The reality of being a girl who likes sports

Looking at Sport’s most recent collaborative piece on our favourite sporting members I very quickly realised that despite loving sports, I didn’t actually have many prominent proud or happy memories. I have one: being the strongest female basketball player in PE. My reign over ‘shark attack’ was undefeated between years 4 to 6, dribbling my way to basketball team captain each lesson. Yet, that is where it ends. One image of me dribbling a ball in the corner of a laminated indoor court which doubled as an assembly hall.

Soon I came to realise that the reason my fond memories are limited is pretty simple: I’m a girl who likes sports.

My earliest memories of any form of athletics date back to the early noughties, 2004-2005, to be historically exact. I was a child with a lot of energy on the playground, and “stubbornness” (- my mother). I was the oldest of my parents’ two children, and they had quickly learnt that a leash was necessary for any outing, effectively making me their second pet alongside the cat. My mum was not the yummy mummy you see roaming the Didsbury high street, instead continuing the no-nonsense ‘come on now’ parenting her mother had instilled in her. She wasn’t a girly girl, and nor was I. I wanted to run, holler and climb the unclimbable, soaring across the concrete of Filton Avenue Nursery most mornings, essentially making me a track star.

Primary school is when it set in. Still a slightly unruly child on the playground, I had no interest in playing ‘family’. That was the game girls were supposed to play: family. Mum, dad, baby and child. Whenever I did end up playing with the girls, I’d almost always be allocated ‘dad’, because of my ‘unfeminine’ nature and high energy. What I was really interested in however was football.

Every break time, four jumpers would be thrown to the ground and deemed a suitable goal post. Positions would be divided up and teams quickly made, before a football was launched into the air with screams of “boot it!” soon following. Every break time, I would be allocated goalie, if anything at all. I was unwelcome. I was a girl, this was football, girls don’t play football. Any wrong move I made, or score I let slip, was further evidence of the fact – girls do not play football. Get out.

It was my desire to play football, and not be quiet, that ultimately attracted negative attention from a young age. From ages 6 to 16 I was bullied intermittently. Whether it be a groan and heckling for my desire to play football, my unfeminine traits (socially and physically) or my stubbornness to not bat my eyelashes and pipe down. I never quite fitted in and that made me a target.

My sporting interests made me an outsider from a young age. Unbeknownst to me, it reached a point of concern for both my parents and teachers. I was described as a child who floated between friend groups, never quite settling for one. The floating was likely between the ‘dad’ role and the goal, rejecting and being rejecting on a loop. The solution? Girl Guides – a place for loud energetic children to run around a church hall, bang out some campfire songs, and tussle up a craft project all within one hour every Tuesday. The epitome of noughties feminity. Yet, it was during my years as a Girl Guide that I began to be accepted not only as a girl, but as a girl who loved sports, surrounded by other girls who also loved sports.

The next 10 years saw evenings filled with more aggression than most WWE matches. Despite Girl Guides having a delicate 1950s image, with girls gaining outdoor and domestic skills while being ever so polite and respectful, the evening activities were anything but. Funded by Tesco Vouchers and the Labour Party, noughties ‘hockey’ consisted of rolled-up newspapers, a bean bag, and two chairs. Flared nostrils and sweat replaced any notion that these nine-year-olds were polite and quiet just a few hours ago in school. Instead, it was every man for themselves, with paper relentlessly beating the floor with force as each girl fought to smash the dusty beanbag between the chair legs. There would always be one girl who cried, hurt a little by the satanic events that had just ensued. It would be this girl who would be the outsider.

If you weren’t striking the church hall of its floor varnish with a newspaper; you were running vigorous laps during rounders, or crushing sticky legs during ladders. Come the summer, sports day put every girl to the test. When I say every girl, I mean about three per race. Regardless my nursery track star days were back, now as a girl guide, swooping up sports day certificates left right and centre.

The same could be said for the school sports days, with no mercy shown to any other competitor. Certificates were replaced by medals, and I stood proudly in my dining room posing with that year’s winnings. Yet, despite showing myself as capable in a variety of sports, in the playground the rejection still lingered.

I had been a part of various sports clubs by the latter years of primary school from netball to basketball and football. Within the co-ed environment though, I was still ostracised for being a girl. Football was replaced by bulldog, arm wrestling, or beyblades and bakugans. I had the enthusiasm, skills and desire to be a part of the game, however, that desire wasn’t necessarily shared by male classmates.

In football club, which had a few older girls in it, I resorted to practising passes with the wall, too shy to play with anyone else. Even in netball club, a stereotypically female sport (rejected by a male classmate as even being a sport due to its feminity), I was too boisterous and committed to the sport. Essentially, the way Jennifer Lawrence describes her teenage football shoot symbolised my adolescent love and passion for sport.

Secondary school was no different, with sports clubs being replaced by catty PE lessons. I was soon the kid that had a ball flung at their head. Football, tennis, basketball, hell, I’m surprised I wasn’t struck by a passing ping pong ball – I took it all. When I wasn’t laughing off a humiliating boink, I was being kicked in the back during dodgeball. Katie, who had been caught out and left to defend herself on the bench, didn’t appreciate my defending skills, jumping up and swinging every throw she got. Perhaps if she’d spent less time kicking and taunting, and more time playing, she wouldn’t be on the bench. Regardless, the teams I was on were sneered at for losing or accused of cheating when winning. The only difference here was instead of 7-year-old boys, it came from 14-year-old girls.

When looking for pictures for this piece, it was then I realised this affected me. As I entered my pre-teen years, the “daredevil” (- again, my mother) pictures slowly grew rare on my parents’ Facebook feeds. Between the ages of 14 to now, there is one.

I haven’t been a part of a sports team since age 18, joining Bradley Stoke’s Women’s Football team as a way to rekindle my love of sports. By then though, it was too late. I was no longer that sporting stubborn child I once was, but a shy insecure adult intimated by the broad and athletic women around me. I was no longer a sports day medal winner, track star or aggressive hockey player. By 18, I had become a shell of myself, trying my best to keep up, eventually quitting to spend more time with my boyfriend. I was a shy outcast, with my enthusiasm shrinking into shame and inferiority. I was no longer a girl who liked sports.

I met up with my ex the other day. I used the same laugh to cover up my frustration and irritation over my inability to play squash. I enjoyed it, the sport that is. But I would’ve enjoyed it more in private. Away from judgement. Away from boys.

Nothing has changed for girls in sports. Unless they grow up with older brothers, they remain trapped in the world of ‘families’ or an ambitious goalie on a makeshift football pitch. As they grow up, the feminine ones become ‘catty’ and ‘bitchy’, further penalising female love for sports. It’s unattractive and easy to pick on. Yet, had I had those female-centred sports environments for longer (as I had experienced as a Girl Guide) maybe I would have stuck with it. Had primary school children had mixed sports teams from an early age, perhaps sports wouldn’t have become gendered. Perhaps if any of this would have happened, I’d have a favourite sports memory to share.