Girls’ football more than just fun and games
Print Edition
From her earliest days in elementary school, Amber Bo has always enjoyed sports, especially football. But when she decided to hit the pitch herself three years ago, she had to train and compete with the boys.
While Bo adjusted well to sharing the field with her male peers, things were different once the cleats came off.
“When I first started playing football in school ... there was only a boy’s team. I was the only girl in the 20-member team,” Bo says. “I used to feel a bit awkward and shy around them. I also found it hard to join them in conversation as our hobbies were different.”
Now though, the 13-year-old student at Shanghai United International School has plenty of other girls to play and form bonds with. One year after joining the boy’s team, her school started a girl’s team, which is now one of the largest of its kind in the city.
“Now I feel free to talk about girls’ stuff with my teammates, and have made a lot of friends here,” the young center forward adds.
Bo and her teammates take part in a 90-minute practice session every week under the coaching of four PE teachers — two Chinese and two foreign. After 15 minutes of warm ups and basic footwork training, they form groups and practice skills for about 40 minutes. The teachers will then divide them into teams for half or full-field games.
The team has brought more than just SUIS’s sports-loving girls together. It has also helped unite international and local-stream students, who are normally separated during the school day and so have few opportunities to socialize.
The practice sessions are conducted in English, but the Chinese PE teachers and multi-lingual students will help their Chinese peers understand directions and technical terms.
“I made some foreign friends here like Sophie from Finland, Angelina from South Korea, and of course some other Chinese friends,” says Huang Xiaoyu, a student in SUIS’s Chinese stream.
There are about 1,200 students at the primary school at SUIS’s Hongqiao campus. Football has long been one of the most popular extra-curricular activities at SUIS, and students play and compete all year long. Nevertheless, the number of girls who showed an interest in the new football team surprised even the school’s sports teachers. While initially expecting no more than 10 girls to sign up, about 30 joined during the first year. Today, the roster has grown to 56, with players hailing from China, South Korea, India, Ireland, Germany and Sweden, among other places.
“Once it got on track, girl’s football became more popular. Students would look at us training and ask ‘what’s that?’ and then come join us,” says John Paul McCarthy, an American PE teacher at SUIS.
“It’s fun to watch them communicate in both Chinese and English,” McCarthy goes on to say. “For the students, the fun is not in the matches themselves, but in the process — girls from different classes work as a team, fight for the same goal, go for bus rides together to other schools, practice in the rain, and so on.”
In 2012, SUIS joined several other schools in the city to form the Shanghai School Sports Association. It’s this organization that organizes matches between the SUIS girl’s football team and teams at 12 other participating schools.
For the girls on SUIS’s football team, at least one match is scheduled every month during the school year, in addition to friendly games between schools. Looking ahead, McCarthy says he plans to reach out to other local Chinese schools to plan friendly matches.
While the girls are just as enthusiastic about football as the boys, McCarthy can also see differences between the genders.
“The boys tend to be more aggressive while the girls have a comparatively defensive playing style. The girls are more disciplined and focused, but the boys are much naughtier. Girls want to be together and boys want to win. Also, the girls like showing off their new football boots to each other,” says the coach and PE teacher.
Previous matches have also shown that girls at SUIS have the same urge to compete and prove themselves as other committed athletes.
“One time the team suffered a 0-9 loss to another school and it was a real bad week for some of the girls,” McCarthy explains. “One girl approached me later and asked whether the two sides would be playing again. I asked her if she wanted to, and was expecting to hear ‘no.’ However, she said ‘yes.’ She learned a very good lesson from the sport — to get up when you fall and never give up.”
McCarthy and his fellow teachers also make the girls take turns as captains of a team and let them experience what leadership is about. Each captain organizes post-game analysis and encourages her teammates during a match.
As their coaches and parents see it, football also offers the opportunity to develop as a person and learn valuable lessons outside of the classroom.
“My mother wants me to try different things and not restrict myself to studying,” says Chen Qijia, a Grade 5 girl who has been described by her teachers as the most academically gifted students at the school. “My father likes all kinds of sports. We will do running and play ball games together at home. I can run 5 kilometers within 24 minutes!”
As an all-rounder, Chen is capable of taking any position on the field, including as a defender, a midfielder or a striker.
“I believe that being part of a team is something that everyone should experience. It’s all about becoming well balanced and developing characteristics that can transfer over into all aspects of life,” says McCarthy. “It’s also about making life-long memories.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
