Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports

By Michael Sokolove

Book Overview

Amy Steadman was destined to become one of the great women's soccer players of her generation. "The best of the best," Parade magazine called her as she left high school and headed off to the University of North Carolina. Instead, by age twenty, Amy had undergone five surgeries on her right knee. She had to give up the sport she loved. She walked with a stiff gait, like an elderly woman, and found it painful to get out of bed in the morning. Warrior Girls exposes the downside of the women's sports revolution that has evolved since Title IX: an injury epidemic that is easily ignored because we worry that it will threaten our daughters' hard-won opportunities on the field. From teenage girls playing local soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and other sports to women competing at the elite level, female athletes are suffering serious injuries at alarming rates. The numbers are frightening and irrefutable. Young female athletes tear their ACLs, the stabilizing ligament in the knee, at rates as high as eight times greater than their male counterparts. Women's collegiate soccer players suffer concussions at the same rate as college football players. From head to toe, female athletes suffer higher rates of injury, and many of them play through constant pain. Michael Sokolove gives us the most up-to-date research on girls and sports injuries. He takes us into the homes and hearts of female athletes, into operating theaters where orthopedic surgeons reconstruct shredded knees, and onto the practice field of famed University of North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance. Exhaustively researched and strongly argued, Warrior Girls is an urgent wake-up call for parents and coaches. Sokolove connects the culture of youth sports -- the demands for girls to specialize in a single sport by age ten or younger, and to play it year-round -- directly to the injury epidemic. Devoted to the ideal of team, and deeply bonded with teammates, these tough girls don't want to leave the field even when confronted with serious injury and chronic pain. Warrior Girls shows how girls can train better and smarter to decrease their risks. It makes clear that parents must come together and demand changes to a sports culture that manufactures injuries. Well-documented, opinionated, and controversial, Warrior Girls shows that all girls can safeguard themselves on the field without sacrificing their hard-won right to be there.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743297555
• ISBN13: 9780743297554
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

the Walking wounded...vs Its all in the game...

Girls/women wreck their knees EIGHT TIMES as often as boys/men in team sports. Are you stunned by that? I am. DOnt let your daughters become athletic has beens by 18 and candidates for knee replacements because of poorly designed and monitored training. This book shows what is an overwhelming need for girls and women to train smarter, rather than tougher, (what else is new?? :-) to avoid the incredible injury rates they incur in sports and military training. No matter what anyone fears about women "measuring up" to males, we all "know" females are built differently from males and deserve to be trained in ways that they can continue to achieve their personal best. The author refers to a program from the Santa MOnica Orthopaedics clinic that appears to be reducing injury rates by improving balance and running mechanics for females. [...] check this out with whoever coaches your kids.

Warrior Girls

This book is highly recommended to all the young ladies and their parents involved with soccer. It is very interesting to learn that we have all forced these new expectations on what we all believe is necessary to succeed. It would be doubly interesting to hear from the Mia Hamm's and Brandy Chastain's of this world as to what our girls should be doing realistically since it appears that when these ladies were in the spotlight, double practices where not required by coaches.

Wish I'd found this book 6 months ago

My daughter recently tore her ACL playing soccer at the club level. She was a freshman in HS, at the time. I wish I had come across this book before that fateful day and not a month after. Warrior Girls is well-written, well thought out, and well-researched. The first chapters are grim with cautionary tales of promising female athletes who were forced to give up their dream of a career in sports because of serial injuries. Fortunately, as the book progresses, the author passes on information about research that is being conducted and prevention programs that are being adopted for the prevention of these serious, debilitating, and purposely ignored injuries to our teen-aged daughters! My daughter's surgeon told us it is very unlikely that she will tear her ACL again. However, after reading this book, I've learned that my daughter my have a pre-disposition to knee injuries and without some sort of training and prevention program, she may likely do it again! More parents and coaches should be aware of the terrible risks to our daughters' health and sports careers and insist that schools and clubs institute an injury prevention program. A must-read for parents, coaches and club-directors!

Protect your daughter and save her health!!!

This book will help you protect your daughter from over zealous coaches. It's an incredibly interesting story. It's wonderful that girls are able to participate in sports like never before. It's not wonderful when they're on the sidelines in crutches. This book will show you how to prevent your daughter from becoming an injury statistic. It will empower parents who are not familiar with the modern sports culture to protect their children. You'll learn how to recognize when your child is doing too much and a coach is demanding too much. It's a wonderful story and very interesting to read.

A must-read for soccer dads and moms

Girls are suffering ACL injuries (which can take as much as year to recover from) at an alarming rate in soccer games and similar sports. Sokolove reviews the evidene about these injuries and suggests valuable training reforms that might spare these girls from such devastating injuries. This is a "must read" for any dad or mom whose teenage daughter is in competitive soccer, basketball, lacrosse, or similar sport.