Girls' Sports in the Dominican Republic

When I was in elemetary school, I played recreational soccer for years on a boys team at Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Kentucky. We'll have to double-check with my Dad, but I think the reason why I played for the "Steamers" (We wore all black uniforms... maybe 'cuz we'd steam them to the ground? Don't know...) was because there was no girls' team out there to play for at that point. I believe I started playing with other girls when I got into middle school.

If you can imagine, today in the Dominican Republic there are even FEWER girls soccer teams (sports of all kinds for girls, really!) than when I was in elementary school over 20 years ago. When I mention to people that I coach a "equipo de fulbol de hembra," most people kind of laugh to themselves and shake their heads... but my little team is up to 22 girls now, 75% of which come from barrios where they only have electricity about 3-4 hours/day. There is one other girls team that I know of that we could play against, but that's it.

That said, you have to imagine my delight when I got a phone call last week from the Carol Morgan International School that has a varsity girls' soccer team. Because they are so few girls' soccer teams in the DR, this team travels to Venezuela, Haiti, Trinidad and Puerto Rico to compete. Basically, the school is made up of very wealthy Dominicans and embassy kids who have already traveled the world. The team captain had come to a few of our practices and wanted to know if we could do a joint practice and if they could show the girls a few new things.

Without hesitation, I said YES... and the next thing I knew we were boarding the Carol Morgan air conditioned bus and on our way to their private school soccer fields. Although I was somewhat nervous that the wealthy girls might be weird around my girls and do the whole "Oooh, they're so cute and it's so sad that they're poor" thing, I had prayed about it a lot over the course of the week and was ready to treat all of the girls equally, with respect and encouragement.

Much to my delight it was an awesome morning of practice, as the girls loved playing together and were very encouraging to each other. There were a few older girls on my team who took the Carol Morgan girls "to school" if you will... but for the most part, the private school girls taught technique and gave my girls a more disciplined example to hopefully follow. We plan to do the whole thing again in May.