Nike is taking strides forward to encourage girls to stay engaged with sports this year. The athletic brand has partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport to launch a new free digital resource for coaches, Coaching HER.
Coaching HER features seven modules, each with practical tips for coaches to encourage young girls to stay in sports. Each module incorporates issues from youth sports that impact girls’ experiences on sports teams — and aims to increase coaches’ knowledge of gender bias and overcome stereotypes to prevent drop-out rates.
Athletes in Nike’s Made to Play program.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Nike
The program’s sections are based on 2021 data conducted across 21 workshops with coaches and young female athletes in France, India, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. During the surveys, coaches discussed how they perceive, evaluate and coach girls, while girls similarly discussed their experiences being coached. Together, this information was analyzed by the Tucker Center and used to create each module, aiming to challenge assumptions when it comes to coaching girls.
Athletes in Nike’s Made to Play program.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Nike
Within the program, the Tucker Center also utilized research from its 2018 report analyzing how girls’ gender bias can cause them to drop out of sports — historically by the age of 14, twice as often as boys. The highest rate of drop-off from girls in sports often occurs between the ages of 11 to 17, the range when girls feel the most pressured to conform to identities shaped by their peers and adults — which includes coaches. The report emphasized that how a girl feels about her coach is essential to determine if she will continue to play organized sports in the future.
Coaching HER is the latest entry in Nike’s Made to Play program, a larger guide that aims to keep girls active within the brand’s larger gala of 50% female participation in its community programs by 2025. Previously, Nike launched Made to Play in 2020 — including a Made to Play Coaching Girls Guide with We Coach — to increase children’s physical activity and interest in sports.
Athletes in Nike’s Made to Play program.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Nike
