They let me play

“If you let me play sports,
I will learn what it means to be strong.”

In 1995 Nike aired an ad campaign that didn’t focus on a shoe or a ball. It focused on an idea, a belief that sports benefit young girls in ways well beyond physical fitness.

The voices of young girls told us, “If you let me play sports, I will have more self-confidence. I will be 60 percent less likely to get breast cancer. I will be more likely to leave a man who beats me. I will be less likely to get pregnant.”

As a competitive athlete I was inspired.



Fast forward to last month when I read an article in The New York Times Magazine entitled, “The Uneven Playing Field” and I was anything but inspired.

Let’s start with the cover page - a picture of a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, pony-tailed teenage girl heading a soccer ball. That sounds fine until you mention that she resembles a victim of a horrendous car wreck rather than an athlete, sporting a neck brace and a full head cast.

If readers manage to get past the cover and open the magazine they will read as author Michael Sokolove discusses the “injury epidemic” plaguing women’s sports today. For the most part Sokolove focuses on female high school and travel soccer teams and the increased rate of A.C.L. (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries among them. However, he offers little statistical evidence of this increase, instead recounting one-off stories of individual players and teams.

As for why injury rates in high school athletics remain higher for boys’ sports than girls’? Sokolove dismissively claims that the numbers are “complicated by football,” as if football exists as an exception to the rule.

While the issue is compelling, and certainly worth exploring, what is most disappointing about the article is how Sokolove fails to even consider addressing and fixing this “casualty rate” in women’s sports.

If the author had his way, he would probably wrap young girls up in bubble wrap and send them back to 1972, before Title IX existed and all was right with the world.

Instead Sokolove offers young female athletes three choices – play injured, don’t play at all or learn to play like a boy. Perhaps it is this way of thinking that continually pushes elite female athletes to go to extremes to prove their mental and physical toughness.

For arguments sake, here are some more options to consider.

Hold coaches accountable. If young girls are not getting the proper training to help prevent injuries then some amount of blame needs to fall on the coaches. Youth sports have reached a level of specialty that requires coaches to be experts – not someone who daylights as a math teacher. Coaches should understand the risk of injury and what they can actively do to prevent it.

Make training programs more comprehensive. If weakened muscles are to blame for the majority of ACL tears in women, then strengthening exercises can be tailored to target those muscles.

Embrace our differences. Too often men’s sports set the standard for the right way to play while women’s sports are simply an inferior version of the real thing. Instead, we should respect the skills that both men and women bring to the field.

Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, offered one key defensive point against Sokolove’s claims.

“We need to do everything we can to prevent injuries. But when you look at the stories that get told…there is a disproportionate emphasis in things that are problematic or that are presented as signs of women’s biological difference or inferiority,” Kane said.

Fortunately, organizations such as The Women’s Sport Foundation exist to shed light on some the positive stories. Founded in 1974 by Bill Jean King, the Foundation works to increase the participation of girls and women in sports and fitness through education, grant-giving, recognition and advocacy programs.

According to its website:

• As little as four hours of exercise a week may reduce a teenage girl's risk of breast cancer by up to 60 percent.
• 80 percent of the female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former "tomboys" - having played sports.
• Today there are 10 times as many women playing high school sports as there were in 1972 (before Title IX was enacted). Five times as many women now play sport in college.
• Girls and women who play sports have a more positive body image and experience higher states of psychological well-being than girls and women who do not play sports.

Bottom line - we should be encouraging young girls to participate in sports not employing scare tactics to chase them away.

I was in competitive sports for 18 years and suffered my share of injuries. But would I trade a few aches and pains for the lessons I learned? No.

They let me play sports and I learned what it means to be strong. I wish all girls and boys could have that chance.