By Lucy Newmyer, ICGS Special Projects Intern and graduate of Miss Porter's School

"The Connected Girl" is back for its third season, and this year, we’re exploring agency—the idea that girls can own their decisions and their direction in life.  

In our first episode, host Trudy Hall sits down with Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and a faculty member in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. Their goal? To discuss how the adults in girls’ lives can help girls feel confident showing up, belonging, and feeling valued as they pursue athletic activity. Below are key takeaways from their conversation and ways coaches and parents can make a difference in their girls’ sporting lives.

The research is clear: girls who pursue sport tend to pursue more advanced higher education and get better jobs as adults.

In fact, 94% of C-suite leaders who are women played sport, and 52% of them played college sport. We know that participating in physical activity can boost confidence, resilience, and the ability to work in a team. Across the board, girls are just as interested in playing sport as their male counterparts. Yet, girls drop out of sport in adolescence at twice the rate of boys. And in a world where almost half of all athletes are female, not one woman appears in the Forbes list of the 50 highest-paid athletes.

Since 1993, the Tucker Center has been grappling with such problems. Dr. LaVoi has conducted extensive research on why girls do and don’t engage in sport, finding that:  

• The reasons why children play sport is consistent. There are few differences between the reasons why girls play or don’t play and the reasons why boys play or don’t play. For kids, it’s not about winning. It’s about having fun, getting better, being physically active, and hanging out with friends.  
   
• The #1 reason why girls drop out of sport is low body confidence. Girls face different gendered stereotypes about how they should look and how they can act. Many girls with differently shaped bodies don’t feel that sport is for them, leading them to drop out. 
   
• Girls are heavily influenced by teasing and bullying from peers, and comments by teachers, referees, and parents.  

The good news, though, is that adults in girls’ lives have control over this and can change the sport ecosystem to create a positive, healthy, and empowering climate. Girls deserve to reap the developmental, psychosocial, academic, health and wellness, mental health, and career benefits of playing in sport.

For parents interested in cultivating a healthy sporting environment, Dr. LaVoi recommends:  

• Show up, when possible. Girls want you to be there! 
   
• Cheer for everybody’s good play, not just for your kid. Then, when girls hear yelling from the sidelines, they’ll know it’s because something good happened. This relieves pressure and stress for young athletes.  
   
• Ensure that the parent is the parent and the coach is the coach (unless, of course, you are a parent coach)! To create a positive climate for girls, each parent and coach has a unique role to play.  
   
• Remember that nobody is perfect. There is no judgment in this conversation – it’s about learning and growing.

For coaches, Dr. LaVoi suggests:  

• Use the three Cs: Care, Competence, and Choice. This is a framework developed at the University of Notre Dame. It’s based in self-determination theory that acknowledges humans’ three essential needs:  
   
  1. To be cared about. Girls must feel known, needed, valued, and like they matter.  
  2. To feel competent. We like doing things we are good at, and the biggest predictor of sport participation is a girl’s own perceived competence.  
  3. To have choice. Girls want to have ownership in their sport experience.  
      
• Believe girls. They know what is best for themselves and their bodies. Remember the ABC Model – ask, then believe girls, then see the change. 
    
• Actively work against reinforcing gender stereotypes. If coaches go in thinking that girls aren’t as competitive as boys, they will coach differently, and the girls may believe sport is not for them.  
   
• Create a body-confident climate where girls feel good about their bodies. Rather than focusing on what the body looks like, focus on what it does as an athlete. Work to eliminate all “body talk,” and be informed on all aspects of girls’ health.  
   
• Remember that girls are not monoliths. Girls will face gender stereotypes because they’re girls, but girls with other identities will face the system differently. We can develop culturally and religiously sensitive programming that meets each girl’s individual needs.

Through everyday actions, the adults in girls’ lives can create spaces where they can truly belong. Agency requires that girls feel seen, supported, and trusted, and sport is a powerful arena in which to cultivate it. If we want girls to stay in the game, we must build a game designed with them in mind.  

“I think that sports have really helped me to be an independent person that I am today and has helped me…know that I am worthy of doing what I’m doing and that I belong in these more ‘professional’ or high-stakes moments. And I think that’s something that every girl and person in general should have access to.” 

– ICGS Member School Student 

To learn more about improving the experience of girls in sport, check out these resources:  

• Coaching HER: a coaching resource designed to help sport coaches challenge conventional norms and rethink what it means to coach girls. Available for individuals and organizations! 
• Developing Physically Active Girls: a Tucker Center report connecting research-based knowledge to strategies and practices, ensuring girls have ample opportunity to engage in sport and physical activity.  
• Body Confident Sport: created to help young people feel more comfortable being active and participating in sport through empowering coaches and athletes around the world to celebrate active bodies. Includes the Body Confident Coaching program.  
• Play Like a Champion Today: works to change the culture of youth sports, partnering with sports organizations at the youth and high school levels to provide all children with an opportunity to play sports in a safe, fun and supportive environment.  
• ICGS Blog on Girls' Education Insights: “What We Can Learn from Girls’ Sports” by Samuel J. Abrams

Lucy Newmyer is an undergraduate foreign affairs, public policy, and psychology student at the University of Virginia. She began working with ICGS in 2023 and, as a Special Projects Intern, supports the Coalition team through research, writing, and outreach. Lucy is a graduate of Coalition member Miss Porter’s School, where she learned firsthand the impact of an all-girls education. Through her time in the Global Studies Certificate program at Porter’s, she developed a passion for advocating for girls’ education and health. Her interest in attaining a global education most recently led her to study abroad programs in Meknes, Morocco and Copenhagen, Denmark. Outside of class, she is involved in student journalism and initiatives related to civil discourse. She also serves as a mentor and tutor for middle school girls. Lucy strives to bring optimism, dedication, and curiosity to all she does. She is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to ICGS, an organization that enables girls to grow and thrive every day.