The Top Three Reasons Your Daughter Needs to Play a Sport

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a growing, crippling fear for the next generation of women. With television shows like Bad Girls’ Club, 16 and Pregnant, and Jersey Shore becoming an integral piece of pop culture, you have to wonder if there’s anything good influencing our girls anymore? These days, girls are learning how to use their bodies as currency instead of learning how to work hard for achievements. It’s a bigger compliment to them if you like their face, than if you like the way they approach and solve a problem.

When did this happen? Why is it so difficult to keep our daughters from things that aren’t good for them? Why is it so hard to teach her the self confidence she needs to avoid ending up like the women on reality t.v. shows?

Noelle Delgado, CEO of Girl Force USA agrees, “Sports are our best chance. This is one of the best opportunities to give girls a healthy way to connect and relate to each other.”

If we’re being honest with ourselves, this isn’t a job parents can take on by themselves. As parents, we plant the seeds, but she needs to go out into the world and apply the principles we’ve taught her in a real social setting – she needs to see these hard truths played out in situations with outcomes she actually cares about. She needs to play a sport.

Sports Help Her Build Self Esteem
We all know that exercise does the body good; playing on a team actually helps your daughter improve social skills, battle depression and anxiety while simultaneously increasing her self-esteem. Aside from learning how to cooperate and work alongside her peers, it teaches her how to set goals, think critically, build self-discipline, and refocus in the face of challenges and defeat. She learns confidence, persistence and studies show that girls who play sports are more likely to take leadership roles in a group setting.

Sports Boost Grades
Many parents are afraid that organized sports will create a distraction for their child’s focus on education, but studies show us that the opposite is true. Routine practices teach children time management and often boosts academic grades when their sport is in season. On average, adolescents who play sports hold higher education and occupational outcomes than those children who don’t, and girls who play sports are less likely to drop out of high school. A study in 2007 showed that women who played sports were more likely to receive a college degree within six years of graduating high school than those who did not, despite socioeconomic challenges. Sports act as an accountability factor for most student athletes, pushing them in the right direction for academics.

Sports as Prevention
In addition to preventing diseases affiliated with obesity, sports do much more in the way of preventative health and supporting overall personal wellness. For example, children who play sports are less likely to engage in risky behavior such as drugs, alcohol, and sex. A nationwide study on adolescents showed that only 5% of female athletes were likely to become teen mothers while 11% of female non-athletes would likely become pregnant in their teenage years. That means that girls who play sports are half as likely to become teen mothers than girls who don’t play sports at all. “Half as likely” gives her a 95% likelihood of an easier start to life. Every hour spent working at mastering a skill or learning new plays is an hour not spent getting into trouble or finding harmful ways to cure boredom. Sports are the easiest, most effective way to keep kids focused and off the streets.

These are only a handful of the benefits children – especially girls – get from playing sports. Participating in a sport means girls get to put teamwork, leadership, diligence and failure into practice. It helps them grow their confidence by teaching them that failure is a bump in the road, not the end of it, and above all, it gives girls a sense of belonging.

“True confidence doesn’t come from compliments or affirmations. It comes from lessons learned from failure; it comes from picking yourself up after you’ve just lost the championship game and experiencing success in other areas of your life. It’s in the decision to overcome and to be better that builds lasting confidence and creates a generation of women who will lead.”
-Noelle Delgado, CEO Girl Force USA.

For more information on Girl Force USA and their upcoming events in Carmel Valley visit Girl Force USA or email the team at info@girlforceusa.com.

Article by www.writtenwildfire.com