girls in sports - nytimes article

[mimitabby]

Janelle focused on soccer early in her athletic career and played year-round on school and club teams and in grueling out-of-state tournaments.

read the whole article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?ref=health


Janelle was one of the best players on a very good high-school team, the Lady Raiders of St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale. A midfielder and a 2007 first-team, all-Broward-County selection, she had both a sophistication and a fury to her game — she could adroitly put a pass right on the foot of a teammate to set up a goal, and a moment later risk a bone-jarring collision by leaping into the air to head a contested ball.

That she was playing at all on this day, though, was a testament not to her talent but rather to her high threshold for pain, fierce independence and formidable powers of persuasion. Janelle returned to action a little more than five months after having an operation to repair a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L., in her right knee. And just 20 months before that, she suffered the same injury to her other knee.

The A.C.L. is a small, rubber-band-like fiber, no bigger than a little finger, that attaches to the femur in the upper leg and the tibia in the lower leg and stabilizes the knee. When it ruptures, the reconstructive surgery is complicated and the rehabilitation painful and long. It usually takes six to nine months to return to competition, even for professional athletes. But after her second A.C.L. operation, Janelle refused to wait that long. When her teammates were at practice, she felt a longing. What were they doing? Who was playing well? What jokes were they cracking? Just about every girl pictured in her hundreds of photographs from homecoming and other social events was a soccer teammate. She missed her sport, her friends, her life. Whenever she started to feel depressed, she said, “I would just try to rehab harder and get back earlier.”

Janelle’s mother broached the subject with her of whether she should continue playing at all. “I’m afraid for her, and for all these girls,” Maria Pierson told me recently. “What’s it going to be like for them at 40 years old? They’re in so much pain now. Knees and backs and hips, and they just keep going. They’ve been going at this so hard for 10, 11, 12 years, and it’s taking a toll. Are they going to look back and regret it?”

Janelle’s father was concerned, too, but a bit more philosophical. Title IX, the federal law enacted in 1972 mandating equal opportunity in sports, has helped to shape a couple of generations of girls who believe they are as capable and as tough as any boy. With a mix of resignation and pride, Rich Pierson said to me: “We’ve raised these girls to be headstrong and independent. That’s Janelle.”

Janelle told her parents that she was still determined to play soccer in college — and that she would race through her rehab in order to salvage the end of her senior season in high school. Her physical therapist thought that was a bad idea. Her surgeon was reluctant to write a letter to her school stating that she was medically cleared to resume playing, but Janelle persuaded him.

Playing through pain, rushing back from injury — a warrior-girl ethos — was ingrained in Janelle, just as it is in many young women. The more she was hurt, the more routine the injuries felt. Her first A.C.L. operation, she told me, was “monumental. It felt scary. You know, it’s surgery.” Then she added: “The second one was like, O.K., I know what I need to do, let’s just do it. Let’s have the surgery and rehab and get back out there.”

[Zen]

A few things stood out for me-

"These were elite players, but from one end of the field to the other, Silvers pointed out girls she judged to have insufficient core muscle strength, balance or overall coordination to play safely. Their movement patterns put their knees — and probably their ankles, hips and backs — at risk."

and

"The club structure is the driving force behind the trend toward early specialization in one sport — and, by extension, a primary cause of injuries. To play multiple sports is, in the best sense, childlike. It’s fun. You move on from one good thing to the next. But to specialize conveys a seriousness of purpose. It seems to be leading somewhere — even if, in fact, the real destination is burnout or injury."

and

" she achieved her goal and made the under-19 team, the highlight of her too-brief career. As Amy walked toward me the first time we met, her right leg was stiff and her whole gait crooked. She moved like a much older woman. If I hadn’t known her history, I would never have believed she had been an athlete, let alone an elite one. She had undergone, by her count, five operations on her right knee. Her mother counted eight, and believed that Amy did not put certain minor cuttings in the category of actual operations. She was done playing. She had been told she would need a knee replacement, maybe by the time she turned 30
Amy told me about her final operation, recalling that when she came out of anesthesia, the surgeon seemed as if he was going to cry. He looked at her in silence for what seemed like a long time, trying to compose himself. Finally, he told her, “Amy, there was nothing in there left to fix.”

I have to wonder why their parent's didn't think about this after the second, if not the first surgery.
Privileged children of moneyed parents.
Private gyms. Chiropractors.

