Girls Playing football

In my 8 years coaching, this is the first year I've ran into this. She is on my 7th grade team and plays RB and CB. She can run all day, is tough, and has never complained. Worked her butt off all summer during our morning workouts.

Other than forgetting to unlock the girls locker room early in the season, I have not run into any problems.

I have never seen a girl who could physically compete with boys on a high school football team. I have read articles about girls like Holly Mangold and a few other girls who could play with the boys, but, aside from a kicker, I have never personally witnessed a girl who could consistently play high school varsity football with boys.

But, as a youth coach (5th-8th grade), I have had some female players who were very good. Often, at that age, some of the girls are actually more physically mature than a lot of the boys.

At the HS level, their biggest advantage would be mental maturity, they can set a really good example of how to behave, and since no guy wants to get the word going that he's a barbarian, the boys tend to stay in line a little better. That's how they can have a big contribution to the team even if they never see the field.

It is the boys of fall.

Girls are cheerbops, IMHO!

If she wants to play, fine, but she would have the same expectations as anyone else.
We've never had it happen here. One girl said she wanted to and made it through about two weeks of summer workouts and changed her mind.

Honestly, if one of my players gets bounced around by a girl the last thing I'm worried about is his psyche...

We had a girl come out two springs ago. She started by coming to morning lifting. The first day we went out on the field and conditioned, she didn't want anything to do with football anymore.

On the flip side, we have a girl on the team this year. She is our place kicker. She doesn't have a big leg, but she is nails on extra points. She is 28-of-29 through five games and her only miss was a block on her very first attempt (because she approached slowly). She is a welcome addition, the boys enjoy having her and treat her with respect. She has drawn a lot of media attention in our area and has tied our school record twice for most PATs in a game. She is not what I would consider a full-fledged member of the team though. She only comes out for 30 min. to one hour during every practice and still plays competitive soccer during football season. She has been our most consistent kicker we have ever had.

Over the years I've had 3 play. One was good kicker and that is all she did. Two years ago I had a female play offensive line, and she kicked some ass while the boys sat on the side with boo boos.
This year we have a 7th grade girl playing offensive line at our Jr high level. I like her a lot, but probably Jr high is all she will play.

I have always thought it was unfair at our school because we won't let the boys play volleyball but the girls can play football. How is that equal?

Of course if you had a whole team of boys you could probably win the state girls volleyball championships, since some schools do have boys volleybal.
It is just silly to let girls play boys sports and vice versa in my opinion.

Like you said though john, there is boys volleyball in Ohio there is not girls football so there is no other option for them. It's such a rare occurence that it really isn't a big deal at all, we had a 9th grader my first year here that was a Nose, played the year as a backup, no issues from her or our team, set the standard from the top and the boys will follow. Seems to be a bigger issue with some coaches than it ever is with the players.

And they perform up or down to expectations. Sort of an aside, but treat them like toddlers and they'll act like it. Expect them to behave like young adults and they will.

Which one, that you sound insecure or that kids perform to expectations?

While I see the principle to your argument, it smacks a bit of a bad American stereotype. I would be more inclined to agree with you if girl's football existed. Why would anyone be turning a player away? Are we not past this? I promise you, if the reincarnation of Flo-Jo shows up one day, we are gonna throw bubble to her all night. And I was also yanking your chain to an extent.

A little levity: The girl's flag team had a game last Tuesday, so we had to practice across the street. No big deal. As we're leaving the girls are coming out of the changeroom, all wearing what one coach would later term "Spandex micro-undies." One coach says "thank God we're not practicing on the sidelines (our field has huge sidelines you can practice on) 'cuz the guys wouldn't be focussing on much else." Another coach jumps in "yeah, and I'd be going to jail."

Does your district have boys volleyball? It's universal here to have boys volleyball here. I would then agree that if boys volleyball is not available in your area, not just at your school, then yes, it should be co-ed. This is odd to me, since everyone here has boys and girls soccer, cross-country and golf are separate (same coach, practice as a unit, compete at the same time and place but placed distinctly) And technically, I don't think cheerleading is considered a sport.

I know this isnt what the post was originally intended to be, but the way it was turned I felt it pertinent to bring this up:

Last year all the football coaches met with our AD, apparently there was going to be a big push by some big name lawyers in the name of Title IX (our district is fairly large, and was going to be one of the few nation wide where they were going to make a stand).
There issue was going to be that schools needed to have equal, or near equal, participation numbers for boys and girls athletics. Mind you, this isn't equal opportunities but equal outcome (total numbers) of participants; and PS neither cheer or dance count as a sport.
Now virtually all sports have boys/girls equals here (just added boys volleyball), except for wrestling and football (which are technically open to either). We were told that this was something that was "gonna happen and there was no use fighting it". The amount of girl participant in sports is going to have to be roughly equal to boys, once again not counting cheer or dance.

We were told that unless we came up with a way to even out the numbers throughout the school and district (I suggested girl's flag football) we would start having to cut our numbers we were at about 160 total in the program.

Now I don't know if this is going to be as big as he made it out to be; but if so I think unless girls football is offered specifically (which I would encourage) we should be willing to accept all players regardless of gender