When I take a moment to think critically about sports — and youth sports in particular – it seems bizarre to consider how passionate we all are. In concrete terms, after all, the grass field has no meaning without us on it. The rules of the game are worthless unless we believe the score reflects some form of superiority. As athletes, we charge the game with meaning.

But why? Why is it important — and why do we play?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask the laxers I coach. In my small consulting business, I get to work with players on an individual basis and it never takes long for this issue to surface.

Typically, when I first ask the question, I get puzzled looks. The girls suspect I’m some nutty Yale-educated existentialist. After the shrugging, fidgeting and squirming, however, words emerge. The first round of spoken answers are something like “Well, because it’s fun” or “Because my friends do it.” To many young players, this may be all there is to the question. In some cases, I may leave it at that.

But for most of my high school players, I push further. “OK, but what else?”

This gets the wheels turning. From here, conversations embark in unique directions. Some girls talk about wanting to make Dad proud; others describe feeling a sense of identity as an athlete; and still others reference the bonding among teammates that comes with long bus rides and pre-game rituals.

When I think back to why I played, I know my motivations ebbed and flowed over time. I was a ten-year-old who liked to get dirty – and was loud and aggressive. At 14, I was awkward everywhere but on the lacrosse field. As a 17-year-old, I needed sports to balance the chaos of an AP-heavy academic schedule.

Now, as a coach, I am struck by what you can learn about a player by asking an open-ended question and shutting up. Each conversation helps me to identify the value systems on which a particular player bases her decisions. I become better informed about root causes of success, struggle and failure. In short, I become a more effective coach.

An example: A young player who tells me she plays because she wants Dad to be proud will not respond to my yelling at her during a game because as I yell, Dad watches, and instead of listening to me, this player thinks about what Dad hears from his seat in the bleachers. Her play suffers. Inevitably, there’s a breaking point beyond which she reasons there’s no way of making him proud today – might as well pack up and go home.

In that scenario, I’ve lost her for the rest of the game — and I may not even know it. That is, unless we’ve discussed her motivations for playing. If we have, then I can use her value system to my team’s advantage – leveraging the fact that Dad is there to privately encourage her to dare to be great today. I can even use her language: “I bet Dad would be really proud if he saw you running as hard as you can after every loose ball.”

This may be a single (and common) example. But I believe it matters at virtually every level of sports competition. Sure, coaching at higher levels you can be more selective about choosing players who are driven to play for one reason or another.

A college coach can seek recruits whose their internal drive is in line with the program and team values. But at youth and even high school levels, attaining such homogeneity almost never happens. Youth coaches, on the other hand, would be wise to accept – and even embrace – their players’ motivational diversity.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, a former three-time college All-American selection, and and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

It is the quiet story behind the high-profile victories of women’s athletics:  After thirty years of Title IX, after the superstardom of Mia Hamm, Michelle Wie, and Venus Williams, even after the advocacy of groups like the Women’s Sports Foundation, girls – especially in urban communities – are playing sports in lower numbers than boys.

There are many reasons for this and we heard about some in the Sunday New York Times and, more poignantly, in a short video on the NYT website.

As an athlete and a recent Yale School of Public Health graduate who just completed a research project in which I focused on this very issue, I can tell you it’s frustrating and disappointing. Why do so many sit on the sidelines – or in public health terms, why do so many girls express feelings of low self-efficacy towards sports?  The problem is particularly prevalent in urban and African American communities where residents have below average health, are low-income, and come from less educated households.

What do girls in just about every research study say? “I am self-conscious about my looks when I exercise” or “I am not motivated to be active.” Such feelings reflect a youth sports culture in which girls join later, play less, and quit sooner than their male counterparts.

So what has been done about it?

For years there has been a focus on trying to get girls to change the way they perceive their place in relation to sports. (In my world of lacrosse, sticks, gloves and goggles aimed at girls are ubiquitously pink). Some populations of girls have responded (When Title IX was enacted in 1972, 1 in 27 girls in high school played sports, now it’s one in three!). But other groups remain obstinately unchanged. This is, to some extent, unsurprising in a market saturated with images and messages aimed at bolstering female sexuality. (See FGN post)

Rather than try — and fail — to change girls’ attitudes, some of the newest interventions side-step the low self-efficacy issue all together. Instead, new strategies promote non-sports physical activity to prevent these children from becoming disinterested in or unable to participate in exercise all together.

The first of its kind, the Stanford Dance for Health intervention, for example, substituted dance classes for traditional physical activity classes three times a week in a mostly low-income middle school population.   In a randomized control trial, girls who had been assigned to the dance intervention significantly improved their fitness and reduced their BMI gain compared to girls in the control group.

Hip Hop to Health Jr. is a 5-year randomized intervention conducted in 24 Head Start programs where each site is randomized to either a 14-week dietary/physical activity intervention or a general health intervention. These approaches capture the attention (and it seems, enthusiasm) of an audience that will seem (at the moment, at least) unlikely to be captured by classic youth sports such as gym class dodgeball or Saturday morning soccer.

The big question remains, though: Do these programs miss the point that girls need to participate in sports? How you answer may depend on what you think sports do for a child (there is much more, many might suggest, than fitness to be gained).

On the other hand, might dance-based interventions give these girls safe time and space that might otherwise be lacking?  And if young girl gets that body confidence first in dance, whose to say it can’t be guided onto the field, court – or into the pool?

