Why all girls should play sports
The list of reasons why kids should play sports is too long to ignore. There's a host of short and long-term positives, both to the individual and society. This is especially true for girls.
If you go out to basketball gyms and courts and playgrounds around the world, you usually see a lot of boys playing pickup or practicing. They’re having fun, bantering, trying new things. Occasionally, you’ll see a girl among them, one of those brave souls who probably grew up around brothers and who ignore the fact that being called a girl still has a negative connotation, and who thrives on proving them wrong.
Unfortunately, those girls are few and far between. The average talented female basketball player will subside when the testosterone runs high and blind competition dominates. But there should be space for her, as well.
Providing safe environments for growth and physical spaces for girls to play is one thing. The cultural component of how we raise, treat and talk to - and about -girls is another.
“Girls have been taught to be perfect and boys have been taught to be brave,” Billie Jean King famously said in an interview some years ago.
The legendary female tennis player, who won 39 Grand Slam titles, famously defeated male opponent Bobby Riggs in “The Battle of the Sexes” match. She’s also the founder of the Women’s Sports Foundation, which is dedicated to ensuring that all girls have equal access to sports and physical activity, and the great life-long benefits they provide.
And King has a point. If we teach girls to be perfect, they will naturally fear failure. And when you fear failure, you never get a chance to learn and get to the next level, and you never get the chance to dream big.
Coaching girls, you see the crippling effects of that. Beating yourself up when you make a mistake, less willingness to try new things, assuming you may not be good at it.
If we teach our girls that perfection is the goal, we automatically set a limit on their potential. Instead of perfection, being brave in taking chances should be rewarded, King says.
When we teach our boys that they need to be brave, we teach them that it’s ok to fail. “Just get up and dust yourself off, and try again,” is the message we send.
And this is where sports for all girls come in. Because one thing you learn when you play sports, at any level, and any type, is that everyone makes mistakes.
When girls - especially today’s younger generations - grow up, mostly tied to a screen where people show their perfect (scripted) lives and perfect (airbrushed and retouched) bodies, our young girls are never exposed to the authenticity of real life. And many come to the conclusion that failure is not an option.
But failure, you see, is not an outcome to be avoided, it’s a challenge to overcome. Without experiencing failure and adversity, you never grow and improve. Athletes know this, basketball players know this. The legendary Michael Jordan often talked about it as a necessity: “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
In basketball (and sports in general), everyone misses at times. Not even Steph Curry, widely considered the best shooter of all time, makes more than half of his three-pointers. Half! That means that he misses half of his shots. On a good day.
That’s an extremely important lesson to teach girls. As basketball goes, it’s a perfect metaphor. You can miss half of your shots and still win the game. Even win the NBA MVP Award. The important thing is that you keep trying, keep going and don’t give up.
When the new girl on the U11 team grabs her head in exasperation after losing the ball, she sees how the other girls just keep playing. The best player misses a layup and we say “good job, you’ll make it next time”.
Slowly, she learns that making mistakes is part of the process, it’s part of becoming better. At basketball, but also at life.
“One thing sports does for girls,” Billie Jean King points out, “it gives them confidence. They learn to trust their bodies. Because we’re taught not to trust our bodies.”
Teaching resilience like this will help her in five years when being a teenager is difficult and she struggles in school. Playing sports will literally set her up for handling both pressure and failure better as an adult.
But it doesn’t stop there. Playing sports - especially team sports - teach players to lead in a very real way. Every time there’s a decision to be made, a play to run in-game, a realization that rooting for your teammates and encouraging them makes a real difference, it’s a real life-lesson for later in life.
When girls play sports there’s a direct connection between investment and output in their later careers.
“The reason I want girls to go into sports at all, and they don’t have to be good, everybody goes ‘well, I can’t be the best’.” It’s not about that, Billie Jean King says: “It’s about the culture.”
“I want girls to get into sports, because we know 94 percent of women in c-suites (management) identify as being an athlete. It’s more comfortable and also we learn how to lead. Girls that learn sports, learn how to lead. Make decisions, live with it and move on.”
That’s what we in sports call ‘the next play mentality’ and it is not fostered in a perfectionist culture. How we talk about and to girls - about themselves and their opportunities in life - has to change in order to increase the chance that more girls fulfill their potential. And the best way to start that change on the ground is through sports. That’s why all girls should play sports.
You speak such a deep truth with beauty and you are one of the biggest influences in putting my girls in sports. They have gained and learned so much from sports and relationships build by playing. It’s been hard at times to watch my daughter as a minority surrounded by boys in basketball but the beauty has outweighed my fear. She has become more confident playing against boys and (to my surprise) has been cheered on! Thank you 🤍
Excellent as usual. I can kind of relate to all of the comments. I am small and female. I played sports including basketball, which was OK until everyone else had a growth spurt and then really sucked. With my daughter I chose a better sport by honoring our body type and admiring everything she did lol. She could do headstands and was a fearless menace on monkey bars or any climbing apparatus so I started her in gymnastics at age 4. It was great for her. She was well suited but still had to work hard, which she did. She learned lots of important skills including discipline and time management balancing hours of practice with schoolwork. She developed easy confidence I would love to have. Then she won all around at a southwest regional (5 states) competition, was asked to join a gym known for Olympic gymnasts, and immediately wanted to quit. I tried to be sure she was quitting for the right reasons (not fear basically) and she assured me she still liked it but not as much as she used to and mostly wanted to try new things and have more time for social activities - seemed like good reasons to me. She dabbled in basically every sport her school offered without taking any too seriously, just fun for fun’s sake. In high school she joined the cheer team and all those gymnastic skills and core strength were reawakened. Now she is on a competitive university team and she loves it.