Elevated self-esteem and healthy social connections are primary reasons girls participate in sports — or don’t, says Eva Phalen, who supervises the Piedmont Recreation Department, in regard to her department’s upcoming Play Like a Girl+ Piedmont event May 5.
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“We have professional women athletes who attend the event, and they tell the girls, ‘You’re an athlete, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Your bodies and minds are strong,’ ” Phalen says. “That message is so valuable to girls who might be otherwise susceptible to outside voices.”
The three-hour interactive event featuring 25 sports will be held at Piedmont High School’s Witter Field and is open to girls ages 2 through 18. Play Like a Girl+ Piedmont is entirely free and provides opportunities to practice a wide variety of athletic skills such as throwing, running, hitting, passing, fielding, shooting, kicking and more.
At this year’s event, participating girl athletes and their families can explore several special features, including an opportunity to see demonstrations by professional boxer Dalia “La Pantera” Gomez and five-time Olympic Gold medalist Dana Vollmer-Grant.
The Piedmont Fire Department will also host a booth offering girls hands-on learning about what it takes to be a firefighter, and a sports equipment swap in partnership with Dress Best for Less will be held. For registration and more details online visit bit.ly/44fs20o.
City staff, volunteers and participating amateur, club, Olympic and professional women athletes contribute expertise in basketball, softball, rowing, rugby, swimming, tennis, soccer, track and field, lacrosse, boxing and other sports to Play Like a Girl+ Piedmont.
“Last year we had an Olympic rower attend,” says Phalen. “The girls were able to ask questions, and she told them about how she grew up not running, kicking or throwing fast and never thinking of herself as an athlete.
“She discovered rowing very late, in college. She told the girls, ‘And then I flipping went to the Olympics.’ Those were her exact words, and her message was to never give up, to keep trying until you find your sport.”
Phalen and many other women — and men — in her special event camp aren’t the first or even the most prominent voices proclaiming the extended value of sports participation for girls. Studies have found that female athletes perform better on standardized academic tests than non-athletes and earn 7% higher wages as adults.
Science-backed research has concluded that athletic mental conditioning — team building, self-control and emotional regulation — has a positive impact that carries beyond the K-12 school years and into adulthood.
“I grew up as an athlete playing mostly soccer, softball and volleyball,” Phalen said. “There were health benefits for sure but also academic ones. Just playing on a team, competing, winning, losing — I learned how to resolve conflict.
“Even at age 10, let’s say you don’t get along with your coach, how do you put yourself out there so you’re heard? And there’s competition and leadership all through life: How do you get picked for a team and, later, for a job? How do you work in an environment when you’re a top player and, later as an adult, a manager or CEO and a role model?”
Phalen says girls are also drawn to sports by the social aspect. At home, her family watches and participates in sports, which reinforces parent-child bonds but also indirectly validates the kids’ peer-to-peer relationships.
While cautious about overemphasizing the social aspects, as if girl athletes need them more than boy athletes, Phalen does suggest that with all the negativity made possible by anonymity on some social media platforms, girls benefit greatly from the close, supportive relationships that develop within teams.
“Girls often do play sports for that reason. It’s one reason behind the fact that since we started this event in 2018 when I was working for the city of Albany, we had 400 girls and last year it was approximately 700 girls.”
Play Like a Girl+ for its second year was held in Albany in 2019, went on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020 and 2021 and resumed in 2022, when Phalen brought it to her new position with the Piedmont Recreation Department.
“Billie Jean King got this gender-equity-in-sports movement started, and Piedmont is a town that’s very aware of Title IX and professional women athletes like college basketball’s (Iowa Hawkeyes player) Caitlin Clark (who now plays professionally for the Indiana Fever) and so many others,” Phalen said.
“The community has really entered in and wanted girls sports to be a part of the curriculum in the K-12 schools. They had a speaker series to highlight the amazingness of women in sports. Beyond the schools, the film group in town showed documentaries and had us come to speak. They spread the net wide.
“The local support backing the gender equity movement I see as kind of an anomaly because a lot of communities outside of the Bay Area don’t have it. Here, we have professional women’s sports teams coming. That’s why we call our park and rec programs the feeder programs: We start with young girls and help to fill the pipeline for new women’s sports teams.”
Backed by the enthusiasm of the community and in response to the strong demand from girl athletes, Phalen’s department has established Try (it) Out Tuesday, a small-scale model of the large 25-sport Play Like a Girl+ Piedmont event.
Try (it) Out Tuesday offers girls ages 6 through 16 the chance to try a new sport, meet coaches and explore opportunities to play throughout the year. Phalen said that while Play Like a Girl requires months of planning and up to 30 volunteers in addition to staff, the smaller event is more manageable.
“We hold it on a weekday, it’s free and has just three instead of 25 sports. Athletes can try a new sport or just participate and learn more about a sport they already enjoy,” she said. “We have a food truck there so no one has to worry about getting dinner. We usually have about 80 to 100 girls, which is perfect because we use a smaller field.”
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.