Helping Girls Stay in the Game

How we can give girls a boost to meet the challenges that come with adolescence

We consistently find that girls disengage from participating in organised sport in large numbers (data from the UK indicate around 4 in 10) upon reaching their early teens. To date, initiatives aimed at reversing this trend have had little impact. It is becoming evident that this may be because we have fundamentally misunderstood the problem, preventing us from tackling the real root causes.

The simplest explanation is that girls discover other interests, but another widely accepted claim is that many girls no longer wish to take part as a result of junior sport becoming increasingly competitive around this time. The findings of a recent UK survey of teen girls' attitudes towards sport challenge the conventional wisdom. The common assumption that competitive sport is much less appealing for girls versus boys is seemingly based more on stereotypes than compelling evidence. Girls’ attitudes towards the competitive aspect of sport are not dramatically different to boys, especially among girls who consider themselves ‘sporty’.

This very different account of the situation points towards wholly different solutions. Clearly it is not as straightforward as taking steps to make sport more appealing to girls by de-emphasising the competitive element. There is evidently more to the question of why sport becomes less rewarding once girls hit puberty. If we want to design and implement countermeasures that will have a meaningful effect we must ensure we are in fact addressing the underlying causes.

Naturally, the best way to some shed light on what these factors might be is to go to the source and ask! The aforementioned survey findings of teeage girls’ attitudes towards sport are once again illuminating. The steep drop off in participation among girls seems more driven by lack of confidence alongside feelings of insufficiency and the sense they are ill-equipped to compete.

Certainly kids become more self conscious and sensitive to social judgement from their peers once they hit puberty. Not only do girls hit puberty earlier than boys and so face these challenges sooner, but girls also tend to be more sensitive to social evaluation. Sadly, reassurance only goes so far; however, what we can do is tackle this indirectly by taking steps to help girls feel more confident and capable.

The availability of quality coaching becomes all the more important to lend a sense of competence so that girls feel confident enough to continue. Even if it is not immediately available, the possibility that they could access quality coaching provides some assurance. In either case, having the means to improve and remain competitive will make girls more inclined to remain involved in the sport.

The perception among teenage girls that sport becomes harder following puberty is at least in part grounded in reality. The changes that occur during this phase of development genuinely do tend to make things more challenging. Whereas boys experience free gains in strength, power, speed and endurance to accompany the growth and gains in mass that occur, girls have no such luck. Clearly none of this is much fun, so it is unsurprising that the experience of participating becomes less rewarding.

Being heavier, having altered body composition and longer limbs without concomittant gains in strength poses other problems. In addition to female athletes operating at a relative strength disadvantage following puberty, they also start to move differently in an attempt to compensate and the combination of these two factors leads to increase risk of injury. So not only does it become harder to perform at the same level, girls also start to experience more injuries, which hinder participation and can take girls out of sport entirely. For instance, adolescent girls experience dramatically greater incidence of ACL injury that involves lengthy periods of out action and a considerable proportion of those who suffer through the experience ultimately fail to return to sport.

Happily, none of this is inevitable. With timely intervention we can avoid these adverse changes ever taking place. Lack of strength is a major predictor of these traumatic injuries in adolescent girls (to a far greater degree than for boys), so strength training intervention is a crucial part of the solution from an injury perspective. If young female athletes commence strength training prior to puberty and maintain this throughout adolescence they can also expect their performance progression to continue as before. Practically this means commencing strength training around age 11 in girls, which remains far from standard practice. The outcomes are better with early intervention, especially for injury risk, but whilst it becomes more challenging if we wait the situation is still salvageable with a combination of strength training and coaching intervention.

The fundamental point is that we must provide the necessary boost to eliminate the obstacles that otherwise arise once girls reach adolescence. Ensuring that girls not only feel confident to continue participating in sport but are physically able to do so requires training and coaching intervention. To move the discussion away from participation for a moment and consider things from a performance perspective, dedicated physical preparation during puberty and beyond should be a non-negotiable for any young female athlete who has aspirations to enable them to compete without undue risk of injury and continue to progress.