Girls in Sports Become Leaders in the Workplace

Your daughter’s weekly sports meets or after-school games with friends may seem like a fun hobby or a good extracurricular activity for now, but did you know they can have one of the biggest impacts on her professional life and personal growth?

An EY and espnW survey found that 94% of women in C-suite positions played sports, with 52% playing at the collegiate level. In fact, 80% of female Fortune 500 executives surveyed said they played sports in their early years.

Being involved in sports at an early age instills in girls life skills important for success in both academics and the workplace later on.

Playing sports naturally teaches girls discipline, self-confidence, teamwork, sportsmanship, resilience, communication, strategic thinking, goal-setting, emotional endurance, and composure under pressure and the ability to bounce back from failure—all skills that make up the recipe for a great leader.

So if your girls are involved in sports, you’re on the right track. If they aren’t yet, now is the perfect time to start!

Not all kids already know what they want from the get-go. Get them inspired by exposing them to a range of options (volleyball and basketball aren’t the only choices!), and sign them up for beginner classes until they find what they enjoy most.

If they look serious about it, get them into a long-term program, such as enrolling in more intense classes, joining competitions, or simply trying out for their school's varsity teams.

If, on the other hand, they don’t seem to want to be as intense in their chosen sport, encourage them to be enthusiasts instead. Not everyone wants to make the national team or be a professional, but you can instill in them a love of the sport.

This can take the form of long-term classes, casually joining competitions from time to time, following pro sports teams and watching them, and joining sports clubs or getting together with friends to play every weekend.

If your girls have yet to pick their sport, you can build a habit of movement in the meantime. Go on daily walks, make it a family or sibling activity, and get them to walk the dog daily.

Remember how you would set up playdates with their friends in preschool? Keep doing that and more! Encourage their entire friend group to do team activities. This could be anything from forming a friendly neighborhood sports team to signing up for yoga or dance classes together.

Moving with her friends fosters the same camaraderie and team spirit she would get if she joined an actual team.

One of the easiest ways to get your girls into sports at a young age is to have them watch older girls succeed and have fun with them.

Take time to sit down and follow coverage of women’s sports on TV, watch the Olympics women’s matches, Palarong Pambansa, WNCAA, and other female collegiate teams. When your kids are old enough for social media, follow female athletes on their social media so they can have positive female role models in sports.

Follow Atleta Filipina on YouTube, an organization that covers women in sports and tells the stories of Pinay athletes. To get them involved, sign your daughter up for their sports clinics and join their workshops.

Another organization dedicated to girls in sports is Go Hard Girls, which started as a podcast telling the stories of Pinay athletes and has now become the Philippines’ first sports show focused on women athletes and pushing for gender equity in sports. They also hold different community events, like media workshops, aimed at not just celebrating women already in sports, but also building a community that supports our female athletes, such as storytellers, artists, and advocates who support girls in sports.

Ultimately, their goal is to build a community of girls who dream big, believe in themselves, and empower and inspire each other to succeed.

Almost two-thirds of girls drop out of sports by the time they enter their teens. Girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys by the age of 14.

As girls go through puberty and grow up fast, they tend to face new challenges, such as the fear of being judged, the sudden lack of confidence in their ability to perform well or in their appearance (some sporty girls worry that they are getting too muscular and not the conventionally beautiful, petite type).

There’s also a lack of support from their family and community, and a lack of female coaches and role models, on top of the pressure to prioritize academic performance over sports, especially during their senior high school years.

Now that your daughter is in the game—how do you keep her in it?

Of course, the ideal scenario is seeing our children reach their full potential in whatever they do, especially in sports. But making the school varsity team and later joining the national team isn’t always the goal.

In coaxing your girls to do sports, it’s best to let them decide which path they want to take—whether it’s picking the sports they want to commit to or deciding whether this will be light and recreational or something intense that could turn into a professional career later on.

Praise their attitude, improvements, and strengths, not just their wins. Make a big deal out of their wins, but also celebrate their losses because they did their best.

Acknowledge their learning and growth, both personal growth and the growth they make through the sport.

One of the major reasons teenage girls drop out of their sport is their struggle with self-esteem, body image, and stereotypes.

Sporty girls tend to be branded as rough and masculine by their peers, and this can be especially tough when they’re in the middle of navigating puberty, struggling with body image, and wanting to conform to conventional feminine beauty standards.

Imagine dealing with all these challenges at a time in your life when emotions are always high, and you experience everything intensely, on top of the pressure to perform academically.

When faced with all these challenges, without enough support, your daughter’s enthusiasm for her sport might be the easiest burden to let go of. This is where you enter and become her refuge.

During this time, it is important that your daughter feels seen, understood, and encouraged to keep doing her sport. Sometimes, all they need is a strong support system to push through.

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