National Girls & Women in Sports Day

        National Girls and Women in Sports Day held its 26th annual celebration this Saturday all around the U.S.  Even at Skidmore we had a clinic for young girls to try out every sport offered here at Skidmore.  Every team ran its own station and the energy in the gym was tangible.  Girls from 3rd grade to high school were there to experience was it is like to be a woman athlete.  The girls participating all day long managed to enter every different sports' station with just as much excitement as the last.  Their willingness to learn new disciplines like how to hold a field hockey stick, versus how to spike a volleyball was outstanding and gave me a new hope for the future generations.

        All around the US, women celebrated this day by running all female road races, just working out and doing something you love with other women, or by running clinics like the one at Skidmore.  The theme this year is Title IX at 40: In it for the Long Run.  Title IX was introduced in 1972 stated that, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance...”.  This statement allowed women to start participating in sports at school just as much as men.  

       National Girls and Women in Sports Day is important to women around the nation because it represents the power of women in the world.  I believe that girls' sports are just as important as boys' sports for extracurricular activities.  It amazes me that a law had to be passed in order for girls to have the same opportunities in athletics as boys.  Though I am grateful to be living in a world where we can live in equality automatically.  Earlier, stronger generations of women made that possible for us.