I think I'll just shut up and go eat the one frozen dinner I have left. Or a can of beans. I need to go grocery shopping. Maybe tomorrow after I visit the physiatrist i'm seeing to analyze my movement patterns.
But I'm 50, not 17.

[Jones]

Privileged children of moneyed parents.
Private gyms. Chiropractors.


In my encounters with children's sports this statement really hits the nail on the head. My daughters are on swim team, (they also play soccer, basketball, volleyball and ride bikes) but the swim parents on our team are crazy. They pay for swim team about $75+ a month, private stroke lessons at $50 an 1/2 hour, personal trainers, chiropractors and some even belong to two teams to get different coaching. They buy motor homes to travel to away meets and sometimes live in the motor homes for weeks at a time to let their children practice in a long course pool instead of short course. Of course this happens during the school year but that doesn't seem to matter. Some of these swimmers are good but some are no faster than your average age group swimmer. I just don't get it.
Sorry didn't mean vent so much.
Jones

[mimitabby]

read the article.
a lot of the parents are begging their girls to NOT compete.

yes, i agree, money and not enough sense; but there's more to it than that.
Young girls are every bit as competitive as young boys, maybe even more so.
except they are not usually physically prepared.

i really like the part about the preventive exercise. girls don't have to be ill prepared for sports.

[Zen]

read the article.
a lot of the parents are begging their girls to NOT compete.


I read all ten pages.
Begging their girls not to compete? Who's in charge? Who's paying for camps, lessons, private coaches?
This type injury doesn't occur at this rate in girls who compete in a number of different sports instead of living and breathing soccer.

[Jolt]

Very interesting article. Kind of made me glad that my main sport growing up was swimming and that we weren't as "hard-core" about sports as some of the people described in the article and in this thread. A lot of people are just plain overdoing it and it's going to cause problems later in life--being active is a very good thing but maybe it shouldn't be the same activity all the time, and don't forget that rest is needed too. Some of these young athletes are likely to have a hard time staying active throughout life because of their injuries from pushing themselves too hard. I knew there was a higher incidence of ACL injuries for girls/women but didn't realize it was that much higher--those statistics were a real shocker! My question is, why the differences in how girls vs. boys move in the first place? Obviously we're built differently but the fact that the situation can improve with training indicates that this isn't the reason.

[Zen]

I kept waiting for Q-angle to be mentioned :confused:

[mimitabby]

Zen, i wasn't talking to you. You clearly read the article. And it's not just soccer either.
Basketball players are not doing so well either.

[kelownagirl]

Well this has always been my feeling about kids' sports. When my girls played soccer, luckily they weren't good enough to play for the 'select' teams and I say luckily, because I wouldn't have let them. I will only let my kid play in a house league for the fun and the fitness rather than rep teams regardless of how good they are.

Part of that is selfishness on my part - I cannot find the time or energy to drive my kids all over the place for TWO practices and games per week and all the weekend out of town tournaments they have. (And as a teacher, I am sick and tired of how frequently I have students missing Fridays so they can get to weekend tournaments. Who schedules these things for 8 year olds who are supposed to be in school???)

The other part stems from a conversation I had with a local baseball coach when my 10 year old son was born. I asked his advice about putting my son into sports when he got older, if he was interested. The coach told me to try to have a focus on individual sports if I could, and/or low-key house league sports for fun. He said he'd seen too many 11/12 year old boys with their arms blown out before they even reached puberty.

I think kids SHOULD play individual and/or team sports if they are interested but the focus on competition at the expense of their growing and developing bodies is ridiculous. So often, it stems from parents trying to use their kids to fulfill their own needs. (My kid's going to get into the NHL...)

So I guess my point is - it's boys AND girls.

[Crankin]

I hated the whole atmosphere around team sports when my kids were growing up, but please don't say it's all because of "moneyed" parents. Yes, it IS the parents' fault, but having money is not the cause.
It's living your life around your child.
I could not deal with the driving, etc. just as KG mentioned. I was happy when son #1 decided not to do baseball in MS. He was good, too.
But, I hate to say this, cycling parents were just as bad. As soon as Scott got his driver's license, we stopped going to a lot of races. They all took it too seriously and it made my son crazy.

[OakLeaf]

Yes, it IS the parents' fault, but having money is not the cause.
It's living your life around your child.

Hear, hear.

And it's really got nothing to do with sports, either. Kids whose lives revolved around academic success can be just as damaged, but their injuries aren't visible (and they're much less likely to have been treated for them contemporaneously).

