Crane freshman guard Ramiyah Puckett was surprised on Saturday when she walked through the doors of the Advocate Center on March 1 for an all-girl basketball clinic.
“Seeing a lot of girls in one program was nice because usually it’s a little bit of girls and a lot of boys,” said Puckett, who’s on the varsity team at Crane.
The Bulls held their second annual “Girls’ Day of Play,” the Women’s History Month kickoff. The organization had 150 girls descend to the West Side to participate in a two-hour event that included a keynote address from former WNBA player Edniesha Curry and a panel including Sky guard Rachel Banham. A predominantly female staff coaches the girls throughout the drills they participate in.
The idea to hold this event was hatched four seasons ago when the Bulls partnered with the Center for Justice and Healing to create the Girls Coaching Cohort. This collaboration helps girls develop confidence and leadership skills. Alarming dropout rates played a role in starting the program.
“We can’t get to all the girls, but we can get to the coaches,” Bulls vice president of community engagement Adrienne Scherenzel said. “We wanted to develop a coaching program that addressed some of those issues, but also, how can people be better coaches? A lot of times people coach how they were coached.
According to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, 75% of youth head coaches are men. Developing coaches is a critical part of young girls’ development.
“We want girls to understand there’s a place for them in sports,” Scherenzel said.”But we also want them to realize it’s gonna be work. You might not be good at it at first, but you can have a lot of success.”
In 2018, the Tucker Center conducted research that concluded that girls between the ages of 11 and 17 have the highest drop-off rate. Their study found that coaching was one of the determining factors in whether or not girls continued with the sport.
But keeping girls in athletics goes beyond the benefit of the sport itself. Athletics teach interpersonal skills that are crucial for human development. You learn to grow through adversity, take feedback and work within a team construct.
“Just learning how to be disciplined, how to work hard, how to communicate, how to make friends, those things are important,” Banham said. “It’s so big for relationship building.”
Scherenzel referenced the correlation of former athletes holding C-suite positions. A 2015 survey conducted by espnW and Ernest & Young found that 80% of Fortune 500 female executives played sports in their adolescence.
Prioritizing representation is essential for Scherenzel. She wants young girls to know that there’s a place for them in sports, whether or not they go on to play in college or professionally. Scherenzel, a track and field athlete at Syracuse, understands that visibility matters, so she said it was important to team with the Sky and have Banham in attendance.
When Puckett — who started playing basketball in the sixth grade — is asked who her favorite basketball player is, she ponders the question before asking one of her own: “WNBA or NBA?” she said. That in itself shows how far the growth of women’s basketball has come. Her answer? A’ja Wilson.
“It’s fun being a part of it now, as is; we’re getting the attention that we finally deserve,” Banham said of the growth of women’s basketball. “I’m excited to see where this goes. And I think it’s going to continue to grow. Events like this are going to happen more often and Chicago Sky are going to be part of it.”