Exercise for teen girls prevents cancer later on

After the depressing NYTimes article about teenage girls who damage their knees (particularly) in competitive sports, I've had my eyes out for news that indicates that vigorous physical activity might have some offsetting benefits for this population.

I was glad to find a study cited that indicates that pre-menopausal cancers among women who had been physically active as teenagers are more than 25% less frequent than among women who had been sedentary as teens.

Here's the permalink to the article.

Perhaps there's a middle way that churches ought to consider -- especially for girls: something between encouraging/coercing girls to sit quietly with their hands demurely folded in their laps (this typically "churchy girl" behavior is correlated with increased frequency of cancer) and the other extreme, playing on three travel soccer teams simultaneously (this "girl jock" behavior causes increased risk of ACL tears).

The middle way is called "fun sports for teens", especially teen girls.

What's YOUR church doing about this? We would love to hear!

Good Grief! Another Episcopal Church Does Sports!

Well, after three years of thinking that our little parish church was the only church and sports game in town, so to speak, with our summer soccer program, I learned this morning that there is a parish church -- yes, a parish church in the Diocese of Connecticut, where we are -- that actually fields a cricket team.

That church is St. John's Stamford and I am glad to see they are doing this. After running through their website, however, I didn't see anything in terms of sports that they do for kids. (They do have kids in their parish; witness their Sunday school programs and their Christmas Pageant -- they just don't do sports with them.)

Now, having worked in Stamford for a few years, I can understand why St. John's does not have a soccer program. Stamford is a renascent small city on Connecticut's Gold Coast, and there are already plenty of opportunistic soccer coaches down there driving BMWs and lining their pockets. St. John's is located very close to Stamford Town Center, definitely a high-end mall. It's not your standard inner city parish. And they are also creative enough to host the Stamford Model Railroad Club in their undercroft!

But one does wonder if there isn't something, no matter how obscure, in the world of sports that a parish like St. John's could do for kids that would benefit both the young people of Stamford -- and St. John's as well.

By the way, thanks to The Coracle for this lead! At one time in my life, I found myself keeping score for cricket matches on Staten Island, so this resonated for other reasons as well. (Interesting that to keep score in cricket you don't need to know a silly mid off from a fast bowler, but that's another post.)

Girls and soccer...

The New York Times magazine section has a thoughtful article about injury rates in elite female athletes. It's long, but definitely worth reading. Here's the permalink to the article.

It seems to me that the last thing we want to do when introducing sports to church is provide yet another opportunity for girls to over-commit. There's a whole lot to say in favor of sports for kids being fun -- instead of a "do or die" phenomenon that the soccer industry has made it in many parts of the country.

People frequently ask me if I am planning on a future soccer team of Trinity Lime Rock players -- making our fun summer Sunday morning soccer into something more "serious".

My answer is an emphatic NO.

And our fourth summer of soccer starts in just a month!