They’ve Got Game

A year after taking aim at municipal sports programs where boys outnumbered girls by more than 4 to 1, the city of Los Angeles has significantly boosted female turnout for its basketball, volleyball, soccer, and other youth teams.

In 1999, 39% more girls joined city-run sports programs than the year before, according to Department of Recreation and Parks statistics. The increase far exceeds the 10% benchmark city officials set for Year One of the so-called “Raise the Bar” program, an initiative designed to draw more girls into athletics.

The push came in response to a high-profile federal lawsuit filed by a girls softball league that had been forced to migrate among shabby fields while boys leagues enjoyed home games in lush ballparks. The 1998 suit, which may still go to trial if a settlement package falls apart, prompted city officials to embark on a vast consciousness-raising of sorts, launching dozens of girls’ sports clinics, churning out armfuls of posters, and dispatching recreation center directors to daylong training sessions, all in the name of gender equity.

“The message is that girls are just as important as boys in sports programming,” said Councilman Mike Feuer, who led the charge to overhaul the department’s policies. Until the girls league complained about inequities, he said, “I think that most of us were simply unaware of the deficiencies.”

The gains in female participation happened all over the map, from a 32.8% increase in the San Fernando Valley to a 51% rise in the recreation department’s Pacific region, which includes the Westside, parts of Hollywood, South-Central and Watts. The Griffith-Metro area, spanning the eastern end of the city from Hancock Park to Eagle Rock, saw a 32.2% jump, according to department records.

Overall, the surge amounted to 4,144 more girls involved in city-run sports last year than the year before.

“The preliminary numbers that we’re seeing are very encouraging,” said Rocio Cordoba, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the girls softball league.

“Our concern is that these kind of efforts are implemented citywide and that they are implemented consistently,” she said, adding that the ACLU would like to see more clinics and workshops aimed at girls.

Despite the increase, girls have a long way to go before their participation matches that of boys. In 1998, only 19.3% of the 54,665 children playing sports in city programs were girls. Last year, 66,058 youth joined city teams, and 22.3% were girls.

Guided by an inch-thick Raise the Bar manual created by recreation officials, the program has included everything from posting girls-only bulletin boards at the city’s 165 recreation centers to recruiting female mentors to coach girls.

One example is L.A. Kids, a federally funded sports initiative aimed at low-income children. In the past four months, L.A. Kids has sponsored girls softball and basketball clinics taught by professional coaches at almost a dozen recreation centers in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

“There is a lot of interest,” said Steve Vollmer, the program’s supervisor. “The girls like the fact that they can come to their local recreation centers and not have to deal with competition or intimidation from boys. Once they see their friends involved, they want to play too.”

Cheryl Gray, director of the Normandie Recreation Center in Mid-City, said girls were especially impressed by the clinic’s female coaches, who showed them the possibility of winning sports scholarships to attend college.

“We have women coming out talking to the girls, and not only are they role models for sports, they’re role models for life,” Gray said. “They’re success stories.” Across the city in suburban Woodland Hills, the accelerated push for girls sports found Anna Rubin racing down a basketball court last week with her friends, the Studio City Starzz. The team got started when two girls, encouraged by their local recreation center director, rustled up some eighth-grade classmates at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood.

The Starzz, a squad of honor students wearing ponytails and braces, hasn’t won a game yet, but nobody seems to mind. “Just getting together and passing the ball around is fun,” Anna said during a break on the sidelines.

Chuck and Kathy Miller, a Sherman Oaks couple rooting for the Starzz, haven’t missed one of daughter Jessica’s games.

“It’s more fun than watching some 8-foot-tall person slam dunk the ball,” Chuck Miller said. “They are getting more aggressive and they’re not afraid to make mistakes.”

Citywide, the recreation department has hired three new training coordinators to help with “Raise the Bar” and ordered seven vans to shuttle girls to events, said Marilyn J. White, the supervisor who oversees the effort.

Recreation center directors are now required to submit monthly “gender equity” reports, and in March the department plans to formally certify each center for compliance.

“It’s great to see the excitement in the girls’ eyes and the parents’ eyes,” White said. “We’re starting to see those rewards. It’s been a major undertaking to turn this ship around.”