How Playing Sports Results in Girls' Success
Having girls involved in sports will improve their lives, their families lives, the community and education. The benefits of sports outweighs what is done in any one team. Lessons learned along the way are so valuable. Founder and CEO of Girl Boss Sports, Sarah Wolfer, joins us on the podcast to discuss the value of sports for girls.
Listen to the podcast here:
About Sarah Wolfer
Sarah Wolfer is the CEO and Founder of Girl Boss Sports - a Greater Seattle area soccer company that is devoted to female athletes and female coaches.
With 96% of female C-Suite executives playing sports during their teenage years, Sarah understands the positive impact that sports can have - particularly for girls!
Sarah is also a Professional Tackle Football Player with the Seattle Majestics and is working on a book centered on women in leadership and sports in 2019.
Additionally, Sarah is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) in WA state and is passionate about breaking barriers that can hold women back, in sports AND in life.
Soccer
Sarah grew up playing soccer.
She went to school in Miami and played soccer while getting her bachelors and masters in social work.
She has coached soccer for 15 years.
Football
Sarah loves playing football and says she’s falling in love with the sport and is really outside of her comfort zone.
They recently released a series about the backgrounds of the women on the team and their backgrounds.
She loves the physical and mental components of the games.
Girl Boss Sports
Girl Boss Sports came about because of Sarah’s involvement with women’s sports over the years.
There are a lot of issues for women and girls.
There are two goals:
1. Keeping girls in sports.
Girls drop out at a fairly young age.
They have female coaches so that they know what it’s like to be a female athlete.
2. Increase the number of female sports coaches.
There are a small percentage of women sports coaches.
Life Success
Girls participation in sports lead to success later in life. There is a correlation between sports in school and career success.
Female Leadership
When Sarah was playing soccer, her coach was screaming at her.
She was proud of herself for not crying, but she ended up crying after she walked away.
She then got kicked out of practice.
That approach doesn’t work for girls and women.
Connecting with female athletes requires something different.
Sports and Education
There has been a lot of research that shows girls who play sports do better in school, have less dropout rates, fewer teen pregnancies, less depression and suicide and better health.
The key years for this are during middle school.
There are ways to get the teamwork aspect, such as clubs and hobbies. Sports teams really help with collaboration and teamwork, working together and more. Boys generally start younger than girls. So, girls often feel that they are not good at sports because they don’t have the experience.
Individual events can still connect you with a team as you work toward a greater goal.
There are still lots of benefits no matter what the sport is.
This can mimic what happens in the workforce as well.
Sports and Leadership
Sports teaches kids how to set and accomplish goals.
The amount of preparation that it takes, the slow but constant progress toward goals; it takes a lot of time to do all these things and that relates to leadership.
Having girls involved in sports will improve their lives, their families lives, the community and education.
The benefits of sports outweighs what is done in any one team.
Lessons learned along the way are so valuable.
