BEHIND THE PLAY #20

The Canadian women's national team won the bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics. Vancouver hosted the CONCACAF qualifying tournament the year before. Canada hosted the U20 Women's World Cup in 2014 and the full on Women's World Cup in 2015 with the final being here in Vancouver. We then repeated as bronze medalists at the Rio Olympics in 2016. The crowning glory, literally, was winning Olympic gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. These were all exciting events. I bought tickets for the Women's World Cup and also went to most of the Olympic qualifying tournament games held in Vancouver in 2011. Those years from 2011 to now have seen a tremendous rise in interest in the Canadian Women's National Team as well as the U20's.

And in every one of those years since 2011, enrolment in girls' soccer in Metro Vancouver has gone down.

But how can that be? They have role models. They have been able to see role idols play in full stadiums against the best teams in the world; live and on TV. They buy jerseys and go to autograph sessions.

Here's why. There's a huge difference between sustenance and the occasional treat. Women's soccer events, on and off the field, have to this point been dispensed as occasions; fleeting but high profile. They make you feel good for a short period of time and you look forward to them but they do not sustain you. Sustenance requires a steady flow healthy inputs necessary to make you stronger and more committed. The occasional snack for someone who is otherwise getting what they need nutritionally is totally fine and can be motivating but it does not keep them going long term.

Will the new women’s professional league, the Northern Super League, make a difference? Yes, if it gains traction and develops a significant following the fact that it will have a more permanent presence, with teams playing half the year instead of quadrennial events like the Olympics and World Cup, should create a more sustained impression and pique interest in a larger number of girls.

But you know what really keeps girls playing soccer long term? Their parents and their coaches doing what is necessary. It’s a simple as that.

Parents who facilitate their play by providing time, money and an emotional investment in girls soccer. Parents who find the right club by asking the right questions of the right people. They register them, get them to training and games, encourage them to keep playing through periods of doubt, help them ride out the challenging moments, buy the necessary equipment, tell them that they really enjoy watching them play and show that they value team sports and what can be learned from them. They volunteer to help as an assistant coach or manager. They advocate for their daughter when necessary, help breed confidence in them by telling them its okay to take some chances and have them not work out all the time. They celebrate their victories and tell them that losing a game is just something you use to learn from and that teamwork is about respecting both the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates and being able to work with both. These people are what keep girls playing soccer more than anything else.

Some kids need more of this support than others regardless of whether they are a girl or a boy but at some point they will all at times need the guidance of a parent to calm doubts and keep them playing. Those moments are crucial. They have to be recognized quickly and acted upon deftly.

As parents facilitate and support, coaches engender trust and respect in the pursuit of helping players get better at the game.

All players need to be able to trust that their coach wants the best for them and respects them as a person as well as their ability to contribute to the team's efforts regardless of the level of play. And once that bond is established, players need to see this is not a one off and any other coaches they have will honour that relationship the same way. Volunteer coaches who take players from their first years right through to U18 are absolute gems of people. To spend ten plus years working with a group of girls, showing them that you want to be part of their soccer experience from the time they enter grade school to the time they leave it, that you enjoy it and will stick it out through years of training sessions on wet, windswept fields; that you won't walk away from them after 7-0 losses and won't make the experience more about your ego than their enjoyment? Gems.

These are the people keep girls playing soccer. To suggest that the occasional ‘event’ does is insulting to so many men and women I know that have worked within an age group that starts with helping to tie their shoelaces and ends with tears and hugs when the last U18 game is played.

I have no issue with the elite level women's players generating products that provide little hits of excitement. They are more than entitled to leverage their abilities and success on the field to pursue options that I'm sure they genuinely feel are beneficial to young players. The issue is that we need parents, primarily, but also coaches, to recognize that this does not replace the long term efforts needed of them to keep girls playing the game.

The hits keep coming but, as already stated, the numbers keep dropping. The key is to get more parents to facilitate and more coaches to commit.

Parents have to get them to the field and coaches have to keep the field engaging. It's a symbiotic relationship between parents and coaches. They either strengthen or weaken each other. Involved, supportive parents motivate coaches. Those coaches in turn resolve to create better team environments and the result is that coaches gain increasing buy in from parents and a higher percentage of girls end up continuing to play.

Conversely, parents who don't support their daughters' soccer and who abide by, or are the cause of, poor attendance at training and games make it easy for coaches to lose interest and walk away. Coaches who run poor sessions and create a culture of nonchalance or display indifference, despite the best efforts of parents on the team, also cause attrition. Buy in from both is needed. It goes back to the Zen koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” In this case, the answer is indifference and lower participation rates.

You may ask, “Well, what are you doing about this issue?” and that would be fair. We have two concurrent, ongoing efforts. The first was to contract Supporting Lines to assess the team culture of all our U11 to U15 girls teams. This took the form of an anonymous survey that went to all the players and a similar one that went to all their team officials. The results were then shared with the team officials accompanied by a playbook that will be implemented this coming season. It was a sizeable investment and we hope it kicks starts improvements that truly resonate.

The second initiative was to form a committee of our women with extensive but varying experience with girls soccer at our club. They have been tasked with examining all aspects of the girls soccer experience at our club and been encourated

Everybody likes the simple solution. Everybody wants to believe that the latest fad diet that lets them eat their favourite foods all the time is going to make them lose weight and/or be healthier overall. The quick, easy fix will always have the ear of the public with their regularly crossed fingers and willing credit cards.

Keeping girls playing soccer does have a simple solution though. The challenging part is the solution has to be applied over many, many years and requires regular check-ins with the players. How could keeping young people engaged in a pursuit from age six to eighteen not require the care and cultivation of many motivated people throughout those dozen or so years? It's a long term project. It needs as much dedication and resilience from parents and coaches as we ask of the players themselves.

You want your daughter to keep playing soccer? Focus on sustaining them with what they need over many years rather than placating them with what looks good short term.