Amanda Was Told Girls Can’t Play Football
By: Amanda | Age: 14 | On: 03-10-2009
This is one of many reader entries from the Share Your Story section, designed to encourage and inspire other women to rise to the challenge and follow their dreams.
Have you ever been told you can't
because you're a girl?
A couple of weeks ago my history teacher posted the sign-up for freshmen football outside of his classroom. I asked him for a pencil so I could sign up, I was just kidding, because my parents would never let me play football. He responded with “girls can’t play football.” I yelled back that girls can do whatever they set their mind to. He told me that he agrees, but he thinks that girls shouldn’t play football.
I now realize he only said that, because he doesn’t want girls to get hurt playing football. I still believe that a girl can play football if she wants to!!
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gretchen | March 10th, 2009 2:23 pm
Amanda – you are right that girls can play football if they want to play. The problem here is that there aren’t any girls football teams in high schools, but it seems as if more and more girls are wanting to play. It used to be this way in basketball. For me, in the 6th grade, I had to join the boys team in order to play basketball. I think if enough girls start joining the boys teams, we might start seeing girls football as a high school sport just like we now have girls basketball, girls golf teams and girls soccer. Find some friends who are willing to play and see what you can get started. Your efforts may not succeed on the first round, but I guarantee you can get the ball rolling.
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Scott | March 22nd, 2010 5:28 pm
Fact of the matter is, most girl’s CAN’T play football…at least, not at the level boys can. It’s simple genetics. Girls, on the average, are smaller and lighter than boys. That’s not to say all are…I played high school ball with a girl that was one of our better players. She played receiver and also kicked our field goals and extra points. She, however, is the exception to the rule. I am not trying to be sexist or anything like that. I am all for girls playing football on a girls team. But girls on a boys team? I don’t believe in that, any more than I think the boy who sued (and won) for the right to play field hockey a few years back was right.
Ivy Heidenreich | March 22nd, 2010 9:32 pm
Alright, well I’ll tell you my story. I’m a freshman in highschool, and I played on the ‘boys’ football team at my highschool in Duluth, MN.
I was told by my gym teacher, who was also the head coach for the highschool, that I couldn’t. So you wanna know what I did? I went right on and signed up, and guess what?
I made the team, and started in special teams and played defensive and offensive tackle.
I was the first girl ever at my school to play, and I know I’ll play for three more great seasons of the best sport ever made.
Girls CAN do it, they just have to prove themselves.
Corey Renee | April 20th, 2010 8:33 am
Girls playing football on an all girls team is like guys cheering on an all guys team.
Isn’t cheering suppose to be a girl thing, well if guys can cheer then us girls should be able
to play football.
Scott | June 7th, 2010 6:14 am
Corey Renee, you’re way off base. Cheering and football have so little in common, physicality-wise, it’s not even amusing. And also, cheerleading is NOT meant for just girls, despite the stereotype. It is in fact a co-ed sport.
While I don’t discount the athleticism needed for cheering (my wife was a cheerer in high school and in college, and she’s just as athletic as I am, and perhaps even more so as far as cardio goes), it’s just not the same thing. In cheering, yes, you can be injured. But not by someone hitting you and smashing you to the ground every 40 seconds or so for three hours.
As I said back in March, it’s simple genetics. Let me put it this way. Girls, are on average, smaller and lighter than boys. Not opinion, fact. Now, picture an average sized girl getting hit by an average sized boy in a football game, over and over and over. Females are tough, I am not saying they aren’t – I mean, come on, you females give birth for crying out loud
– but you just aren’t built, on average, to stand the brutality that is football. Not at a co-ed level, anyway. And as I said in March, I am all for all-girls football teams. Just like I’m fine with my daughter, now age 11, playing ice hockey on an all-girls team. I would be a million times more nervous about her safety on an all-boys team.