National Daughters Day, September 25, is a time to celebrate the millions of girls and women who are daughters. The occasion also helps focus on helping daughters be healthy, confident, and fulfilled for the long haul, such as through access to sports.
As a daughter myself and the mom to a daughter, I know firsthand how powerful it is to encourage daughters everywhere to be and stay active. Girls who play sports see lifelong benefits such as higher self-esteem, lower rates of depression and anxiety, elevated academic performance, and even higher wages later in life.
And yet, by adolescence, girls are leaving sports at higher rates than boys. NRPA's Get Her in the Game initiative exists to close that gap, giving parents, guardians and communities practical, ready-to-use suggestions. Here are five tips you can use to get and keep your daughter active in sports today, tomorrow, and beyond.
1. Start Her Off
Early exposure builds the foundation for girls in sports, such as giving her a ball, racquet, and mitt in the early days, gifting her a t-shirt repping the local WNBA or NWSL squad, and providing spaces to flex those muscles and try new things. These small signals carry big meaning, telling her she belongs in the space. Exposing girls and young women to play areas, athletic implements, and sports opportunities helps her see it to be it. Such as the dad who takes his young daughter to her first WNBA game, both of them beaming and marveling at the feats of the women athletes, followed by pick-up in the park that weekend!
2. Let Her Try
Sports sampling, such as helping our daughters try a bunch of athletic activities before specializing, is how girls (and all) find what they love and build confidence. A local park and recreation department is usually the most affordable, lowest-pressure entry point, but consider things like a one-week summer track camp, a recreation soccer league where nobody's keeping score, or even getting mitts for catch in the yard. I know a local mom who'd never played basketball in her life but stepped up to coach her daughter's grade-school team of first-timers when no other volunteer could. She learned the skills, figured out how to convey them, and in the process enabled her daughter and the entire girls’ team to have an amazing first season, returning for next year.
3. Surround Her with Role Models
Help your daughter, and everyone in the family, get inspired. For example, put women’s basketball, volleyball, or soccer on the TV. Further, talk about favorite players at dinner or on car rides. Better yet, take the kids to a women’s college or pro game. Families can also highlight women in daughters’ lives, such as mom lacing up alongside her to take the court or field and showing that sports can be a healthy, sustained endeavor for a lifetime. One family I know watches so much women’s soccer on television that the daughter asked her mom whether men play too!
4. Help Her Persist
Helping daughters try and sometimes fail, and have setbacks, is part of the equation. Not getting the sport right away, losing, and handling a coach that is different from last season all teach resilience that outlasts the sport itself. For those with daughters, consider a woman I know who talks about how her father worked with her one-on-one on soccer and softball skills because she wanted to keep pace with her teammates, even on the toughest days. He showed up, drilled with her positively, and talked her through the frustrating stretches until she got there.
5. Consider and Adjust Systems Around Her
Supporting our own daughters is one step, and another key step is identifying and removing the blocks and barriers such as unequal field time, coed teams that are not fully inclusive of girls, or outdated community attitudes about what girls can and cannot do. NRPA's Get Her in the Game Playbook gives parents a starting point for partnering with park and recreation agencies, school boards, and youth organizations to advance intentionally designed girls’ teams and leagues that remove those pitfalls. Parents and guardians can check out NRPA, other sources such as the Women’s Sports Foundation, and deploy them in your community!
Kim Turner is an independent consultant supporting nonprofits, parks and recreation, schools, districts, youth sports clubs, and leagues, having played Division I college volleyball, served as a Title IX attorney, and in her roles as a nonprofit leader and youth sports coach.