![]() She’s developing at a different rate, so her training shouldn’t mimic that of boys her age.” The goal during this time is to not chase short-term success at the expense of long-term health and involvement in the sport. Trent says, “A high school girl runner isn’t just a slower high school boy runner. Even I wondered if I was cut out for the sport after my third stress fracture in 18 months. This increased my risk for bone injury, which I faced for a few years in college. I didn’t get my period until I was 19 due to not enough breaks in training and improper fueling. Does that mean I don’t even have a future?” Sara would think, “I went through puberty before I started this sport. Sara would hear coaches say a girl is done running well because she went through puberty and therefore has a body that’s not well-suited to distance running. That difference can make their progression look like a roller coaster for a few years. While boys continue to get stronger as their bodies change, girls have to learn to work with an ever changing-body. Renowned exercise physiologist Trent Stellingwerff says that when you’re training girls through puberty, their timeline for improvement might differ from that of boys. Girls’ improvement rates during puberty may differ from boys’ ![]() How Olympians Are Prioritizing Mental Health.It Took Years to Realize I Had an Eating Disorder.These numbers show that there are real hurdles for a girl participating in sport, but that they’re worth addressing because of the incredible benefits to a girl’s confidence, agency, and more by staying in them.īetween the advice from experts in the endurance sports world and interviews with 50 elite women runners, here were four key points that arose. There are also a number of health and academic benefits to staying in sport longer. Ninety percent of the few existing female CEOs played a sport growing up. It’s worth staying in the game, even if the college or pro ranks aren’t anywhere in sight. The attrition rate for girls in sport is 29 percent higher than boys between 8th and 12th grade. We want to keep girls in the sport, have them realize their potential, and have it be a net positive experience in their budding lives. The questions shaping our book were in part about what we would have liked to have as an inspiration and resource growing up, but also about how we’d want our and everyone’s daughters raised in sport. You see, we don’t want to be alone at the top of this mountain. That’s why we decided to crowd-source advice for girls and young women in sport from some of the best women distance runners and endurance sports experts we know for our book How She Did It. This, of course, isn’t entirely our responsibility, but a little armor never hurts! It means knowing how to navigate away from the destructive elements in the sport. It takes intentional route planning to stay on a path that’s edifying and empowering, especially for girls and women for whom societal pressures are different. We realize today, after hearing stories from high-profile athletes like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka on the importance of protecting your physical and mental well-being as an athlete, that at all levels, there’s a line we walk in sports. ![]() We were both invigorated by the sights at the top of our climbs and the empowering experience of the journey, but we were also acutely aware of the girls who didn’t continue past the rocky points, or were knocked off course by things we hoped wouldn’t ensnare us either: “She went through puberty, so she’s done” or “She’s a head case” or “Another eating disorder.” Those comments could peel a girl right off the trail. Two-time NCAA champion Sara Slattery and I have been pretty high up in the peaks of running. The risks get larger, the air gets thinner, the fellow hikers a lot more sparse, and it’s easier to slip or lose your way. If you travel the ranges of the sports world long enough, like any mountain, the conditions change as you climb higher.
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