Book description
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.
"Warrior Girls brings alive the reality
that our daughters are suffering from an epidemic of devastating
sports injuries that can be prevented with exercise programs." -
Mehmet C. Oz, M. D.
Michael Sokolove is a contributing writer for
The New York Times Magazine and the author of Hustle: The
Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose. He lives in Bethesda,
Maryland, with his wife and their three children.
