Coalition helping at-risk girls of Buffalo
Basketball program at UB among first G.A.L. activities planned for urban teenage girls

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

Kathryn Neeson noticed that although sports participation has been found to have many academic, health and social benefits for young people, there are few such opportunities for urban girls, particularly those from low-income families.

So she did something about it.

In January, Neeson, a UB alumna, formed a coalition of concerned professionals who have a special interest in working with young city girls. Together, they founded G.A.L.-the Girls Athletic League of Buffalo-and so far have developed two girls' basketball programs, one at Mount Mercy Academy and a second at UB.

Neeson says G.A.L. directors hope that these programs are the first in a network of ongoing citywide, multi-sport camps for girls conducted in safe places and in a multicultural atmosphere.

The UB camp, which will serve girls ages 9-12, will begin Monday and run through July 30 in Clark Gym on the South Campus.

Besides coaching and instruction by members of the UB women's basketball team, the camp will offer workshops and presentations by Preventionfocus, Inc.-Buffalo's largest adolescent prevention/intervention agency-designed to help strengthen the girls' potential and skills, and enlarge their vision. Faculty and students of the Department of American Studies also will make presentations designed to promote understanding of multicultural issues and of the social, economic and cultural issues that will affect the girls' futures.

Camp is expected to be fun and instructive, with T-shirts, free breakfast and lunch, workshops, trophies, equipment and a closing ceremony and party. The reason for its establishment, however, is serious business, indeed.

"The girls of Buffalo and Lackawanna are in peril," says Neeson, who currently heads a counseling unit at Preventionfocus.

"They have the highest teen pregnancy rate and infant mortality rate in the entire State of New York, and U.S. Census figures indicate that 40 percent of them live at or below the poverty line."

Neeson points to extensive research, including a study co-authored by former UB sociologist Kate Miller, that has found that girls who participate in sports and other extracurricular activities are considerably less likely to drop out of school and less likely to become pregnant in their teen years. They also perform better academically than their non-involved peers.

Miller's study found that teenage female athletes were more likely to be virgins (54 percent) than their non-athlete peers (43 percent) and reported fewer sex partners overall. She also found that white, black and Hispanic athletes all showed significantly reduced rates of pregnancy.

It is also the case, Miller contends, that sports changes the way girls think about themselves and their bodies. Previous studies have demonstrated that teen girls who play sports are better students and have higher self-esteem than girls who do not.

"We speculate that through regular athletic activity, teenage girls come to see themselves as "doers" instead of just observers," Miller says. "They're less passive in other parts of their lives, too. They accomplish a great deal that isn't related to how they look, how they dress and what boys think of them."

Adds Neeson: "Years of research indicates a causal relationship between extracurricular activities, including sports, and a host of academic and social benefits. But we have woefully neglected our girls in this regard.

"Our community offers many and varied recreational activities for boys," she points out, "while girls are not offered the same opportunities.

"G.A.L. was founded to address this need. We want to promote athletic skill and build the girls' spirit and identity. This in turn, we hope, will influence their school attendance, pregnancy rates and overall growth and development."

Neeson says this is the perfect time for this effort to begin-on the coattails of the U.S. women's soccer team's victory in the World Cup and the rising interest in women's sports.

"This is very exciting for all of us," she says. "We hope some time in the not-too-distant future, our girls will be walking down the streets of Buffalo wearing G.A.L. attire and a new sense of self-awareness and self-esteem.