Co-ed b-ball

[Mark Padgett]

Our local kids rec league is winding down for the season. Two more weekends to go. This coming Saturday morning I have two HS JV level games. We have a JV and a V program and the JV program is co-ed. We have eight JV teams, each with two girls on them. When we had registration at the beginning of the season, we hoped to have enough HS girls sign up to have a girls program, but only 16 girls signed up. We went to our JV teams and asked the coaches and the boys how they would feel about playing co-ed. They were all for it, although I think the boys thought they were going to get to share locker rooms.

Earlier this season, in one game, a boy went up for a jump shot and one of the girls on the other team had a clean block. For the rest of the game, his teammates would occasionally say to him in a "chanting" manner - "You got blocked by a guuurrrrrrllllll". Even the girls thought it was funny.

The nice thing is that the season turned out just fine. There's no problems with the boys being too physical or anything like that. They respect the girls and the games are fun to officiate. In fact, there's a situation with a boyfriend and girlfriend on opposing teams. They like to tease each other during play (and maybe on dates, too - I dunno).

Here's the really funny part, especially to someone my age. We've had a higher percentage of boys than girls needing to be told to remove their earrings.

This is the first year this happened and I'm looking forward to next season. Of course, we may have enough HS girls sign up to have a separate program (our 7/8 grade girls program is very solid) but if not, co-ed is just fine.