Girls Getting Hurt

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ambition.jpg

Show of hands who read the article on girl injuries in sports in the New York Times magazine? This alone is yikes-worthy: Some experts believe that in sports that both sexes play, girls rupture their A.C.L.s (i.e. blow out their knees) at rates as high as five times that of boys. Girls are also more likely to suffer concussions in sports like basketball. The piece is totally worth checking out, cuz I think this is an issue we need to care about for a number of reasons. Shall I lay those down for you right now?

-If you happen to have a girl child who is into a sport, you may find that kid sports are kinda wicky-wack in some ways nowadays. Many kids play the same sport year-round, often joining multiple leagues and doing regular tournaments. In fact, multi-sport kids feel the pressure to choose one sport if they hope to compete with other players. This is baaaad, because doing one sport all year is hard on anybody, especially developing little bodies with softer bones and forming muscle and so on. Lots of kids are getting injuries resulting from overuse and chronic stress on joints. This totally blows, and is also relevant if you have a boy kid, BTW.
Also, we have structured sports in a funky way. While any preschooler can join, say, a soccer league, by the time kids get to high school, the opportunities to play dwindle. Therefore failure to make the junior varsity or varsity team might mean bye-bye to a sport. That ain't right. We are seeing some intramural sports and so on, but we have to make sure there's ample chances to pursue a sport regardless of competitive ability.
And kids are competing hard to get college scholarships and just play for teams. Unless we get coaches and parents on board en mass, it's unlikely we can keep many kids from limiting play to one season, even though off-season time could be spent on another sport or in other kids of training or in, you know, playing and stuff.

-If you are female... Click Here to read more