Ana Flores recently graduated Kelly High School after four seasons on the soccer team, an accomplishment she’s proud of but one that took great effort — especially at home.
“Both my parents worked and my older brother worked,” said Flores, whose parents are from Mexico and expected her to help care for her 4-year-old brother after school. “I told them that I really wanted to be in (soccer). I kept telling them that we had to find some other way. I had to convince them so I found my aunt to take care of him.”
Determined to be an athlete, Flores conquered cultural traditions and financial struggles — the same hurdles that keep many minority girls off the playing fields.
Her teammate Deisy Cardenas, whose parents also are from Mexico, has a similar story. “My brother was in three or four different sports,” she said. But when Cardenas asked if she could play, “my mom was like, (soccer is) a boys sport. You stay home.'”
While there never has been a better time to be a female athlete, the law that has been so widely celebrated — Title IX — hasn’t helped everyone.
Girls of color have been left behind.
“There’s a huge disparity,” said Amy Skeen, president and CEO of the Chicago nonprofit organization Girls in the Game. “If you look at girls from urban areas (playing sports) compared to girls from suburban areas, it becomes quite apparent.”
There are many reasons for the disparity — economic, institutional, cultural — which has made sports a field of opportunity mainly for white females.
John Evans, coach of the Amundsen High School softball team, said his players notice that the best teams, which usually have access to better facilities and players who can afford more private training, often don’t look like his players, who are mostly Hispanic.
“A suburban team we played, there were 13 blond-haired, blue-eyed white girls and one Filipino,” he said. “Actually, one of the girls also had brown hair. The girls that go to those schools and make those teams are girls that have been playing since they’ve been ankle biters. They’ve been playing travel for three years before high school. It’s a completely different world.”
Most of the girls on his team, like many urban teams, are learning the sport for the first time as teenagers.
While the NCAA reports its athlete demographics, there is no law that high school or youth sports teams must gather information on the race of players. The latest large-scale study was conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 2007.And the numbers were telling.
In a study of high school sophomores, Caucasian girls participated in sports at a 51 percent rate, while 40 percent of African-American girls, 34 percent of Asian or Pacific Islanders and 32 percent of Hispanic girls played.
The numbers of African-American boys (51 percent) and Hispanic boys (44 percent) who play sports reveal that the issue isn’t solely based on gender or race but is related specifically to girls of color.
The trend continued at Division I colleges.
African-American women are underrepresented in all sports except basketball (51.9 percent) and indoor and outdoor track (27 percent), where they actually are overrepresented. Diversity is virtually nonexistent in sports such as lacrosse (87.3 percent white, 2.4 percent black, 1.7 percent Hispanic and 1.2 percent Asian) and swimming (81.1 percent white, 1.5 percent black, 3.1 percent Hispanic and 2.8 percent Asian).
“There has been some discussion and there needs to be more done about Title IX and disparities based on race, especially on female students,” said Neena Chaudhry, director of equal opportunities in athletics for the National Women’s Law Center. “I don’t know of anything addressing that point.”
At Kelly, which is 84.4 percent Hispanic in the Brighton Park neighborhood, Stan Mietus is the girls soccer coach. To stick it out for four seasons takes more than just putting up with his no-Facebook, no-boyfriend rules during the season.
“I’m very strict,” he said.
It also takes more than enduring 5 a.m. practices or traveling for all games to avoid nearby gang-infested parks and a shoddy field across the street from the school.
For many of Kelly’s female soccer players, it also takes financial sacrifice and sometimes bucking family tradition.
Most are first-generation Americans with parents from Mexico. And most are playing sports for the first time.
“Everything from A to Z is going to be taught,” said Mietus, who has worked at Kelly for 19 years. “In the past, I knew I had these girls four years. We developed them.”
Only two of 28 players who started on his team as freshmen still were playing last season as seniors. Eighty girls started on the team, for which Mietus never has made cuts, but almost 30 quit during the season.
“When I see kids not playing through their senior year, it really hurts me,” he said. “They’re missing the best time of their life.”
It’s a different world compared to many suburban — and often primarily white — teams where girls have competed on club teams and sometimes have year-round training from a young age to make competitive high school rosters and play in front of college scouts.
“Our parents are sacrificing so much,” said Mietus, who emigrated as a child from Poland with his mother. “There are single mothers and working parents. Not all the parents can show up (to games), but we’re still trying. If a player quits the team, the parents might not know. Suburban kids aren’t going to quit the team. Their parents have invested (money).”
Playing on a club team or travel team can cost hundreds of dollars. Add in equipment, travel costs and private lessons and families’ tabs could reach more than $1,000.
Many Kelly players said they were expected to hurry home after school to care for young siblings or take a part-time job to help the family’s budget.
Besides a financial hurdle, players often must break down traditional gender roles and stereotypes instilled in their culture.
“I asked my mom and she said, ‘Isn’t that for guys?'” said Edith Garcia, who will be a junior at Kelly in the fall and has played soccer since sixth grade. “She wanted me to join the cheerleading team. She wanted me to be more girly. That’s not me. We have some arguments. ‘Why do you prefer that manly sport?’ That’s what I want to do. She doesn’t get that I really like it.”
