Third Idea for Senior Project

My third topic for the senior paper that I am exploring is coed youth sports.

I read an article from the magazine Youth Sports called "On the Same Team?" The article argues that pre-pubescent children should be on coed teams, more often and that kids should be playing along side the opposite gender.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzooW85DaBBjQzExcnFmTFRTR1NqNEFWLVRJOVhwdw/edit

In the beginning of the article it talks about how people have this idea that boys are naturally more athletic and competitive than girls, which is not true. This is why people start grouping kids by gender when they play sports so early. The only aspect of education that is segregated by gender is sports, but the author doesn't think it should be this way. Teams, instead of being grouped by gender first, should be made by pure skill when kids are younger. Girls actually can be stronger and more athletic than boys when they are in the pre-pubescent years because they naturally mature faster. So why, as a society, do we see girls as unfit to play along side their male counterparts. I believe that if boys and girls played on the same sports teams from a young age until they hit puberty, boys would not have the image that girls were weak and we wouldn't root the idea of "boys sports are always better than girls" in our youth's mind right from the beginning.

Boys are more likely to see girls that also tried out and made the same team as equals from a younger age. They have no reason to say they are worse because the girl is the same size and just as good. The boys see them as fellow athletes instead of the weak link. Maybe this will eventually take away the common saying "stop playing like a girl" and maybe when a all male team plays badly, the coach won't refer to them as "ladies"to show that they played badly or to lower their confidence. Girls also learn to become more skilled when they play with boys that might be a little more physically strong, they learn from a young age how to get around the bigger boys and therefore gain much more technicality that can make them a better player in the future and able to better compete with boys.

The article also delves into the objections that are often brought up. Many say that girls will get injured more often when they play with boys. But this is not true. I found this very interesting. Boys get hurt playing with boys, girls get hurt playing with girls, and there are no studies that show that girls get hurt at a higher rate when they play alongside boys. There are weaker boys and there are stronger girls so the argument proves invalid. Title IX said specifically that the issue of safety cannot prevent a girl from playing on a boys team, so then, what is stopping us?