Lauren Taylor, assistant coach of Women’s Lacrosse at Yale, graduated from the Yale School of Public Health earlier this month, and is now working for the Yale Global Health Initiative.

By Laura Pappano

School districts are sweating. Budgets are tight and they are cutting in the same old places, including middle and high school sports. (A recent American Association of School Administrators survey shows the proportion of school districts cutting extracurricular activities, including sports, will triple from 10 to 28 percent from this academic year to next.)

There is also recycled talk about “pay to play” – not in the political-access- Rod-Blagojevich sense of the phrase, of course – but in the fee to participate. The downside: If the fee is too high some kids get left out. It does cost money to play sports and there may be a place for a nominal charge (say you buy your own uniform…or provide your own equipment). But one budget balancing option to consider: Pay to watch. And not just football.

Of course folks are used to paying $8 or $10 to attend high school football and, as a result, there is obvious focus these days on those revenues. The question is: Why do we pay this and what does it mean now, when budgets are tight – and later when this fiscal calamity has passed?

There is obvious attention these days on high school football revenues. The Tennessee Secondary School Association is fretting because dollars from post-season football play have been falling steadily since 2005, from $830,667 to $610,090 this past season. The Board of Control’s solution? They raised ticket prices for next year’s playoffs from $10 to $12.

They are leaning on the fact that people are used to paying to see high school football. At Gainesville High School in Florida, for example, the football team brought in $83,589 of the school’s $132,667 in sports ticket sales – plus about $105,000 through a booster’s club (including $60,000 for ads in the football program).

The high school’s athletic director, Wayne Vickery, told the Gainesville Times that football money is key: “Other coaches don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry, football is a driving force,” Vickery said. “But that’s the way it is in the South. … Whether people like it or not, football pays the bills.”

The problem with this reality is the underlying presumption: Football (and maybe men’s basketball) are the only sports “worth” paying to see (or buy programs for, or support through booster fundraising).  It’s part of a familiar hierarchy in which football games are scheduled as Friday night community entertainment (or say Thanksgiving).

This budget crisis is an opportunity to insert some equity into the revenue-respect equation. It’s time to re-evaluate the paternalistic attention-sucking power structure that is high school football and share some of the wealth – and responsibility – with other athletic teams. Yes, I said, “responsibility.” It’s time for supporters of other teams to realize that athletics cost money and that it’s also worth dollars to watch soccer, cross country, gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, swimming…

What would happen if a school district took turns featuring key athletic match-ups on Friday nights (and promoting and charging for them)? Track under the lights? Field hockey? Softball? Lacrosse? In the process, maybe school districts could expand their base of support beyond the football boosters to an audience (and pool of funders) that is largely untapped.

Sure, officials in Tennessee attributed their falling football playoff revenues on things beyond their control: poor weather and unexciting match-ups. But maybe we’re giving too much to and expecting too much from high school football.

After many years of lugging around a lacrosse stick to various U.S. locales and being met with conspicuous stares and questions of “What is that?” I was thrilled to see women’s (and men’s) lacrosse being nationally televised this past weekend.

As I watched Syracuse and Notre Dame face off, I noticed something: Women’s lacrosse is looking more like men’s lacrosse. Gary Gait (one of the all time greats of the men’s game) coaches the Syracuse women, and as I watched I saw what I’ve seen elsewhere, namely the flow of people, technology and tactical concepts from the men’s game to the women’s.

For example:

1. Coaches (top men’s players are coaching college women, like Gary Gait @ Syracuse and Mike Waldvogel @ Fairfield)

2. Equipment (women are adopting an offset stick design which has more of a curve to the head – like the men; the use of protective goggles is now required – and some wonder if helmets could be next)

3. Hard Boundaries and Restraining Lines (prior to 2006, there were no boundaries in the women’s game)

4.    Tactical Concepts
a.    Draw Packages Many women’s teams are now training and using certain players in games         specifically to win possession of the ball and then quickly sub out for offensive/defensive players.
b.    Subbing “on the fly” Women’s teams are now substituting one player for another within the natural flow of the game so as to make better use of specialized skill sets, and catch defenses off guard.
c.    Goalie Tactics Women goalies are adopting a lower, more athletic stance in the cage and being significantly more active outside the cage.

d.    Defensive Sets Certain styles of defense, for instance the “Backer D” are lifted directly from the men’s game with only minor adjustments to accommodate women’s rules.

These changes are not necessarily a bad thing. Some of my greatest mentors as a player, particularly in college, were men. They offered me a perspective on the game that I hadn’t already seen or heard and as a result, I listened more closely and applied their ideas more readily. I’m nothing if not thankful for their influence on me.

That said, I have mixed feelings about whether the influx of personnel from the men’s game and adoption of male lacrosse practices is a good thing for the women’s game. On one hand, it can make the women feel like second class citizens who simply take, take, take without having anything much the men want to “borrow” from our game.

On the other hand, stealing the men’s style of play may mean the women’s game becomes faster-paced and more exciting, attracting higher rates of participation, viewership and support. So maybe we women should just take the goods (say thank you very much to the men) and run! What do you think?

Lauren Taylor, who will receive her Master’s in Public Health from Yale next month, is assistant coach for the Yale Women’s Lacrosse team. As a player for Yale, she earned three All-America selections and was a four-time first team All-Ivy League selection.