Girls’ Basketball Struggling to Keep Pace With Soccer, Softball and Volleyball

After class, elementary school girls all over America are abandoning their pencils and textbooks for softball bats, soccer cleats, volleyball knee pads and tennis rackets. But what about basketball?

There are youth programs in soccer, softball and volleyball for girls as young as 5.

But there is no national juniors program encouraging young girls to learn to dribble.

Soccer, softball and volleyball all capture the imagination of young girls and teach the fundamentals of a team sport before they get to high school.

That has broadened girls’ sports options, and made it harder for basketball to keep up.

The situation is especially acute in Southern California, a volleyball hotbed, the headquarters of Bobby Sox softball and the testing ground for the American Youth Soccer Organization.

AYSO has burgeoned in affluent, suburban Orange County, spokeswoman Lolley Keys said. AYSO has 350,000 youths, age 5 and older, playing in 38 states and some 45,000 children (12,000 girls) in its strongest areas of Orange and San Diego counties, Keys said.

AYSO has been so successful that the California Interscholastic Federation made girls’ soccer a varsity sport in 1980 and it has since expanded to three divisions, said Scott Cathcart, Southern Section official.

What’s more, soccer is a winter sport in Orange County, putting it in direct competition with basketball.

“The only problem we have is that soccer is at the same time as basketball and a lot of the girls have come up through the soccer programs, so they have played (soccer) since they were little,” said Sheila Adams, girls’ varsity basketball coach at Foothill High School. Foothill won the 3-A championship in 1985.

The United States Volleyball Assn.’s local chapter, the Southern California Volleyball Assn., has 2,500 participants on teams for girls 14 to 18.

But the oldest organized team sports program for girls in California is the 40,000-strong Bobby Sox softball organization. Like soccer, it is strong in Orange County, where more than 5,000 girls, ages 6 to 17, participate.

Basketball is still the country’s No. 1 team sport for girls, with 16,196 schools participating nationwide compared to almost 11,834 for volleyball and 3,697 for soccer, according to the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations.

But basketball participation has declined slightly since 1983 while volleyball has gained 3% and soccer participation has increased 82%.

Perhaps the most telling effect of the absence of feeder programs for basketball is the skill level of high school freshman.

“You would think a layup would be a basic skill a girl would have coming in, but we spend days just teaching them how to do a layup,” Adams said. “Well, we spend days, then we just move on.”

Basketball does have Amateur Athletic Union basketball teams for girls, but they are open only to the most skilled players.

Steve Kavaloski, former Garden Grove High School coach, is one of the founders of two high school girls’ basketball leagues and two high school girls’ programs.

He started a junior high division for his Run and Gun League 3 years ago after Proposition 13 forced junior high schools to cut back on their athletic programs.

Basketball programs are so few and far between that girls from as far away as Simi Valley and Palm Desert attend his clinics, Kavaloski said.

“If you have a daughter and she likes basketball and you want her to play, chances are you are forming your own league or driving long distances to a program,” he said.

That’s what Kelley Lentini did. She asked her father, Bill Lentini of the Brea Police Department, to find a program for herself and her friends Kristin McPhee (now on scholarship at Northern Arizona) and Carrie Egan (on scholarship at Cal Poly Pomona). They approached John Joslin of South Junior High School, and the Pole Cats--an off-season basketball team for seventh and eighth-grade girls--was born.

Brea-Olinda High School’s girls’ basketball team has been so successful in part because of the Pole Cats, but also because of a youth police league in Brea.

But girls in other areas are not so lucky.

“I don’t know of any basketball around this area,” said Joanne Kellogg, the girls’ athletic director at Huntington Beach High School since 1975. She coached basketball from 1975-85, winning the 4-A title in 1978.

Before soccer became a varsity sport, twice as many girls tried out for basketball, Kellogg said.

“The kids’ comfort zones are in volleyball and soccer, so even though the kids may be fine athletes and could pick up basketball very quickly, they are afraid to try,” she said.