By: Angel Akinkuoye
Girls playing boy sports, oh my!!
Football is usually known and recognized as a sport for males. In the past,
females were supposed to be the people who stayed home, worked on house chores,
and watch the kids. Times have definitely changed. Women are finally doing what
they want and are not sticking to the social norm. I think it’s a great thing
that women are interested and desire to play in football. Football along with
any other contact sport has its positives and negatives. If females understand
the risks, and still would love to play the game, I feel as though they are
fully entitled to do so. I actually think it’s motivating to see girls playing
a “boy” sport that they actually excel in. Seeing girls’ and women excel makes
me motivated to do the same thing their doing. Once I seen the video of Sam
Gordon playing little league football with the boys, I found myself in complete
awe. This little girl had great talent and was super fast. She outran a number
of boys and continued to run until her little legs made a touchdown. Although the video displayed her getting
tackled, you could tell that a tackle never kept her down. You could clearly
see that Sam Gordon had a strong determination to be great at football. If a girl wants to play on a football team, I
suggest that she plays and be treated like every other player on the team. From the video it seemed as though the boys
treated her as equal as any other player.
I totally agree that today’s societal norms have completely changed from many years ago. Many younger women today are deciding to interact in different sports rather than staying at home and helping the family or doing house work. The fact that they are wanted to play football is really interesting and I give them kudos to wanting to play such an intense sport. Personally, I don’t have any problem with girls playing football as long as they know and fully understand the risks and implications with their decision. Growing up when we used to play tackle football after school, there would always be some girls that would join us and we didn’t treat them any differently than we did the guys. From this experience, I know if I have a daughter, if she wants to play football then I would support her decision even though at first I might be a little worried for her because after all she would be my daughter playing in a boy’s league unless a girl’s league is created by then.
ReplyDelete-By Josh Gibson
Sam Gordon, like Holley Mangold, is a gifted athlete when it comes to playing football. Holley Mangold played well in high school and Sam Gordon is playing well now as a child. This shows that some girls can compete against boys at various levels of the game. Perhaps the biggest issue with girls playing on guys' teams is just the maturity level of the guys and how well they will treat the girls on the team. In class we talked about one girl who was the kicker on a college team. She transferred because she got raped by some of the boys on the team. Issues like this are always questions that come up when thinking about girls playing with boys. However, in terms of actually performing on the field, if a girl can play, and she understands the consequences of doing so, then she should be allowed to play.
ReplyDeleteBy David Shelmon
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this post if a girl wants to play and knows what she is getting into let her play. In high school there is a sense of school pride and friendship, the teammates look out for each other. Although maturity levels are much different between males and females there comes a point where the coaches and school officials need to step in and maintain the team to focus on the sport. If a male on the team felt uncomfortable on the team and went to the coach he should receive the same treatment of protection that a female should feel. In the end it’s about the field if she can play on the field let her play!
ReplyDeleteBy Jessica Gatten
I don't see any reason why girls shouldn't play football if they're physically capable and willing to do so. Girls have been incorporated into male dominated sports like baseball before without problem so I don't see why football would be any different. I understand there could be locker room issues however this is something that a strong coach and influential leaders amongst the team could put to an end rather easily. As for the safety issue, like we pointed out in class, you can't be concerned about the health of girls but not the health of boys. If you say that it is ok for boys to play football then you also have to allow girls to do it.
ReplyDeleteBy Max Perry
I believe that the opportunity for girls having the ability to play whatever sports they inspire to do is changing. As a result from certain policies being implemented such as Title IX within sports. However, even with a policy like this existing there needs to be more of an impact within the sports economy for people to want to make change within sports equality. This is no different when people back in the day tried to fight for equality within races voting or school integration. Everyone had different views of what they thought about integrating races. Although everyone tried to take an ethical approach to the problem by saying our country should allow for different races to have the right to vote or allow for integration. People didn't contribute to efforts of seeing this happen. Which is happening in this same case today. Today, even though policies are in place to support discrimination based off of sex within sports. People are not contributing to the effort of this policy because of personal perceptions, beliefs, or interests.
ReplyDeleteby Anthony Pape