Nike has partnered with We Coach, an organization that embraces recruitment, advancement and retention of women coaches in sports, on a new Made to Play Coaching Girls Guide to “help make sport fun for girls.”
Nike and We Coach provide additional support from Youth Sport Trust in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In a statement, Nike said that by age 14, girls have dropped out of sports at twice the rate of boys. The open-source coaching guide highlights barriers to girls and offers insights on how to remove them or to help girls overcome them. The Guide was prepared using research from the Women’s Sports Foundation and Nike’s Coaching Through a Gender Lens report. Its research shows that when girls like their coaches, they are more likely to love playing and keep playing as they get older.
“Leveling the playing field for girls is a challenge – and it’s been made even harder by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Jorge Casimiro, Chief Social & Community Impact Officer at Nike, Inc. “Girls love to play, and being a better coach — or at-home P.E. teacher, as some of us are trying for the first time — can help keep them playing now and in the future.”
The guide includes tips from program partners around the world, including New York’s PowerPlay, Chicago’s Girls in the Game and Eugene, Ore.’s KidSports, as well as global organizations such as PeacePlayers International and Soccer Without Borders.
The Made to Play Coaching Girls Guide can be found here.
Photo courtesy Nike
