What Makes Girls Tick: Creating Enriched Environments

Presenting at St Catherine’s annual Girls Talk Parents Seminar this week, Sport and Exercise Psychologist Jacqui Louder, provided a thought provoking address: What Makes Girls Tick: Creating Enriched Environments.

With the transition of women into professional football in the AFLW, the differences in coaching needs for male and female athletes quickly emerged. As a Sport Psychologist, Louder’s professional advice was frequently sought as predominantly male footy coaches grappled with the intricacies of coaching women.

“I just couldn’t hack it with girls’ teams. It was too complex and so mentally demanding.
They needed to know why they were doing everything they did so I just went back to coaching the boys.” Football Coach

Some of the observed differences when coaching women included the need to create a more inclusive environment and ensure an understanding of the higher levels of self-competitiveness. Whilst females were considered better listeners, they were also considered to be more concerned about the welfare of their team members and more likely to self-blame for poor performance. By way of comparison, their male counterparts were recognised as having a desire to be competitive as a group yet were more concerned about self and more likely to blame others for poor performance.

In presenting the gender differences, Louder also highlighted some of the research around female participation rates in sport:

• If a girl does not participate in sport by the age of 10, there is only a 10% chance she will be physically active when she is 25 (Bunker, 1988).
• Adolescent girls report more barriers to participation than boys do, including time, money, resources and a concern for safety. Lack of active, older role models has been cited as a contributing factor to lower participation rates amongst girls (BCCEWH, 2000).
• Of women 15+years, only 35% were considered to be ‘sufficiently active’ and the most significant motivation to be physically active was to ‘lose/maintain weight’.

Keep Her in the Game – this compelling clip explains how advertising and social pressures impact young girls.

The decline in female participation rates has sparked a series of marketing campaigns to keep girls playing sport. Such campaigns bring to light the issue that from ages six to nine, girls and boys demonstrate an equal level of interest in sports, but by age 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys. Yet we know girls who stay in sports are proven to have higher self-esteem, better body image, obtain better grades and avoid things like drugs, smoking and teen pregnancy. Social stigma, lack of access, safety, poor role models and the rising costs of participation are among the reasons girls leave sports.

In her conclusion, Louder provided tips for coaching girls:

• Adopting an encouraging tone of voice and body language
• Understanding what makes athletes tick and what motivates them
• Providing constructive yet positive feedback
• Understanding that menstrual cycles can affect performance
• Committing to the athlete and her goals
• Approaching the role as coach as a joint endeavour
• Making training sessions varied, fun, structured, challenging and tailored
• Having an awareness that females become overly self-critical when finding faults/errors

Ensuring St Catherine’s sporting culture nurtures yet also empowers girls to strive to be the best they can be on the sporting field recognises the intricacies of coaching girls. This understanding also highlights just one of the benefits of the all-girls environment whereby the culture can be created and targeted specifically towards girls’ participation. This approach is not only relevant to sport but can be quite simply applied to directing a musical, teaching a Mathematics class, conducting a choir or shaping tomorrow’s leaders today!

On staff, both Tom Crebbin and Lloyd Knight, who lead our sporting programs in the Junior and Senior Schools respectively, understand the range of motivations and reasons why girls participate in sport; this encompasses appealing to girls’ needs to use sport as a social vehicle through to feeding a desire to compete at elite levels. The delivery of feedback, the need for developing team work and effective communication strategies, building self-confidence and importantly athletic confidence, and enabling a balance between academic and co-curricular life are all high on the agenda of the Sport staff at St Catherine’s.

School Events

In Term 2, our Parent Auxiliaries remain active in supporting our students and our many School events. The newly formed Creative Arts Auxiliary (previously Drama, Music and Art Auxiliaries) supported the recent Senior School Musical, Crazy For You, with refreshments before and during interval over the three performances and hosting Pre-Show Drinks on Friday evening.

Last weekend, the Snowsport Auxiliary held its 10^th Annual Snowsport Swap. This proved to be an enormous effort with the Swap growing in stature each year. Prior to the Swap, 1,480 items were tagged and in two hours on Sunday, the Auxiliary sold 105 pairs of Skis, 85 pairs of Ski boots, 250 Ski Jackets, 30 Snowboards and 90 sets of poles. The Swap also donated unsold items to ‘Off the Back’ charity, organised by Old Girl, Toni Joel (‘82). This charity provides jackets and pants to Melbourne’s homeless during the winter months. Four large bags of children’s ski gear was also delivered to the Salvation Army, providing clothing items affordable to those much less fortunate.

The PFA are also in the final stages of organising the annual Ruth Langley Luncheon at Leonda on Friday 25 May commencing at 11.30am. Guest presenter, Australian humanitarian worker, Moira Kelly AO, will provide her insightful story of a life devoted to saving and healing children in communities around the world. Tickets are still available through this link.

Parents and community members are also invited to attend the biennial St Catherine’s Ball, A Winter’s Night on Saturday 2 June. This event promises to be a splendid evening of fine dining with superb wines, live entertainment, auctions and dancing. Tickets can be obtained via this link.

This Sunday, I wish our St Catherine’s parents and families an enjoyable Mother’s Day, a day in which to celebrate the role of all women in family life. There is a reason the endearing sentiment of the bond between mother and her children is so powerful and so resonant. It seems that no matter how much time passes throughout history, this unbreakable connection remains the same. Across countries and across cultures, a mother’s love is always enduring and all-consuming, beautiful in so many ways. This is worth celebrating.