News Coverage of Girls’ Soccer

Re: “Winning Is Business as Usual for the Stars,” March 1.

As a high school girls soccer coach in his second year who is also a science teacher and a parent of two students in the L.A. Unified School District, I have been amazed how difficult it has been to get The Times to print almost anything about girls soccer.

Witness the almost non-coverage of our league’s soccer season until the results of the 3A finals were reported. Oh yes, there was a bit about the excellent 4A Chatsworth team, but compared to the broad coverage of more traditional “American” sports, there was very little space given except to report the scores in superfine print.

That was until the front-page article about a 12-and-under girls club team well-financed by parents to the tune of $3,000 to $4,000 per year and sponsored by Lotto.

More girls are playing soccer than probably any other sport, yet the press continues to ignore the young women who are playing good-quality team soccer for their schools. I hope The Times agrees with me that for the sake of our community, it is both important and interesting to report the positive things young adults are doing, and that the message should not be that you need to do something negative, weird, be a super superstar, or have a corporate sponsor to obtain recognition.

JERRY SELIGA

Sherman Oaks

Seliga coaches at Birmingham High School