This week’s question deals with gender separation of soccer teams. Many recreational leagues across the country have coed teams, though the reasons for this can vary. Our league has all coed teams at the recreational level and only when players move to Challenge (travel) teams do they split up into boys teams and girls teams. However, girls CAN play on the boys teams. In fact, my son’s U10 Challenge team has a girl on the roster who earned her spot via tryout like any other boy. But is that the best thing for her or any other girls playing ‘coed’?
I get asked by a handful of parents each year why our league doesn’t split the teams up. Their queries are usually due to their daughter being nervous around the boys or the boys playing ‘too rough’. In Britain, FA Rules dictate that teams must split at age 11 (U12) for safety reasons. However, a young player has petitioned the FA to change the rules after she was expected to leave her teammates when she aged up. She has apparently found folks willing to listen.
Some believe that teams should never be coed since the players are destined for segregated teams once they grow up anyway. Others feel that girls playing on coed teams will improve even more because the competition is tougher on a coed team than on a girls team. Footie Girl isn’t sure about that:
This may surprise you, but I don’t think that doing away with segregation is the answer. One of the leagues I play in right now is technically co-ed, but in practice about 95% of the players are men. It is more competitive than the women’s league I play in, and playing with the men has made me a better player (although that’s not why I joined the team — it’s because I want to have fun and play with my friends). This same league also has a women-only division, and frankly, they suck. Any of the women who are any good play in the coed division, and the level of play in the women’s division suffers accordingly — and I suspect the same thing would happen if you give girls the option to play on a boys’ team.
By way of comparison, when I was growing up, I played in a city-wide recreational league — there were also competitive teams for all the age groups — with separate teams for boys and girls from age six and up. There were just as many girls’ teams as boys’ teams, and as far as I know, they both got an equal amount of support from the club. And you know what? Those girls’ teams were good. They won tournaments, they had sponsors, they got covered in the local media.
On the flip side, a recent study found that young girls seemed to compete at a higher level in mixed groups than when they were just competing with girls:
When comparing the performance of boys in homogeneous groups and in mixed groups, the p value for the difference is 0.6215, and for the percentage improvement it is 0.6988. That is, their speed was not affected by the gender composition of the group. Similar comparison of the performance of girls in homogeneous groups and mixed groups generates a p value of 0.094 for the difference and 0.0038 for the percentage (i.e., girls performed better when competing against boys than against girls).
I know one of the main reasons we like coed teams in our league, even as we’ve grown big enough to split some divisions like U8 and U10, is the belief that the girls will develop into stronger players having to play against both boys and girls. That’s not to say girls can’t develop into great players unless they face boys. But coed play may be beneficial. My daughter is 7 and I think she has benefited from playing on a coed team. The one problem we do see is that some boys won’t pass to the girls much, reducing their ball touches. This can be minimized by a good coach, but not always.
UPDATE: Here’s a thread on BigSoccer talking about the same question. Not sure if I agree with ‘up until first grade’ though.
So what do you think? Should teams split around U12 like they do in Britain? Should girls continue to play coed into their teens? Or should teams be segregated from the start (U5/U6)?
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August 31st, 2006 at 8:45 am
This is a great question. I’m not sure I have an answer, but I have a lot of thoughts. First, if you make it somehow “not allowed” that kids play on co-ed teams after a certain age (or from the beginning) then some girls will not get to play. In smaller communities where there is more interest in sports from boys than girls there might be only a few girls who want to play – not enough to make a team. Obviously this isn’t a problem in more populated areas where soccer is a big thing, but it would be a problem other places.
Second, I don’t really like the idea of having girls’ teams but ALSO letting the girls try out for boys’ teams, as you describe your league doing with its travel teams. That sends the message that the boys’ teams are a “step up” from the girls’ teams. I don’t think that’s right, yet it’s a very prevalent view in soccer, and it’s a really bad message to send. (Would a boy be allowed to try out for a girls’ team?)
Third, this:
It’s hard to read for tone on the internet, always, but I get the impression you may not quite realize what a big deal this is. It’s a lot more than just reducing your ball touches. It’s denying your contribution to the team. It’s ignoring your effort even when you make a good run (guess how likely it is that a girl’s effort will continue at peak levels in this situation). Have you ever had a whole group of people pretend you are invisible? It’s absolutely demoralizing and makes you feel like shit every single time it happens. This is a BIG problem and if you have this going on in your league and you have coaches who are not aggressively dealing with it, then I would submit that your league has a big problem. I can’t state this strongly enough, that this is not okay. I’m not trying to attack you but this is a really, really important issue. It’s basic respect, and your girls really need that, at all levels of play.
