Missed Opportunities
As girls become women, chances to play sports become rare.

By Jennifer Goddard, staff writer

Imagine yourself 10 years from now. Maybe you're just graduating from college or starting a family. Maybe you're living on your own in the big city or playing it safe at home with the 'rents.

Either way, you'll probably still have some of the same interests as you do now—especially when it comes to playing sports. While your love for the game may not change, the many opportunities you now have to play will be very different.

You Grow. Time Shrinks

Does it ever feel like there's not enough time in the day to fit in everything you want to do? You've got friends to hang out with, practice to go to, homework to do and academic clubs to meet with! Unfortunately, time doesn't grow along with you—in fact, it'll seem like the older you get, the less time you have! This is a big part of the reason why many girls who grow up playing sports often find themselves unable to continue playing after high school and college.

Let's say you're taking a lot of classes in college—you may not have time to spare for sports. Or, if you've got the time, it's likely that other young women your age don't—leaving you unable to form a team or find a league to join! You could always try out for the college team but you may not be selected or have the time to dedicate to it. Most colleges have less competitive intramural leagues with flexible game schedules—but it's unlikely that you'll find an all-women league as most of them are all-men or co-ed.

Once you're out of college, the situation gets even stickier if you want to continue playing sports. Many women concentrate on their careers and families and may not share your willingness to make time to play sports. As you get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to find all-women leagues. Co-ed leagues are relatively easy to find but you may not find men as willing as women to share the ball with you (ever hear a guy insult someone by saying they "play like a girl?").

Missing in Action: Female Athletes (or Melissa's Story)

Melissa Comerchero, a 26-year-old who lives in New York City, has played sports her entire life—mostly soccer and basketball. She's played competitively and recreationally as well as coached for colleges and YMCA. When she attended Penn State University in 1996, she played on their school soccer team that finished in the top 12 Division I NCAA rankings. You wouldn't expect Melissa to have a hard time finding a women's league to play on but she says, "It's harder to find women's leagues because you're less likely to get a whole team of women who want to play or have time to play."

Why is it that men have time to continue playing sports but women seem to not have any? Melissa offers that it might be because "women have families and children to raise."

But don't men have families and children to raise, too? "For whatever reason, women have more of a reason to be preoccupied at home," Melissa observes. "I don't agree with it but it's a trend I've noticed." In her years of coaching, Melissa has "never heard a guy say 'I can't play this weekend because of my family.' It's most commonly women who say they can't play because of work or kids."

Because she "missed the competition," Melissa recently played on a competitive co-ed league in Pennsylvania where there were "two to three women per team who were amazing soccer players but it seemed like it was always the men who were there to play." She notes that it's even more difficult to find women to play in rural areas than urban.

It's a disappointing situation for someone like Melissa who has coached and played with "some fantastic female players—but not enough to form their own league." She continues to play her beloved soccer and basketball in co-ed, adult leagues but she'd prefer to play in women's leagues. "Women have a certain style of play that I'm used to," Melissa explains. "When playing co-ed, you're mixing styles and certain parts of the game—like speed—that are different."

"It frustrates me," Melissa says. "I'd love to see all the star players that I played with in college still playing, even if it's just one game a week. I wish it wasn't that way. From my perspective, I'm going to play until I feel like stopping. If I had a family, of course whatever my children need is paramount to my own needs. But I would never allow my spouse to play and not allow myself to play. It would be a luxury that both of us would have or neither of us would have."