) is taking an active role to prevent bullying and hazing.

CHSAA Commissioner Paul Angelico said in an interview with ABCNews.com, “We decided we need to do more to address bullying, hazing and general mistreatment of kids on kids as it relates to athletics and teams. We recognize the fact that sports are supposed to be a unifying activity, not a dividing activity, so we began searching for some way to address the problem.”

As a way to address this problem and help all students feel included in sports and other extracurricular activities, the CHSAA has teamed up with the You Can Play Project.

According to its mission statement, “You Can Play is ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation.”

“What ‘You Can Play’ seeks to do is equalize things in the locker room, clean up language in the locker room that is casually homophobic and in the stands as well,” said Brian Kitts, a co-founder of the You Can Play Project in a video about the project. “Locker rooms are all about honesty and providing a sense of security and I don’t think a lot of athletes are able to feel that if they’re hiding their sexuality.”

The partnership is part of the We Are CHSAA Positive Leadership Campaign and is known as “You Can Play, Colorado.”

As part of the campaign teams and schools are encouraged to enter a statewide video contest. The goal of the video is to document the commitment that is being placed on the idea that great teammates are judged on heart, talent and skill. Race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or other discriminatory traits should not matter.

A video has already been posted from the Denver (Colorado) East High School. The featured students say, “Some of my best friends are my teammates and I will do anything to help them succeed. That includes accepting them, whether they are gay or straight,” and “Not all teams look the same and not all teams play the same way. But we all want the same thing. We want to win. Anyone that helps us win is welcome on our team. If you can play, you can play.”

“We were trying to approach this from the standpoint that there’s a lot of kids that would like to stand up to bullying, hazing or harassment, but don’t know how or have permission,” said Angelico. “Not only do you have permission, you have an obligation.”