Good Sports : It’s seen as an offensive move against self-esteem problems, depression and drug abuse. Great reasons, the experts say, to team up girls and athletics.

It’s Saturday morning at Senn High School, a grim, cement monstrosity on the city’s north side. Neighborhood kids are milling around the campus, trying to fend off the tough precinct and winter cold.

On the torn-up field, boys are playing football. On the blacktop, it’s boys again, this time matching up for two-on-two. A sinewy girl in a yellow oversize sweatshirt dribbles a ball on the sidelines. She waits 20 minutes. Forty-five. No one will match up with her. She flips on her hood and heads home.

Inside the school gym, though, Kathy Chuckas, founder of Chicago-based A Sporting Chance Foundation, is working hard to even the score. She’s holding a basketball clinic for girls 9 to 13. No boys allowed.

Crystal Gowdy, a little girl with a big shot, steps up to the line. She yanks on her ponytail, bends her knees and . . . swoosh.

“See,” says a 10-year-old, adding commentary from the top of the key. “If the boys were in here, everything would be different.” She bites her lip and tries for an adult tone. “They never want to let girls play. Boys make sports no fun.”

It’s feminist activism in its most literal form: Over the past year a spate of organizations has emerged, all with the mission of getting more girls into sports. And we’re not talking about just Nike’s “If You Let Me Play” ads--although those surely help.

The Feminist Majority has made girls’ sports its cause of the year. Ditto for Chicago-based Women’s Issues Network (WIN). Reebok has started hosting all-girls recruiting camps. Fledgling nonprofits such as Chuckas’ A Sporting Chance Foundation are popping up around the country. The University of Iowa has been posting advice on how to sue schools for violations of Title IX, a federal law barring sex discrimination in, among other things, school sports programs.

Oh, and let’s not forget Gabrielle Reese, the 6-foot, 3-inch, 170-pound, model-beautiful volleyball player who recently leaped across the cover of Outside magazine heralding the latest cool thing for young femmes to be: the Ubergirl, the goddess-slash-jock.

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Why such efforts to get girls playing sports, not house?

Studies show that girls’ involvement in athletics just might help alleviate some of our most trenchant social ills.

According to the New York-based Women’s Sports Foundation, girls who play sports are 92% less likely to do drugs and 80% less likely to have unwanted pregnancies, not to mention more prone to leave abusive relationships, to feel good about their bodies and to avoid depression in general. And among Latinas, those who play sports are more likely to score well on achievement tests and more likely to stay in school.

It’s as if the messiah is coming and she’s wearing a coach’s whistle. The question is: Will the concept of sports-as-salvation work?

Let’s cruise some facts. Girls hit a big-time self-esteem crisis when they reach adolescence. At 11 or 12, the confidence starts to slip. By 13 or 14, it’s in a free fall.

As a 1991 study by the American Assn. of University Women reported, 60% of elementary school girls say they are “always happy the way I am.” Only 29% of high school girls answer the same (the confidence drops were 38% for Latinas, 33% for whites, 7% for blacks).

Furthermore, while boys tend to name their talents when asked what they like most about themselves, girls tend to focus on some aspect of physical appearance.

It gets worse. According to a November 1995 survey conducted by Shape magazine and Melpomene--a Minnesota-based institute that researches physically active women (and took its name from the Greek athlete who ran in the 1896 Olympic marathon even though women were banned)--body image among young women is seriously out of whack.

Take it from this 17-year-old who said in the survey: “I hate to say it, but it is the exceptional girl who isn’t anorexic or bulimic, in my school anyway. This is normal. I am normal and my friends are normal. We’re the women of the future.”

As for athletics, girls drop out of sports at a rate six times higher than boys. Eight million girls younger than 17 play basketball, yet only 4.2 million older than 17 are still taking it to the hoop. In high school alone, 30% of girls start out playing as freshman; about half drop out by senior year.

There are reasons for this.

For one, money--a scant third of college athletic scholarships are awarded to women.

And for two, glory--women’s sports pull down a lame 5% of TV sports coverage and an even lamer 3.5% of print. Check it out: In a year of the weekly Sports Illustrated (1993-94), six women hit the cover: (1) Some babe in a bathing suit; (2) Monica Seles after being attacked with a knife; (3, 4) Baseball players’ widows; (5) Mary Pierce, fearing her father; and (6) Nancy Kerrigan, after getting clubbed on the knee.

