It seems that the list keeps growing...In the past 2 weeks we have come
across 4 girls who have been told by their schools that because they are
still considered ''physically inmature'' meaning they have not yet started their
menstruation they do not qualify for school varsity sports at the age of 13. We
called the women's Sports Foundation and spoke to an intern there who said that
this question had coincidentally had been raised 3 days before my call and that
they were going to be reviewing the facts. Unfortunally the person who is
intersted in this very same issue is out of town at the moment so I have not
been able to contact her personally. One intern there gave me the names and
numbers of the NY State Public High School Athletic Counsul and the Physical
Education Dept in the NY Dept of Education. On both instances I spoke to two
men: one of who said to me that ''although this regulation came about around
1972 he thought it was a very sound one'' and that he was sure the people
(Doctors) who recommended it knew what they were doing after extensive
research... the other, the Director of the Athletic dept for Public High
Schools told me that ''he has had a good experience with the regulation
because it had never affected his daughter and his daughter was now grown
up'' I told him that it was peculiar that I had only have had experience
with this issue for a couple of weeks and that i had already had a sour taste
in my mouth since i can now add another girl to the list because last friday
I happned to have found out about a 12 year old girl who made the State
soccer team but was not allowed to play varsity soccer in her school !!! he
also said that the doctors who came out with this recommendation knew what
they were talking about and that really got me going because I said that i
was sure none of them were women...because after all I had been a girl/woman
all my life and i could NOT think of ever feeling that I could Not be
physically active because of that. I think that having these conversations
was a bit humiliating !!!!! how does a woman go up to a virtual stranger
(male0 and begin to defend this rather intimate aspect of her life with
''personal illustrations'' just so that a man can be reminded that after all
regardless of what a group of doctors may say about menstruation women have
MUCH to say about it ?? I think that there are a great deal of boys and
girls being affected by the total absurdity of this and that again, girls are
probably more affected by it since it is them the ones already at a
disadvantage in sports. I believe that this question deserves inmediate
attention. One of the guys said that ''I should go and pass this
information'' to all the schools !!!!!! like they are not the ones siting
there collecting the paycheks !!!!! I should be the one
in charge of this ????
Lesemann
C123S105L@aol.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 04 2000 - 12:33:27 EST