Girls Play To Win Soccer

Sit back and enjoy – it’s “the beautiful game!” Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, and women are taking center stage. After years on the sidelines, women burst onto the scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Stars such as Mia Hamm brought the game to the masses in the ‘90s. Now it’s your turn. Grab a ball and get on a field. After all, the whole world is doing it! The history, the rules, and the heroines: these nonfiction accounts of women's sports relate the interesting insights of each sport, including the rules, game play, and standout athletes. Girls looking for role models as well as the "hows and whys" of their favorite game will find the answers in these fresh, accessible titles. Part history, part biography, and part instruction, Girls Play to Win allows readers to access "everything they want to know" about the game. More than an introduction, this series takes what is likely an existing interest and allows the reader to delve deeper. Content consultants are real-world experts that include Olympic athletes and coaches. Library Media Connection's Editor's Choice

Step to the plate and swing for the fences! Softball has grown from a spontaneous game to serious business. What began as an indoor ballgame is now one of the most popular women’s sports. Stars like Joan Joyce and Jennie Finch helped it get there. Now players such as Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott are leading the charge. Grab a ball, bat, and glove and get ready to join them! The history, the rules, and the heroines: these nonfiction accounts of women's sports relate the interesting insights of each sport, including the rules, game play, and standout athletes. Girls looking for role models as well as the "hows and whys" of their favorite game will find the answers in these fresh, accessible titles. Part history, part biography, and part instruction, Girls Play to Win allows readers to access "everything they want to know" about the game. More than an introduction, this series takes what is likely an existing interest and allows the reader to delve deeper. Content consultants are real-world experts that include Olympic athletes and coaches. Library Media Connection's Editor's Choice

"Many parents work more hours outside of the home and their lives are crowded with more obligations than ever before; many children spend their evenings and weekends trying out for all-star teams, traveling to regional and national tournaments, and eating dinner in the car while being shuttled between activities. In this vivid ethnography, based on almost 200 interviews with parents, children, coaches and teachers, Hilary Levey probes the increase in children's participation in activities outside of the home, structured and monitored by their parents, when family time is so scarce. As the parental "second shift" continues to grow, alongside it a second shift for children has emerged--especially among the middle- and upper-middle classes--which is suffused with competition rather than mere participation. What motivates these particular parents to get their children involved in competitive activities? Parents' primary concern is their children's access to high quality educational credentials--the biggest bottleneck standing in the way of, or facilitating entry into, membership in the upper-middle class. Competitive activities, like sports and the arts, are seen as the essential proving ground that will clear their children's paths to the Ivy League or other similar institutions by helping them to develop a competitive habitus. This belief, motivated both by reality and by perception, and shaped by gender and class, affects how parents envision their children's futures; it also shapes the structure of children's daily lives, what the children themselves think about their lives, and the competitive landscapes of the activities themselves"--

An introduction, in text and illustrations, to the techniques and strategies of soccer.

The book illuminates a wide range of key international issues in women's sport, such as cultural barriers to participation and the efficacy of political action. It is therefore essential reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology, culture

Rediscovering soccer's long history in the U.S. Across North America, native peoples and colonists alike played a variety of kicking games long before soccer's emergence in the late 1800s. Brian D. Bunk examines the development and social impact of these sports through the rise of professional soccer after World War I. As he shows, the various games called football gave women an outlet as athletes and encouraged men to form social bonds based on educational experience, occupation, ethnic identity, or military service. Football also followed young people to college as higher education expanded in the nineteenth century. University play, along with the arrival of immigrants from the British Isles, helped spark the creation of organized soccer in the United States—and the beautiful game's transformation into a truly international sport. A multilayered look at one game’s place in American life, From Football to Soccer refutes the notion of the U.S. as a land outside of football history.