Coaching Girls Guide: Ho to Get (and keep) Girls Playing: Strategies for Engaging Girls in Sport

This guide is designed to serve program leaders and coaches working to recruit and retain girls (and girl-identifying young people, especially those most likely to be excluded from sport). The goal of this guide is to help coaches create spaces that are more inclusive and welcoming for girls and other young people on the gender spectrum who are traditionally marginalized from sport.

Much of the research cited in this guide is focused on overcoming barriers that gils dace in bringing their whole selves to sport. And while we know that young people with diverse gender identities certainly face additional barriers to inclusion in sport, we believe that many of the lessons learned about coaching girls can dismantle some of those exclusionary practices in sport. When program leaders and coaches become more curious about how to pill more young people - especially girls and trans girls - into sport, we can move toward a system that welcomes all young people, not regardless of who they are, but because of who they are. This build from the Women’s Sport Foundation’s April 2019 Repot Coaching through a gender lens and the work of other researchers and practitioners in the field.

The guide takes learning and research, and translate them into actionable tools. These recommendations have come together based on a review of the research , and translates them into actionable tools. These recommendations have come together based on a review of the research on girls in sport, a convening of experts and leaders and tested coaching working in the field.