Back to the question. I think the only answer is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. I’d like to see all-boy, all-girl, AND co-ed teams available for whatever fits best with each player’s situation.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:13 am
human – First, a couple of things. I should have clarified that for our travel teams, girls can make the boys teams if there isn’t a girls team in their division which is what happened in this case, but to make those teams they are judged with the boys as peers. It’s not meant to imply the boys team is ‘better’, simply that to make the team, you are judged compared to your peers trying out for that team.
My prose may not have made it clear, but I do realize what a big deal this is. First, I have a daughter and see it in action when she’s making runs and the boys pass/dribble into traffic and lose the ball instead. I also coach a U10 team and have seen how the better players will ignore the less skilled players, regardless of gender. At the risk of drawing feminist ire, more often than not at this age, the girls are more likely to be the less skilled. The key is more likely. But it would be naive to think the boys make that judgement – I fight the “but I don’t want to pass to a girl” mindset from day one of practice.
Case in point. I had a player on my team last year who now plays on a travel team. She played hard and played the boys toe to toe and she got passed to. But even then, not as much. The other girls weren’t quite as agressive. However, one of them is ALWAYS in position, by herself, in the box. She knows where to be. She could ROLL the ball into the goal. And the boys wouldn’t pass to her. As a coach I have stressed over and over that they ignore ANY player on their team at their peril. My son is included in this group. As we’ve practiced, I’ve stressed over and over that ALL the players look for open players and pass to them – no matter WHO it is. It’s slowly having an affect. I explained that no matter what – given teh choice to pass to ANYone on the team, no matter how skilled vs tryign to dribble through/around two defenders is a no brainer. Even if we only score on one out of 5 passes – we’re still likely to score. And sure enough, they’ve started to pass and she’s started to score.
One key aspect of this is small-side (at this age) You can’t ‘hide’ a player like you could in 11v11. As a youth coach you should never do this, but the point is some do. With 6v6 and even 8v8 – it’s not possible. ALL the players on the field will get more touches and a coach has to explain to their team that they should pass to the open player regardless of skill. We’re much more likely to lose the ball by ignoring open players than passing to them.
I think you touched on the key at the end of your comment – some players may do better in segregated environments while others will thrive in a coed environment. The problem is that isn’t practical for most leagues.
That might be a good future post – ideas for successfully coaching coed teams to ensure all players develop properly, not just the boys…
August 31st, 2006 at 11:33 am
So you do take this problem seriously – I’m really glad, because a lot of people don’t!
I’m a lot more comfortable with this, than with the idea of girls “moving up” from girls’ teams to boys’ teams. However, this makes the problem of boys taking it upon themselves to refuse to allow participation by girls an even greater one. It’s hard to excel in a tryout when the boys act like you’re invisible and don’t pass to you. (This happened to me when I went out for my high school team. Of course the coaches evaluating the tryout also pretended I was invisible so regardless of skill or lack thereof the result was a foregone conclusion.)
All this doesn’t even get into the fact that it’s hard to pick up the skills the boys have, if you’ve been playing for years without being allowed to fully participate in your team.
So really there are two issues: excluding players because they lack skill, and excluding them because they’re female. The two issues are not identical, but they are related because being female makes it a lot harder to get the skills you need. But, as you point out, even skilled girls and women experience the same, what shall we call it? a Male Invisibility Field? that mysteriously follows them everywhere they go on the soccer field.
Unfortunately this isn’t just a kids’ issue or just a soccer issue, as you know. It follows those of us unlucky enough to be born with the “wrong” sex organs everywhere. But for some reason, it’s especially prevalent, and especially limiting, in soccer. I’m almost 30 years old and I still run into this playing pickup soccer in the park near my house. Last weekend, after being open and ignored on the right corner of the penalty area four times in a row, I had to talk myself out of literally taking my ball and going home (no one else had brought one, so perhaps it would have got the point across!) The only thing that stopped me is that I am less skilled than many of the other players… and I didn’t really want to try to argue about it in Spanish.
Obviously I have a lot to say about this. I should post on my own blog instead of hijacking yours – sorry about that. Back to topic, I’d love to see your thoughts on avoiding this problem in coaching coed teams. Or even as a player. I wish that, as a youth player, I had a coach who cared as much about seeing that everyone was able to fully participate. Since, as you point out, it benefits the team as a whole, there’s little reason not to take that position! I’m sure that whatever work you have done and will do in this area will benefit your daughter greatly.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:44 am
Oh you aren’t hijacking this post by any means – the more discussion the better! But if you blog on this at your place, let me know so I can link to it!
