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7/21/10: Soccer Girls Rule!

Starfinder has received a two-year grant from the Barra Foundation to work with 60 urban middle school aged girls. This program will focus on breaking down the barriers that limit urban girls from participating in athletics.

The purpose of this pilot program, called Soccer Girls Rule, is to develop, implement, and evaluate a two-year physical activity and educational intervention with 60 urban middle school girls from underserved Philadelphia communities. Through participation in this program girls will enhance their self-confidence, resilience, and self-efficacy; increase their knowledge about physical development, healthy behaviors, and interpersonal relations; and be more likely to embrace physical activity as a critical ongoing component of their adolescent and adult lifestyle.

Soccer Girls Rule will incorporate the latest research on girls and physical activity in order to improve the attraction, engagement, and retention of female participation. Innovative programmatic components will be designed to address the intrapersonal, social, and physical factors that are cited by girls as their reasons for eschewing physical activity. The program activities will be designed with a clear understanding of the psychological, sociological, and physiological dimensions that result in successful female participation.

Beginning in the summer of 2010, the Soccer Girls Rule team will finalize the design and development of the physical activity, education, and evaluation activities. These activities will derive from the current Starfinder programmatic curriculum but be adapted and expanded to overcome the following barriers that are understood to impede middle school girls' physical activity participation, including:

Lack of time; doing homework, part-time job, family responsibilities
Influence and lack of support of peers, parents, teachers; no role models
Self-efficacy; inability to set and reach one's goals, fear of failure
Body-centered issues; views of femininity, appearance, male comments, sweating, menstruation
Competition; negative views of participation, stress, lack of enjoyment
Social networking; preference for phones, Internet, television
Concern for safety; out at dark, unsafe playground areas
Transportation and facilities; availability, cost

In the fall of 2010, Starfinder will begin work with the selected two schools. In year one, 20 girls, 10 from 5th grade and 10 from 6th grade, will be selected from each school for participation. In year 2, 10 new 5th graders will be added at each school and the total cohort will grow to 60 girls representing 5th, 6th, and 7th grades.

At the end of the 2-year program we hope to find that indeed, SOCCER GIRLS RULE!!!!!

 

 



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