To help offset cost for financially strapped parents and to keep girls involved, coaches like Mietus at Kelly and Evans at Amundsen often pay out of their pocket for equipment and uniforms, let students pay them back throughout the season and host fundraisers.
“There’s no budget whatsoever,” Evans said with a shrug. “I used to work at a sporting goods store and have a close relationship with them. They get me a super cheap bargains and I pay out of my pocket.”
The obvious question is why don’t class, economics and school facilities affect minority boys the same way?
Culturally, boys of all races often are expected to play sports from a young age, but in many immigrant homes sons do not have the same obligations to household needs as daughters.
“There’s a tendency of putting blame on girls,” Skeen said. “‘She’s not interested. She doesn’t want to play.’ But what are the barriers that could be causing the disparity? There are so many obstacles.”
The issue is as much about social and economic class as it is about race and culture.
Some studies also show the effects of Title IX are tapering off.
The Women’s Sports Foundation cites studies that showed by 2010 girls participated in greater numbers than they had during the beginning of the decade, yet girls’ share of total athletic opportunities decreased compared with boys’ share.
Schools deemed as “upper tier” provided 52 percent athletic participation opportunities for girls (compared with 65 percent for boys), while “lower tier” schools provided 34 percent participation opportunities for girls (compared with 47 percent for boys), according to Women’s Sports Foundation.
It would seem targeting minority females and expanding opportunities for girls of color would be a prime spot to make up ground.
“Urban schools get a lot less funding than do suburban, town and rural schools,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Women’s Sports Foundation senior director of advocacy. “People of color living in urban areas are impacted by that. We tend to think sports participation is a function of demand. That’s just not true. Participation rates are a direct result of what’s provided.”
Title IX came into existence as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 to ensure equal opportunities in public education despite gender, but it does not mention race.
If an athlete or a sports team at a public institution were to challenge the inequalities of race and gender they would have to invoke Title VI, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on which Title IX was based. The law has nearly the same wording as Title IX but prevents discriminating based on “color, race and national origin” by government agencies that receive federal funds.
It’s trickier to apply Title VI to sports disparities among female athletes of color.
“You have to show the school is doing something intentionally that results in fewer (minority) girls being in (sports),” Hogshead-Makar said.
Title IX still could help equalize the disparity between white and minority female athletes as it is enforced better.
The High School Data Transparency Act would require high schools to report the numbers of females who play, athletic budgets and demographics of teams, according to the Women’s National Law Center. The act recently was included as an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in Congress.
The Illinois High School Association, like most state sports associations, does not track athlete demographics.
The lack of current data isn’t surprising to some.
“With technology the way it is today there’s no reason it’s difficult,” said Tina Sloan Green, co-founder of Black Women in Sport Foundation in Philadelphia. “They don’t want to do it because then people will see (the disparity and be urged to act).”
The inequality among female athletes is apparent at the college level not only because it’s easy to survey with the naked eye but because the NCAA released statistical data.
Female athletes of color make up 26.2 percent of the female student population but receive only 17.5 percent of total athletic opportunities. White female athletes comprise 68.5 percent of the female student population and receive 75 percent of total female athletic opportunities.
Access to these numbers helps advocates work for equality.
“You have to get statistics,” Sloan Green said. “It shouldn’t be that hard. You can eyeball that team and see how many people of color are on that team.”
The problem is hardly a simple one to fix.
Budget problems with many urban school districts, including Chicago’s, puts sports and other extracurricular activities on a back burner.
To create equality without an overhaul of the entire education system, an effort has to be made to reach girls of color at a young age, Skeen said.
Girls in the Game introduces fitness, sports, nutrition and healthy living to students in schools where the poverty rate is at least 85 percent. The outreach organization reaches about 3,000 girls every year and introduces them to sports and activities such as lacrosse, swimming, yoga and dance.
Sports opportunities for girls at urban elementary schools are scant, she said.
“It really has to start there,” Skeen said. “If you’re not growing up with access and opportunity to play sports, if you get to high school and there’s an amazing opportunity for girls, you’re already going to be out or at least not set up as well.”
The WNBA’s Sky host a fitness festival every season to introduce girls ages 8-18 to sports and physical activity, such as basketball, dancing and double-dutch jump rope and to provide positive role models for young females.
“It’s everybody’s responsibility,” Skeen said. “It needs to come from every direction.”
The benefits of females playing sports are well documented: reduced risk of breast cancer and diabetes, academic success, higher graduation rates, less drug use and fewer unintended pregnancies.
Most Kelly players won’t earn athletic scholarships, but that doesn’t deter Mietus’ goal for them.
“That’s something we tell them,” he said. “This might be the last time you ever play soccer, but everyone is going to college.”
That’s Garcia’s hope.
The benefits of soccer go beyond good health and solid grades for her. Playing, she said, has been life-changing.
“When I have a bad day at school, once I play soccer nothing matters to me,” Garcia said. “When I’m playing, I think it’s like being in heaven for me. I rush down to get dressed after school. When I start playing, something clicks.”
Twitter @sryantribune
