In Kentucky, how many girls play prep baseball?

The National Federation of State High School Associations is out with its annual headcount of prep athletes.

The latest figures, for the 2008-2009 school year:

-More kids played high school sports than ever, 7,536,753.

-Girls participation also set a record, up by 56,825.

-Swimming and diving added the most participants, 29,967. Next were outdoor track and field, 19,396 and cross country which picked up 18,193. Lacrosse also continues to grow,up 9,579 players.

-Most popular sports (by participants): Basketball for boys, track and field for girls.

I love the detail in this report. To wit: In the state of Arkansas, 20 girls participated in weightlifting. In Kentucky, two played on boys baseball teams.

"This is a brain and a head we're talking about"

The most effective public-service announcement I've seen on kids, sports and concussions.

More info at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Soccer parents make headlines for wrong reasons

What could be worse than being banished from a kids' soccer game for ref baiting? Here's something: Being banished from a kids' soccer game for ref baiting, then having your suspect behavior chronicled in the Washington Post.

This happened today to parents of the Legacy travel team in Bethesda, Maryland.

Post reporter Annie Gowen has the interesting story of a bunch of parents punished for berating an official during a heated game at the end of last season. To its credit, the Washington Area Girls Soccer League took aggressive action, calling the behavior "nothing less than egregious" and banning the adults from the sidelines for two games. A referee stood sentry to make certain that the parents complied.


Gowen writes: "The soccer league, home to many of the area's best soccer players with 600 teams and more than 15,000 participants, has a strict disciplinary system, in which players and coaches receive yellow or red cards for rough or unsportsmanlike conduct. Some have to explain themselves at disciplinary hearings. There are also sportsmanship liaisons on each team, who are supposed to keep fellow parents in check.

"Kathie Diapoulis, league president, said the parents had gone too far. The league's disciplinary board has had better luck barring individual parents from attending games in the past three years rather than fining them, because the parents would pay the money and continue the bad behavior.

"We have taken a strong stance," Diapoulis said. "It's important. This isn't the World Cup. . . . And for the parents to be shrieking on the sidelines and belittling people goes against everything we're trying to do. . . . It's not acceptable behavior."

Gowen doesn't speak with the Legacy players, 13-year-olds, for their views - under the best of circumstances kids that age are mortified by their parents. But she spoke with several of the moms and dads who, in an encouraging note, seemed genuinely sorry about the incident and the fallout.

She quotes one anonymous parent saying, "It's embarrassing. This is seventh-grade soccer."

Another, who hadn't attended the game in which the bad behavior occurred, told the Post: "We accepted our punishment, and we're abiding by it. One of the functions of sports is to teach sportsmanship. When we as parents violate that, the girls need to see there are consequences to those actions."

A multi-generational teaching moment, you might say.

Challenges for girls playing high school baseball

Linking to an article I wrote for Sunday's New York Times about the challenges confronting girls who play baseball in high school.

As the article states, there is no perfect place for these girls. There aren't girls baseball teams. So they end up playing on teams dominated by boys. The so-called ball and bat sport offered to girls in high school, softball, is an entirely different sport, they say, played with a larger ball on a smaller diamond.

Still, girls who choose baseball are sometimes doing so at a price. The best girls softball players have a shot at college scholarships. There are more than 260 NCAA Division I softball programs alone. There's not much of a future in college sports for even the most talented girls who play baseball in high school. A few women have played college baseball over the years. For the most part, it doesn't happen.

There are interesting statistics about girl players. Last year, across the country, 1,012 girls played boys baseball, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That number could be low. Some schools forget to count girls playing on boys teams.

I'm linking to the NFHS data here. (Scroll ahead to the last page and check under the column heading "Baseball.") Note that 26 states report no girls participating. New Hampshire, Kentucky and Maine each show two girls. Connecticut reports one.

One of the players featured in the article is Marti Sementelli, a sophomore pitcher at Burbank High School near Los Angeles. In 2007, Nike featured Marti in this TV spot.

Good Housekeeping seal

Thanks to Jen Singer of Good Housekeeping for citing Youth Sports Parents among three recommended kids and sports blogs. Jen begins her post with an interesting look back at her early sports life and at the barriers she scaled as a girl in a boys sports world.

"Somebody's father was yelling at me. I was only seven, but I understood what his problem was: He didn't like that the only girl on the baseball field played better than his own son. He didn't say that, exactly. Rather, he told me that I didn't belong there. But I watched his son send another errant throw toward (or not toward) second base, and I thought, Yes, I do.

"Thanks to Title IX, I was among the first girls to get to play Little League baseball in my hometown. It was my first experience with organized youth sports. Also, my first experience with parents who really ought to step away from the field and take a chill pill."

Attitudes have shifted quite a bit. Unfortunately, we still need the chill pills.

Kids on the sidelines

Sometimes, youth sports research can be shocking. Not in this case.

A medical study published this month concludes that "physically inactive adolescents have more emotional and behavorial problems than those who are physically active." I see millions of parents nodding in agreement.

Boys who reported less than one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week had more symptoms identified by researchers as anxious/depressed and withdrawn/depressed. Girls had similar issues, and also complained of sleep problems.

This is the opposite end of the spectrum from the concern raised often here - children struggling with overuse injuries - but it is equally troublesome.

The study appears in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientific journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Decades after Title IX, girls still gaining

The surge in girls participating in sports is old news. In fact, decades old. But now and then it's worth reflecting on how far we've come, thanks largely to the passage of Title IX. I'll do that today, with an assist from the National Federation of State High School Associations, which recently released new stats on girls and boys playing prep sports.

In 1972, the year Title IX took effect, boys playing high school sports outnumbered girls by 12 to 1. Twenty years later, the edge had shrunk to fewer than three boys for every girl. The 2007-2008 stats from the NFHS show girls comprising about 42 per cent of high school athletes.

More from the NFHS's recent stat package:

-Most popular sports among high school girls (by number of participants): Basketball, track and field, volleyball, softball and soccer.

-Girls sports that gained the most players last year: Competitive spirit squads, soccer and cross country.

-Number of consecutive years that the number of girls playing prep sports has risen: 20.

And a barely relevant, if quirky, footnote. There are two states that boast more girls playing soccer than boys. Congrats to the ladies from Florida and Hawaii. (Maybe the guys in those warm-weather states are all on the football field).