What's the Problem? - Adam Shanabrook

After reading this article and listening to class discussions this week, I believe that team sports should not be divided until a certain age and skill level, while individual sports should allow any athlete who wants to play and has the skill to compete.  I played many sports growing up, such as baseball, soccer, and basketball, and all of these sports were coed until we reached the age of 7 or 8.  At this age, boys start to become more physical and girls tend to focus more on technique.  This is where sport starts to change in aspect to gender because typically girls sports are more technical and focus on the skill of the game while boys sports typically are focused on the physicality of the sport.  In middle school, every once in a while we would scrimmage the girls team in basketball and we were told to be physical.  I remember one particular incident where we were playing the girls team and one of the boys had a hard foul on one of the girls and she ended up breaking her arm and ended her season.  This shows how boys and girls team sports are different because the girls were not accustomed to the physical nature of the boys game, one of them got hurt.  It is different though in individual sports, such as wrestling, golf, and tennis.  I feel that as long as the athlete has the skill level to compete,  they should be allowed to regardless of their gender.  There have been many success stories about women competing with and beating men at these sports because of their skill level.