It doesn’t matter to me where you play soccer — grass, dirt, turf, parking lot, or gym floor. I have trained girls on each surface who have found their passion for the game.

And yet, there is a serious opportunity gap that bothers me: Inner city and poor girls face obstacles that make their participation drastically lower than boys and their suburban female counterparts.

We know millions of children are registered in youth soccer leagues (3.1 million with U.S. Youth Soccer alone).  But whether soccer or other sports, more are white, male, and affluent.

A 2008 Women’s Sports Foundation study, for example, showed that by age 6, 53 percent of white girls and 68 percent of white boys are involved with sports, compared with just 29 percent of African American girls and 51 percent of African American boys (it’s 32 percent and 44 percent for Hispanic girls and boys). A NY Times story also pointed out the discrepancies.
To me, just as troubling as the low entry rate is the high drop out rate from sports (18 percent for poor kids). How can we get girls from all backgrounds to continue to play soccer — as well as other sports?

Many people focus on the hurdles to access, including funding, transportation, cultural mores. I believe it’s equally critical is to understand WHY certain girls choose to play high school sports.

Recently, I surveyed 75 female high school athletes (60 who participated in the SportsChallenge Leadership and Education Alliance‘s Summer Academy) and 15 from a U19 soccer team I coach in San Francisco). (SportsChallenge brings a wide spectrum of student-athletes together from around the country to train as athletes and leaders). Here’s what they had to say about why they play (in no particular order):

I play sports because I can …

* Be myself (without worrying what others think)
* Escape from all the other stresses of my life
* Control my destiny – set goals, make my dreams come true and ultimately lead others to success
* Make myself a better person – stronger and more confident in all aspect of my life
* Keep out of trouble and stay motivated for school, especially to get good grades
* Open doors to attend college
* Have a safe space where I can learn from others
* Stay fit and active
* Make an impact on the history of my sport

And, on the majority of lists… “Because I love the game!”

By addressing both sides of the equation – the hurdles and the incentives – I believe we can create a lasting pipeline of young girls who continue to play into their teens and beyond.

Molly Hellerman is executive director of the non-profit SportsChallenge Leadership and Education Alliance, based in Washington, D.C.

By Laura Pappano

In a sports culture in which OBP, ERA, PR, SOG, QB Ratings (among others) rule the landscape, Linda Jean Carpenter and R. Vivian Acosta track stats you won’t catch among box scores, but that have served a generation: Women’s access to play and power in college athletics.

“There isn’t a Congressional hearing or scholarly work on the issue of women in coaching and administration that doesn’t cite their research,” Donna Lopiano, former CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation, shared in an e-mail.

Beginning in 1977 using pencil and paper (the second year they switched to IBM punch cards and now use  actual modern computers), Acosta and Carpenter have made a career of surveying Division I, II, and III colleges to record women’s participation on the field and in coaching and administrative suites. They have tallied numbers and types of women’s teams, percentages of female head coaches plus paid and unpaid assistant coaches, and athletic directors. In 1994 (in a nod to an increasingly complex college sports structure) they added percentages of females in sports information director and athletic trainer roles.

In other words, these two women whose own sports experiences – as players, coaches, researchers, administrators, professors (Acosta has a PhD and Carpenter a PhD and law degree) – could shape a compelling narrative of the rise of women’s athletics, have through their data done something even more valuable: Made concrete the wins and losses for the women’s sports movement since the Title IX era began in earnest.

Their longitudinal data, said Lopiano, has provided “critical factual evidence of the absence of progress in opening the highest status and highest paying coaching position to females in college sports.” She says “there is no comparable work like it in the field” and is why “the advocates of Title IX continue to use and depend on this data.”

The project began — as many important things do — by chance.

Shortly after the passage of Title IX,  Acosta was waiting to speak at a conference organized by the AIAW, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (it governed women’s college sports until the NCAA took over in the 1980s).

“I was eavesdropping and I heard someone say, ‘Have you noticed how many men are coaching women’s teams?’ and someone else said, ‘Yeah. Has a study been done on this?’ – and a little light bulb went off,” Acosta recalled last month during an interview at the lakeside home she shares with Carpenter.  “I went to Linda and said, ‘We can do this. All we have to do is count!’”

Counting, of course, was (and is) a mammoth task that takes months. Even today, while they use computers to sort and tally data, all the surveys are sent out on paper because, says Acosta, “people expect it and it takes them 10 minutes.” The next round of surveys will be mailed in a few weeks (see photo above of Carpenter and Acosta in Carpenter’s office with surveys). They collect two year’s worth of data each time and make their reports available for free online. Click here for the most recent.