The apparent message that women are nobody in sports seeps down to the kids. “In the biddy basketball league, the boys are all saying, ‘I’m going to dribble the ball just like Michael Jordan. I’m going to be Shaquille O’Neal,’ ” says Oshi Jauko Owens, program director for Girls Inc. of Santa Barbara. “Girls can’t do that.”

Different people are trying to change the image of female athletes in different ways. Some are doing the obvious: getting girls out on the field. In Wisconsin, Sports Clinic for Girls is running one-day teach-ins in such traditionally male sports as basketball, soccer and hockey.

In East Los Angeles, the GIRLS segment of Kids in Sports is canvassing grammar and middle school classrooms to recruit all-girl teams. In Santa Barbara, Girls Inc. is piloting the Bridges program, teaching non-athletes basic skills and prepping them to try out for school or local teams.

And in San Francisco, Ann Kletz is starting up SportsBridge, a mentoring program for girls 9 to 14 that stresses academics as well as sports.

“I was seeing a distinction between my friends who were involved with sports--they were strong, they were successful, they went to college--and I’d compare them with my friends who weren’t involved in sports,” says Kletz, 26, who used to play on the Harvard soccer team.

“Sports has been a huge thing in my life,” adds Chuckas, starting to laugh. “I mean, I don’t think I would have ever started A Sporting Chance unless I’d played sports.”

This statement is not as self-evident as it might seem. Eight out of 10 women who are key leaders in Fortune 500 companies report being jocks or tomboys in their youth. And it’s largely to this end that feminist organizations are taking on girls sports as a political cause.

The Feminist Majority convened a group of advocates, athletes, administrators and activists to press the issue of sex discrimination in sports. Likewise, the Women’s Issues Network helped produce Girls WIN Day--an event that included such activities as double Dutch and shooting soccer balls at Olympic goalie Briana Scurry for girls, and a host of conferences and networking opportunities for adults.

“We thought about doing a project that focused on issues of self-esteem in the workplace,” says Lois Roewade, the Girls WIN Day project chair. “But then we realized the office is too late. We have to go back much farther than that.”

Individual women are also speaking out. Mariah Burton Nelson, former professional basketball player and author of “The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football” (Avon, 1994), often lectures to college students.

“There are three reasons why female athletes are inherently feminist,” she says. “One, we get strong, physically strong, and in a society that still holds that women are the weaker sex, that still terrorizes us, that still holds the threat of male violence against us, that is a feminist stance. Two, we learn how good our bodies can feel, what our bodies can achieve, and in a society that still tells us that the most important thing is how we look, if women get in touch with how they feel, that is a feminist move. And three, we learn to trust other women and bond with women on a team, and in a society that still tells us that the most important thing is bonding with men, that is a feminist act.”

Of course there are some people, particularly on campuses, who believe that the increased emphasis on women’s sports is a horrific, misguided idea. To their minds, enforcing Title IX means the death of football and the downfall of male opportunity.

“The unfair and discriminatory . . . rules are creating anger and resentment among males,” writes Dale Anderson in the Wrestling Institute Newsmagazine, which is working hard to dismantle Title IX. “And those rules will have an extraordinary deleterious effect on our Olympic efforts and the character of our high school, junior high and grade school boys.”

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For the moment at least, Title IX is still intact and people are working the 1972 law. Female athletes are suing schools for alleged Title IX violations. Also, sports equity commissions are being set up across the country, and some politicians seem remarkably eager to play along.

“I’ve gotten calls from the Senate Democratic staff saying there are senators who want to sit on the commission,” says Betsy Brill, who has spent her life working for feminist causes and is coordinating the project in Illinois. “I’ve never been called [before]. I always have to pick up the phone and, like, beg.”

Still, the question remains: Will athletics really keep our girls in school? Will it keep them from getting pregnant and shield them from depression or the allure of drugs?

“Clearly having a structured activity and an awareness of your body leads to a positive effect on girls,” says Susan Bailey, executive director of the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College Center. “But at this point, the evidence is scattered and somewhat preliminary.”

So, for those who want hard data, go out to a park or a gym and watch a group of girls play. You may find girls who are giggly. You may find girls steadfast in wanting to make themselves strong. But sit a minute. Watch all the muscles. And ask yourself: Recreation or rescue? How is this not good?