Michaela Walsh on why young girls don’t stay in sport

AROUND half of girls drop out of sport by the age of 13.
Michaela Walsh — arguably Mayo’s top athlete ‘pound-for-pound’ — was not one of them.
Until she was 18, she even found time to play Gaelic football for Swinford-Killasser and Mayo while making record-breaking shot put and hammer throws.
The reasons for girls dropping out of sport have never been studied closer.
A scan through the major studies identifies a few recurring reasons — fear of being judged, not considering themselves ‘sporty’, a lack of confidence and changing priorities.
Girls are also roughly twice as likely to stay involved with individual sports than team sports.
As a PE teacher in St Joseph’s in Foxford, Michaela Walsh sees it from every angle.
She has no simple answer to the problem but maintains that female role models are a vital part of the solution.
Role models like Katie Taylor, who is an icon of hers.
“I still love watching everything she does. I think it’s really important that the girls see that it is there,” Michaela tells The Mayo News.
As the most successful product of Swinford AC, she finds herself imitating the Bray boxing superstar in a small town in East Mayo.
When Taylor won gold in London in 2012, there was barely a shop in Wicklow with a pair of junior boxing gloves left in stock.
Likewise, Michaela has seen interest spike in her two events throughout the course of her own glittering career — from a starting point where there wasn’t even a hammer throw event at the Mayo competitions.
“You weren’t giving the athletes a chance to even just train before they went to the Connachts at an event. Now there’s huge interest in the hammer, huge interest in the shot,” she told The Mayo News recently.
At the same time, in her day job as a PE teacher Michaela sees first-hand the ‘huge dropout’ of sport in girls aged 14 and 15.
We ask her if it’s difficult to get girls of that age to participate in PE.
No simple answers here either.
“Obviously, depending on the student’s interest,” she explained. “You will have girls that are really sporty and girls that mightn’t be as interested. I think it’s just the whole thing about the look and just trying to get the whole image thing and the benefits of being active.
“Girls say, ‘I’m not good at sport’. But it’s just about being active,” she continues.
“Even just going for walks and stuff like that would do them so much better, even for studying and stuff like that. It’s amazing too to see the girls that would be good at sport at 13 or 14 and not in it at 16 or 17.”
That last part is worth contemplating.
It’s one thing to quit something because you’re no good at it.
But why give it up when you’ve got ability and talent?
“I think there’s just so much going on…especially in today’s world. There’s so much out there for young people in today’s society,” says Michaela.
“There’s so many social aspects, phones are more popular, there’s so many more apps on the phone. “Obviously if friends are going out, they want to go out and they don’t want to miss out on stuff like that.
“Sometimes it’s just not ‘cool’ to be able to train every day of the week and to be able to say ‘no’ to going somewhere because you’re training and stuff.”
Lads also drop out of sport in considerable numbers – Gaelic football and hurling being major offenders here.
Not to the same extent as girls though.
For that reason, Michaela Walsh believes that boys and girls ought to be coached differently.
“If a match doesn’t go their way, or they are pulled up at something at a match, they take it on the chin and the next day they have forgotten about it. Sometimes girls can be more sensitive to that sort of stuff,” she says.
“If you are a good coach to the boys, it doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good coach to the girls and obviously they just work differently.
“I think they need the support and sometimes if there’s just too much pressure and they are not in the right environment it’s just easier for them to drop out.
“Like a lot of them would look at, ‘Why would I keep going when I’m just not enjoying it at the moment’.
“So I just think it’s important that girls keep enjoying the sport. Even if it’s not competitively.”
In recent times, some female sports’ teams have chosen to revert to dark shorts or less revealing outfits to alleviate players’ concerns around body consciousness.
However, Michaela doesn’t believe athletics is putting off female participants in this regard.
“I think athletics is very good in terms of equality. I think the girls and the boys are treated pretty much the same. “Even in terms of advertisement and stuff I think it’s very equal,” she says.
“I think there’s great role models out there in the athletics scene and the image of ‘whatever works for you, works for you’. I don’t think the whole image thing is too much of a field event.”
Those words again, ‘role models’.
Michaela Walsh is certainly one of them.