September 1st, 2006 at 3:08 pm
This is a tough issue and I’m really undecided on it, despite my post above. Ideally, I think it’d be great if boys and girls were on the same team and be treated as equal players. But if you accept that the teams are going to be segregated at some point, then how do you work it so that the girls’ teams don’t automatically become the poor cousins to the boys’ teams? Not that this is something I have a good solution for.
September 5th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Soccer and Me, Part I: Girl vs. Boys…
So the same scene repeated itself nearly every game. We took the field against an all-boy team, and some cocky thirteen year old twerp would look at me and laugh. “Hey, it’s a girl,” he’d call out to his teammates. Not long after, if he happened…
September 6th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Jen,
I think the dynamics at play may be vastly different between adult clubs and youth clubs, though there are unique problems at each level. At adult levels, I think you run into the ridiculous attitude of “womens sports aren’t as good as mens so let me spend my advertising/sponsorship dollars on the mens team” or perhaps provincial funding that isn’t equal. But those are just guesses – I’d expect you have much better ideas with that.
At the youth level, I’m not sure the girls teams would become the poor cousins, at least not in many youth programs. The main reason is the funding model is equivalent for all teams. For example, in our recreational program, you pay your $20 and get on a team. Challenge is similar, boys and girls pay the same and get all the ame equipment – paid for by the league from registration fees. Now not all leagues may run things that way. But in our case at least – they would start out the same.
Where things get interesting at the youth level is coaches. Our league is about 60% Boys and 40% Girls. However, a totally unscientific assessment reveals that a sizable majority of our coaches have sons or both sons and daughters. Very few of them have just daughters. Does that mean anything? I don’t know. Most coaches coach their kids in youth soccer, so I worry that if teams went segregated, would there be a problem recruiting coaches? I’d hope not. It might be a blessing in disguise in that you might recruit more coaches with just daughters to coach who hadn’t stepped up before – thus expanding your coaching pool. This is all complete conjecture. But it’s something I’d be watching closely if our league started to segregate teams.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Soccer Dad, what’s your ratio of male coaches to female coaches? One of my commenters suggested that recruiting more female coaches (and assigning them to coach coed and males’ teams, not just females’ teams!) would be one positive step and I agree – more female referees, too, also not just assigned to females’ games. I think deliberately placing females in “authority” type positions over males as well as other females would do a lot to break down this idea that men are greater and women are lesser.
You have a lot more experience with league organization than I do. Do you think this would make a difference? What about obstacles that leagues would face, and how to overcome them? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
It might make a difference, but I’m not sure it would be a profound difference.
In our league, we have a number of female officers. As for coaches, not many, but we see more women stepping up to coach each year. This season our female head coaching breakdown is:
Challenge: 1/7
U14: 0/3
U12: 0/6
U10: 2/12
U8: 3/17
U6: 2/9
U5: 3/10
Now this isn’t because of some bias either – we are always struggling to recruit coaches. Any woman who wants to coach and is good with kids – is going to coach 🙂 Now are there things we could do that would lead to more success recruiting female coaches? Probably – but I don’t know what they are. Note we also have a number of female assistant coaches.
The ironic thing is this – anyone involved in youth soccer knows who really RUNS the team – the Team Manager. And they are almost all women. Again, not through some sort of subtle bias. In that case your pool of available people to serve in that role (i.e. the parent who brings the kids to practice all the time) is predominantly women. Now you could write volumes as to why THAT is, but nothing our soccer league could do would likely change that. And it’s not just paper pushing. They really do run the team and ensure it functions. The coach just keeps the kids occupied. Scheduling, uniforms, carpools, snacks, registration paperwork, fee collection, etc. It’s almost impossible to have a successful team without one, man or woman.
I’m going to write about and link to your post soon – this has just been an insane week getting ready for the matches starting tonight.
September 7th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Interesting how the top 2 age divisions have no women. Of course without looking at lots of leagues with lots of teams it’s not really a big enough dataset to generalize from. 🙂
I’m not really an expert on this or anything, but off the top of my head a couple ideas for how to get more female coaches:
– ask your female coaches to recruit other women they know
– sponsor/arrange for coaching seminars taught by women
– if you’re recruiting in a situation where someone hasn’t specified what they want to do (i.e. they’re offering to do anything, or you’re approaching the parent you just know would be a great asset but who hasn’t volunteered yet) ask the women to coach and the men to be team managers instead of the other way around.
Of course the difficulty of getting volunteers for such time intensive positions will always be a limitation, but those are just a few ideas.
Good luck with opening week!