[lph]

I agree - any kind of over-focusing on one single skill may make your kid a brilliant baseball player/pianist/chess player/computer genius/whatever, but real life is varied and complicated and we need to equip our kids to be able to deal with that. It's not necessarily that easy, because kids can be incredibly singleminded and competitive without any input from pushy parents too. But they don't have the perspective that an adult has, to see that they're overdoing it, and they certainly don't have the medical knowledge to know that a growing body should only be pushed so far.

Apart from that - I personally feel that many sports are plain unhealthy at a high level, for anyone. The "cutting edge" is just a bit too sharp...

Moderation! in all things.

[Melalvai]

I went to my 16th year high school reunion a few weeks ago. (aka belated 15th year, if you prefer)
There was a guy there, I did not recognize him at all and after talking to him for 2 hrs I still have to take it on faith that he is the person everyone says he is. He acts nothing like in high school, and he is the last person I'd have expected to have done graduate work. He was also in a wheelchair, bald and a bit overweight.

He was the football hero in high school. He is in a wheelchair now because of football injuries incurred in jr high and early high school. His dad was the football coach. He was such a jerk in high school, I absolutely hated him. And yet I spent most of the reunion talking to him because I couldn't find anything in common to talk about with other people I had hated less.

Anyway just makes you think. It is something I'll talk to my daughter about, she is in no danger of being too good a swimmer for sure, but this kind of thing might make her feel better about being the slowest swimmer at nearly every meet. I don't care if she never makes a qualifying time and swims a division or Level meet. She is out there swimming and doing her best. The fact that her best is everyone else's worst just makes her that much braver.

[kat_h]

Kids should read that article.

I teach guitar for a living and talk to all of my students about repetitive strain injuries. When I was younger I thought that if I worked through the pain I would get stronger. Turns out I got carpal tunnel and tendonitis. I tell my students that and every one of them looks surprised. They don't realise pain can be permanent.

It takes a lot of work to get kids to think about their careers instead of just tomorrow. Unfortunately a lot of coaches are rewarded based on winning games not building careers, so they contribute to burning kids out. Kids are smart though. If they read that article a lot of them would want to do the preventative, skill and strength building exercises it talks about. I'm going to forward it to some of my students and their parents.

[Zen]

having money is not the cause.
It's living your life around your child.


Money may not be the direct cause but it's certainly an enabler. You don't see families without disposable income indulging their children like this...

[horsemom]

I attended college on an athletic scholarship (distance freestyle swimmer) and was pressured to swim when my rotator cuff was tearing. I would swim 10,000 yards some days with ONE arm. It was grueling. I left after two years due to phyical problems and the fact that I needed an education, not more pool time. My family NEVER pushed me, I pushed myself, and that combined with an inflexible program at school almost caused me permanent damage.

Laura

[smilingcat]

Sad reading... Just too many kid getting hurt because of parents trying to live their unfulfilled dreams of sports stardom.

I wish parents (and kids too) that the sports are supposed to be fun. It should never be about life or death thing. If you are hurt don't continue or do it for the team...

Reading stories like her makes me quiet, angry and introspective... It really is a shame to be crippled like that. :( The young girl has a full life ahead of her.

And Zen you're so right! monied family really is an enabler. and parents can stop it too. Child may seem to be in a driver seat; but really, if you don't have money, your child can't go to all those expensive practices and camps. Look at figure skating. look at gymnastics, tennis and all the other sports.

My sister did not go to camps for gymnastics, only what was provided by the public school. She chipped a bone in her elbow during a practice and my parents put an end to her gymnastics. I know she harped on my parents to send her to a camp and all but my parents absolutely refused. Instead, they made her focus on her education. Typical Japanese parents. And I am so grateful for that.

[bounceswoosh]

I mostly agree with everyone here ... and yet, I don't know ..

I know people who have been competitive athletes and are now paying for it. But they don't necessarily regret what they've done.

It's tricky when it comes to kids, but when it comes to adults, I have to think, who am I to tell them what they're doing is too risky? Plenty of people would say that about mountain biking, road riding, any number of things I do all the time.

It does seem to me that teens are more likely to get caught up in the team dynamic and feel that they absolutely *must* keep it up. And I don't remember having any concept as a teen that anything I did could possibly have a permanent effect. I'm not sure I realized that at 30 or 40, I would still want to be active and maybe even be learning new sports, let alone into my 50s and 60s and, well, as far as I can possibly go. Everything seemed much more immediate; I didn't really think long term.