5 Ways to Keep Your Girls Active
Physical activity has multiple, far reaching effects that last into adulthood. For example, the physical training in a typical soccer practice helps reduce a girl's risk for depression while the strength training in that same practice will increase long-term skeletal health.
A commitment to physical activity is an investment in the future. Active girls do better academically, behaviorally and holistically.
Despite these and other known benefits, girls today may be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their mothers due to a lack of sport participation and physical activity.
But we can change that.
Here are a few tips on how to keep your girls active:
- Host your own play day for your girls and their friends. Playing together with other girls in their own backyard not only gets your girls active, it also helps them navigate relationships and make memories that will last a lifetime.
- Sign your girls up for a local Play Like a Girl sports club or athletic team every season of the year. Play basketball in the winter--and softball in the spring. Take swimming in the summer. And run track in the fall. These are all great ways for girls to sample a variety of sports while being active year-round.
- Be your girls' role model with a weekly sweat session of your own. If you're not an athlete who's mastered a particular sport, you can always take a fitness class or simply schedule time for a brisk walk or run in your neighborhood.
- Watch a television series like HBO's Being Serena together to introduce your girls to strong, active women of all ages and backgrounds. Change their perspectives about remaining active as they age.
- Start early. The first 10 years of life are game-changing. These early years provide a critical window for creating a lifelong commitment to physical activity.
Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Today we appointed six new members to the Play Like a Girl National Board of Directors, which is stacked with leaders who will help guide the organization’s efforts to keep girls from dropping out of sport and physical activity and grow our Play Like a Girl Clubs program to a broader, national audience in middle schools and community centers over the next five years.
Members of the Board of Directors are from national organizations and in markets across our evolving footprint and bring expertise in a variety of areas — recruiting, project and risk management, for instance, as well as sports marketing and law. They’re tasked with governing the organization’s work and helping to direct the nonprofit towards its goals as outlined in the Play Like a Girl 2022 Strategic Plan and will provide oversight of business and financial opportunities that will help the organization meet its goals and deliver on our mission.
“These women and men are leaders in their respective fields, and all of them are dedicated to serving the unique needs of girls from diverse communities across the U.S.,” said Play Like a Girl President and CEO Dr. Kimberly Clay. “We’re firmly committed to helping girls experience the joy of sport and physical activity at a time when they are forming lifelong habits, and making a difference in communities across our expanding footprint, and the Board of Directors is critical to those efforts. Teamwork makes the dream work.”
According to a study by Ernst Young and espnW, 94% of women executives in the C-suite first found success in sports. For former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it was tennis and basketball among others. For Nashville’s own Trisha Yearwood, it was softball. But according to Gatorade’s recent “Girls in Sports” study, girls drop out of sports at nearly twice the rate of boys by age 14 and, by age 17, more than half of girls will quit playing sports altogether.
The majority of young women Gatorade spoke to told them that they decided to drop out of a sport because they didn’t see a future for themselves in it and wanted to prioritize their time on school or other extracurriculars instead. Many girls did not see a way to balance both school and sports -- particularly if they didn’t think they’d end up playing professionally -- when, in fact, sports are known to help improve girls’ confidence, perseverance and other important skills necessary to succeed academically and professionally.
Play Like a Girl is on a mission to ensure that every girl reaches her full potential by providing girls ages 9-13 access to sport and physical activity. Through our signature program Play Like a Girl Clubs, girls in 6-8th grades are exposed to a sampling of sport and physical activity in a fun and friendly environment with the support of volunteer coaches, teammates and role models.
Club girls also deepen their love of sports and gain exposure to important STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) concepts in sports while learning about exciting sports careers from female professionals at leading businesses and professional sports teams. These experiential learning opportunities are designed to bring out the best in our girls, allowing them to see the world of possibilities awaiting them beyond the field of play.
The Play Like a Girl Board of Directors is made up of 14 members, including five new members who serve areas across the organization’s expanded footprint. Help us welcome these new members to our team; they are:
- Celeste Bell, Senior Director, Recruiting and Special Projects, MLB Advanced Media
- Adrienne Jordan, Director, Project and Risk Management, Minnesota Super Bowl Host Committee
- Leigh Lovett, Associate Brand Manager, Mars Petcare US
- Sara Toussaint, Vice President, Sponsorship Marketing, Wells Fargo
- Daniel Werly, Managing Partner, Sievert Werly LLC