Benefits of Girls First Program

Girls First campers benefit from the camping experience in a number of ways. The Girls First sports camp integrated the positive benefit of sports and health exercise, in a weeklong overnight camp format, which affords young women the opportunity to experience a positive, nurturing atmosphere removed from their everyday environment. The response of the young women who have been campers during the past three years has been most gratifying, as they respond to caring, adult female role models and the positive learning environment, and begin to discover their own unique talents and values.

Girls First is an important step in celebrating our young women, equipping them with the skills to be successful, and supporting them as they strive toward healthy and productive futures. The transition from childhood to adulthood under the best of circumstances is a difficult and tumultuous period in an adolescent’s life. The tasks of the period include the search for personal identity, attaining emotional and psychological independence, development of a personal value system, mastering impulse control and responsible management of sexuality. During this time, young people must also develop critical thinking and reasoning skills necessary for future adult roles, social skills for relating to parents and peers, and focus on academic achievement and career prospects in order to enter the labor force successfully.

Many children are unable to safely negotiate the transaction from childhood to adolescence due to involvement in risky behaviors. Many of our area’s young women are particularly vulnerable and face a myriad of challenges, risks and problems. Solutions require early intervention and prevention services to equip these children to develop coping skills to overcome environmental and family stressors and to responsibly pursue healthy lifestyles and positive personal and educational choices.

There have been numerous studies on the value of participation in sports for girls, and all have found significant relationships between school achievement, increased self-esteem, lessened depression and reduced pregnancy rates.

What Every Athlete and Parent Should Know

Girls drop out of sports at a rate that is six times greater than boys by the age of 14. They do so because of a combination of factors that includes:

• Lack of participation opportunities – boys have twice the number of participation opportunities in high school and college.
• Lack of the same encouragement to play sports as is received by boys. Every time a boy receives a glove or ball as a gift, or turns on the television and sees crowds cheering images of him playing, he knows he’s supposed to play sports. Girls aren’t receiving the same messages. She needs to get sports gifts as well as dolls. She needs to see images of herself playing sports because they are not often on television. She needs to go to see women play sports so she can have role models. Boys need to go to see women play sports so they will grow up to respect girls’ skills and abilities in sports.
• Starting her sport participation two years later than boys, thereby being less skilled when she starts (usually playing with and against boys) which in turn makes it less likely that she will have a successful experience. If she isn’t successful, sports won’t be fun. If sports aren’t fun, she won’t play. “FUN” is the #1 reason why children play sports. So, she needs to go to that game at a young age and start playing sports as soon as she can. If a girl doesn’t play sports by the time she is 10 years old, there is less than a 10% chance she will be playing when she is 25.

The stakes are high. Every parent should encourage their daughter to play sports because:

• High school girls who play sports are less likely to be involved in an unwanted pregnancy; less likely to be involved with drugs and more likely to graduate from high school. (Women’s Sports Foundation, 1989)
• One to three hours of exercise a week over a woman’s reproductive lifetime (the teens to about age 40) can bring a 20-30% reduction in the risk of breast cancer, and four or more hours of exercise a week can reduce the risk almost 60%. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1994)
• We cannot ignore the lesson of generations of women who were not permitted to play sports or encouraged to participate in weight-bearing exercises that are necessary to promote bone mass. One out of every two women over the age of 60 are suffering from osteoporosis. (National Osteoporosis Foundation, 1992)
• Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence, stronger self-images and lower levels of depression. (Ms. Foundation, 1991)
• Sport is where boys have traditionally learned about teamwork, goal setting, achievement orientation and the pursuit of excellence in performance–critical skills necessary for success in the workplace. Women need those same skills. In a recent study of female executives at Fortune 500 companies, 80% self-identified as having been “tomboys.”