Discussion: Track Divas

That's what a coach is for...to push those divas when all you hear is "I'm siiiiiiiick!"

Right, and injure them for good before the season really starts.

Well, if you want to be on Soupbone's team...you've got to take your skirt off, cancel your manicure, grow a mustache...and HTFU!

Ok chi baby, I think you need to HTFU and get out in the woods and I don't mean that wimpy, expensive golstreep you do. So HTFU yourself.

Ok at our last big invite, our rival cross town school gets a freshman girl that jumped 18 feet in the long jump. If she lived 3 blocks north she would of been going to my school. After 23 years coaching long jump, the school record is only 17'6. I have seen too many kids that do not have the body to take the pounding that maybe in the old days they could take. But maybe they just dropped out of site and never heard from them. Maybe it's today's nutrition and computer age, gaming etc that have made kids body's less tolerable of hard workouts. I don't think any girl on my team has a decent bike worth riding for a workout. But they all have access to cars, phones and Facebook.

18'....Wow! Well your girls' parents are obese, car-bound and screen-addicted, so why should they be different? And over-protected too...parents no longer allow their kids to run wild outside as my brother and I did every day of the summer in California.

Riding trolleys and cable cars all over San Francisco, hiking 10-15 miles up into the coastal range that rose right behind our house, riding my bike all over town every day delivering 120 newspapers. Kids just aren't allowed to do that stuff anymore. Most families had only one car, and many had NONE. So my mother, brother and I often HAD to walk if we wanted to go anywhere, since my father had the car at work.

Sure there were risks of such independence: some old guy, sitting in his open car with his pants around his ankles tried to drag me and my first-grade playmate into his car one afternoon. But "welcome to the big world!" That 30-second encounter was an educational experience unlike anything else I got out of first grade. After that I felt a certain confidence and self-reliance...that I could handle anything.

Well good luck with those Divas. We used to call girls that played rough games with the guys and climbed trees "Tomboys." Is that a name you still hear applied to girls? Are there any tomboys left?

No tomboys left as far as I know. Yes and 18 feet is a wow. she should get a full ride somewhere with that talent, and place high at the state champs and just a freshman.
Yep kids just don't quite play like they used to.

There's tons more opportunities for girls in sports than when I was growing up..... many more girls playing soccer, running track, even rugby and ice hockey. I think girls have more opportunities, and are not pampered as much either. But not as much random playing outside w others (which makes a tomboy), possibly because parents don't want their 5-10 year olds just running around the neighborhoods loose anymore.

But not as much random playing outside w others...

So do kids these days have the self-confidence we developed, out in the big world by ourselves? Do they have an appetite for adventure?

I take a lot of suburban buses out to golf courses from my home in the city. While I frequently see black kids on those buses, going to school or work, I NEVER see white kids, altho these buses are going through exclusively white suburbs. Why not? Don't they work? Do their parents drive them everyday? Do they all waste ~$5000/yr on car ownership? Are modern kids really that stupid, fat and boring?

chi, they are just like their parents. if thats what you want to call it, so be it. To them, it just seems like they are living their life. They dont realize that anything is amiss and that people 'like us' are horrified. Different folks, different strokes.

Good comment matzah man, and yes there are more oppturtunty for girls for sports, but its the everyday playing stuff some how they miss, cause they just play their sport and done. There have always been kids who are different, but you just have to look at our society, computers, big screen TV, phones and Facebook.
None, have bikes that they HAVE to get around on till maybe college. Maybe the city is different.

To paraphrase a bumper sticker,"It's the parents, stupid".
Now, I hate that bumper sticker, mind you, I don't like being called "stupid",
But, my girls rode bikes with us, after being towed in bike trailers, and they walked home from school( I picked them up if it was dark after school sports), and were dragged to every O meet we attended.
No Tv on weeknights, no cell phone, 1 computer which I monitored, and our TV for many years was a 12" Sony Trinitron........

Of course congradulations on your daughters, and we can now see why. On the other hand I have 2 nefhews that run pretty fast times and their parents don't ever exercise. Of course, I did get them interested at a young age and now if I could only get them more interested in orienteering down in Arizona ( which is a tough area) that would be so cool. A lot is driven by the parents, my buddy who skis and bikes in Marquette Mi, after years of his son playing hockey finally turned to High School XC Skiing and won the state sprint championship this year. He never forced him in any sport, but encouraged him and he even had a year with high school football as a backup. There are a lot of parents in orienteering that take their kids to meets and they seem to do very well on the national level. Ouch a 12" Sony TV.....that has too be smaller than any computer screen.