In it, Acosta and Carpenter note that 2008 marked the “highest ever participation by female athletes” with 9010 women’s teams, or an average of 8.65 per school (most popular women’s team offered by colleges, in order: Basketball, volleyball, soccer, cross country, softball).

At the same time, however, the representation of females as coaches of women’s teams “remains low.” When Title IX was passed in 1972, over 90 percent of head coaches of women’s teams were women. Today, it’s 42.8 percent. A few other results of note:

–  21.3 percent of athletic directors are women, up from 18.6 in 2006
–  Only 27.3 percent of head athletic trainers are females
–  Only 11.3 percent of head sports information directors are female
–  Only 2-3 percent of head coaches of male teams are female (while 57.2 percent of women’s teams have a male head coach)

Check out Acosta & Carpenter’s article in Academe (journal of the American Association of University Professors), looking back on 37 years since the passage of Title IX.

Coming Tomorrow:  Q & A with Acosta and Carpenter

In our insta-age, everything you hear about is old the second you’re in on it. But one big secret isn’t out: Girls are allowed to play baseball. (Well, kind of).

It’s 35 years since President Gerald Ford signed legislation opening Little League to girls, but it remains a shocker to actually find one on a baseball diamond. OK, of course, there are girls in Little League. But there are so few that everyone notices when they see one.

Parent antennae emit an alert signal the second they scan the field before a game. Their folding chairs may not be fully positioned when the buzz starts: Hey, did you see there’s a girl on that team? It’s not said with any malice, but rather like the way kids spot advertising vehicles on the highway. Hey did you see that truck shaped like a hot dog?

It’s a curiosity, and that’s the point. That this many years later so few girls play baseball suggests nothing less than A Great Baseball Conspiracy. This is one of those open secrets that’s as embarrassing to women as to guys because it speaks to the thousand subtle ways young children get messages about who they are and what they should – and shouldn’t — do.

In 2009, it remains scary for girls to play baseball, even at young ages when it most surely is not about physical prowess. Having watched my share of coach-pitch, it’s concerning to see the level of self-censorship girls apply to joining up for baseball. Why might that be?

Maybe thanks to ordinary encounters like one last spring in which each time two girls in a first grade (first grade!!!) Little League game reached second base they got the treatment from boys in the field: “Girls don’t belong in baseball,” “You cannot play defense,” There shouldn’t be girls in this league,” and, my favorite, “You cannot hit and we will easily get you out!” (Weren’t they already on second?)

This is not just another episode of kids-say-mean-things, but a window into the way we are raising our children. It is not helpful for girls – or boys – to have baseball serve as the vessel of American Manhood. Yet, somehow, from young ages the message gets embedded that baseball is for boys and softball is for girls. Any girl who plays baseball past fourth grade gets asked when she is going to “switch over” (read: stop making trouble and go where she belongs).

It doesn’t help that some states legally consider baseball and softball to be the same sport – which means for Title IX purposes that having softball means they are providing females an equivalent opportunity. As a female baseball player pointed out recently in The New York Times, “It’s like saying Ping-Pong and tennis are the same sport. ”

That was the issue last year when Indiana high schooler Logan Young and her parents filed suit against the Indiana High School Athletic Association. Public Justice and its cooperating lawyers succeeded in getting the association to pass an emergency rule allowing girls to tryout for baseball teams (good luck finding that key vote on their web site). Victoria Ni, a Public Justice staff attorney, says the association is expected to pass a permanent rule change when the full board meets in May.

Ni, who says the baseball-softball definition is just one of several problematic rules in Indiana school sports, says other states may be just as guilty but how to know? There is no master list of all the states that classify baseball and softball as the same sport, legally, speaking. “It’s a state by state fight,” she told me. “To research these rules is extraordinarily hard because you have to get in touch with each high school athletic association.”

One good move: After a nudge from The Women’s Sports Foundation, in December the NCAA’s Legislative Council “determined that baseball and softball are considered separate sports.” According to a February 2009 NCAA “talking points” memo, “previous interpretations of NCAA legislation stated baseball and softball were the same sport for NCAA amateurism and outside competition.”  Now college softball players can join baseball leagues in the off-season and vice versa.

While clearly a change meant to give players more flexibility without sinking their eligibility, this is a technical change which deserves some notice at the high school level – and younger. Baseball season is starting, it’s time for little girls to grab their mits and loosen up those arms.