Why Not Try Out For Cheerleading Instead?

Oh, this one burns me. It burns right to the core. It hits home because this is the kind of lack of equality thing I’m talking about. And it hits home because it touches me personally.

I was a 10-year-old kid once. And I didn’t get to play football because I was a girl. I had to stand on the sidelines and watch my twin brother excel on the football field when I knew I would have been just as good of a player. I also remember when I played soccer on an aggressive co-ed team for many years. That is until I turned 10. The coach took me aside and told me, with tears in his eyes, that it was getting too aggressive for me. I’d have to play on another team, an all-girls team perhaps.

So I know exactly how 10-year-old Alycia Figuroa feels.

Fox News ~

A 10-year-old was barred from playing in a Cleveland-area youth football league because she’s a girl.

Alycia Figueroa of Ashtabula, Ohio, has loved football ever since she was small — and often plays with the boys. But when her parents took her to sign up for the Ashtabula Midget Football League this week, they were turned away, MyFOX Cleveland reported.

The league’s president told them that according to the bylaws set in 1971, girls aren’t allowed.

“It’s not fair that it’s 2008 and she still can’t play because she’s a girl,” her mother, Poula Stitt, told MyFOX Cleveland.

The league’s president told Alycia’s parents that she should try out for cheerleading instead. Read More

The cheerleading comment by the league’s president only adds salt to the wound. This isn’t 1950 anymore. Look at Brittney Griner. She could school any boy her age on the court. And how about Kara Lawson? She was bulldozing over boys in the Fairfax County Football league before she ever got to Tennessee to play ball. Girls are on par with boys at that age. There’s not as much of a difference in their physical bodies or athleticism as there is when kids are older. At that age, it’s anyone’s game.

Just watch this little girl outrun a a bunch of boys who can’t tackle the running back. She the one who finally brings him down:

It’s incidents like these that remind me how, even after all the progress that has been made over the years, girls are still seen as inferior to boys when it comes to sports.

That’s one of the many reasons why I write this blog.