In an attempt to keep more girls in soccer at older age levels, the Taber and District Soccer Association will be doing an experiment for the upcoming 2012 season.
The association will be making the U12 category gender specific, dividing it into girls and boys teams.
“It has had the board’s attention for awhile and we’ve had people ask if that was a possibility to have gendered soccer. Many communities have gendered soccer,” said Jessica Van Bostelen, president of Taber and District Soccer Association. “When you are looking at a provincial level or provincial-like competition, those are all gender-specific competitions. Most of the competitions you see out there with tournaments is gender specific.”
Among the other factors the board considered in implementing the pilot project for the U12 category this year, is seeing the participation levels of girls getting lower as the age groups rise.
“We don’t know if gender has something to do with kids dropping out or not. But we think it will be good for both the boys and the girls. I’m not sure if it has a lot of gains, but it will certainly not have losses for the boys,” said Van Bostelen. “We think it will have good gains for the girls with both the skilled player and the less-skilled player. The less-skilled player will definitely have more ball time with more touches and less intimidation than with skilled boys on the team. The stronger girls are very skilled and talented, but they have a different style than a boy. When you get to the upper levels, the boys start to use them less from what we hear as a board or see as parents.”
If the experiment proves successful this year, the board will likely look to expanding it to older age categories as well, if participation levels continue among girls with strong numbers.
“We think this will provide the opportunity to improve their game and stick with a sport that they love. We have heard from many girls who say, ‘We just don’t get passed to, why are we out there?” said Van Bostelen. “We have to start somewhere. We want to make it as fun and as accessible to everybody. We do treasure having a house league that is available for our town citizens. We wanted to try in an age group where we didn’t think it would add strain.”
Positive spin-offs are expected at more competitive levels of soccer as well. Andrew Llewelyn-Jones has been coaching provincial tournament U18 girls entries in town for the past few years, in which the Taber area has had a competitive disadvantage.
“In 2010 we won the provincial bronze medal and talking to the girls we had a lot of discussion about girls soccer. All the girls teams we were playing, they had played together with girls teams throughout the year in league, while we are throwing together teams at the last second,” said Llewelyn-Jones. “I talked with coaches from other teams we played and everyone said, ‘Wow, you still do co-ed soccer?’ I felt we were at a competitive disadvantage down here. Talking with the girls, it’s not that they don’t enjoy playing co-ed soccer with boys, it’s just sometimes their opportunities are severely limited and so interest drops off.”
The board viewed U12 as the perfect age group to test out gender-specific soccer in that players are making the transition from mini soccer on smaller fields to regulation soccer.
“It great for training on the bigger fields. Plus, the boys and girls are still hardly different at that stage,” said Van Bostelen. “They are still on par and have equal registration. At the U16 age group we see a slight decrease in boys, but we see a much larger decrease in girls.”
Being a pilot project for 2012, Taber and District Soccer Association will gauge how successful the U12 experiment is in 2012 and proceed from there depending on feedback.
“This is an attempt to see if we can keep up with the rest of Alberta and start it at the U12 level. If it’s something in the community where we get feedback that this isn’t the way to go, then we’ll back off,” said Llewelyn-Jones. “If girls have an opportunity to play together, maybe the numbers won’t drop off. Unless we try, we’ll never know.”
As with any new venture, the board is expecting some growing pains, and one of those may be when it comes to smaller communities under the association’s umbrella like Vauxhall and Bow Island.
“We know it can impact the smaller communities because they have fewer numbers and we don’t know exactly how this is going to play out in the smaller communities. If there is not enough numbers in one gender, we will have to look at making a co-ed team that plays amongst those teams. We want to find a solution that will make it work for Vauxhall and Bow Island and Taber,” said Van Bostelen. “We certainly do not want to make it harder for any of the smaller communities, but we do want to make it better for the kids.”
While Taber and District Soccer Association is attempting to get the pilot project off the ground, it is still in need of a co-pilot to help steer it in terms of a director, as the board was thrown a curveball for volunteer availability.
“We actually had a director, but then they had a job change that would not allow them to continue on and they just found out about it. It’s critical that we have a (U12) director within the next two weeks to even offer the age group,” said Van Bostelen, who added the board also needs a U6 director. “There is a whole board that will help out with that position. Our board is very strong at working together.”
For more information or to volunteer as U12 or U6 director, call Van Bostelen at 403-223-0148.