Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: The Team Girl

FIFA Women’s World Cup is having massive positive impact on girls all over the country. It’s telling girls they are powerful. That what they do is exciting. That the world is watching them. And when the world is watching, it’s watching them for their skill. Women in sport are exciting and commanding massive audiences. I’m not even a soccer fan and even I’ve tuned in to watch these brilliant women kick a ball. Girls all over the county are watching themselves at the centre. They’re seeing their Dads watch women’s sport. They’re seeing women play harder and better than any boy they know. Shit, I’m so inspired I’ve considered signing up with the over 16s, and I have sciatica. 

Today, half of all Australian girls play team sports at least once a week. Clearly not in my family of four girls where I really only managed to get one.  Not for the want of trying I might add. I love team sport. I’m one of those annoying mums that gives the ‘you really should be playing team sport’ lecture in the car about once every two weeks. I know the facts. Like girls who play team sports are less likely to experience an unintended pregnancy. I’m not sure if that’s because they aren’t interested in sex, or if they realise hanging out with boys isn’t as much fun as a weekend with the netball girls, or that they’re just more confident going to the chemist and buying a box of condoms. It also gives you lower levels of depression and boosts your immune system. Apparently, girls who play sports are less likely to get chronic diseases later in life. ‘You should play team sports because otherwise you might grow up and get cancer or diabetes.’ This is sounding like desperate Mum manipulation. 

I am pitching the whole ‘team sports – you won’t get pregnant’ thing to my daughter and I can see she has glazed over. Then I hook back into my own lived experience. I talk about how much I loved playing team sport. How I played basketball and ended up playing for Queensland. How good it felt to be on the court and not just be there for me and my personal performance, but with the other girls. How we learnt to play as a team, not just individuals, and that girls that wanted to showboat instead of showup and collaborate got pulled into line. We learnt the most important lesson in life – when to pass the ball. People who don’t know how to pass the ball suck. I have met a lot of people in my life who can’t pass the ball. They are what we used to call on the court ‘ball hogs.’ So I say to my daughter ‘you don’t want to be a ball hog.’ She says ‘I don’t care. I don’t like team sport and you can’t hog the ball if you don’t even want the ball.’

Oh no. You have to want the ball. That’s the first rule of sport. Shit – it’s the first rule of life. You have to want the ball. My daughters don’t want the ball. Have I failed? How can a woman who wants the ball raise daughters who don’t want the ball? How do you instil hunger for the ball in a kid who doesn’t care? So I throw balls when my daughter is least expecting it. Like when she’s sleeping. And I realised that she’s right, she really doesn’t want the ball. 

I don’t believe her. And as a mother I really don’t want my daughters to experience unwanted pregnancies or chronic illness so I say ‘maybe you haven’t found the right sport?’ So we try lots of sports. Netball. Basketball. Soccer. Netball again. But no, she’s really not into it. But I am. I don’t give up easy. I’m really hoping the Matildas work their magic. I drive past sports fields on the weekend and watch sweaty teenage girls piling into their parents’ car with envy. I imagine them later confidently lining up at the chemist buying condoms. And I think, you go girls. You got this.