On Sunday, May 4, Piedmont Recreation Department hosted the 4th annual Play Like a Girl+ event at Witter Field. The event featured 29 individual stations, featuring more common sports like basketball, football, soccer, and tennis, as well as offering less common sports like roller derby and skateboarding. Other organizations, like the Women’s Coaching Alliance, also had booths. Being offered for the first time were powerlifting, water polo, gymnastics, and mountain biking.
While the event is hosted in Piedmont, it is open to anyone, and admission is free.
“The idea is to show that just because you never felt like a runner or a softball player, doesn’t mean there’s not something you’ll connect with,” said Communications Program Manager Echa Schneider, who directed communications for the event.
The Recreation Department hoped that the event would help girls not just from Piedmont, but the wider East Bay.
“Never once did we think ‘this is only going to be for Piedmont,’” said Piedmont Rec. Department Recreation Supervisor Eva Phalen.
Over 1,000 people attended, with 1,000 pre-registering and 200 registering on the event day.
While a majority of attendees were from Piedmont or Oakland, people came from farther away places such as Alameda, San Francisco, and Sacramento, Phalen said.
Play Like a Girl is part of Piedmont Rec.’s strategy for increasing female athletic participation and having an equal percentage of boys and girls who play sports.
“[Play Like a Girl] really came out of realizing we have girls who want to play sports, we have organizations that always say ‘We need more girls in our sports,’ let’s get them in front of each other,” Phalen said.
The creation of Play Like a Girl was also influenced by state legislation.
“There’s this law called AB2404, and it’s the Title IX equivalent within Parks and Recreation,” Phalen said. “So when my supervisor, Shelly Putzer, and I found out about this and we looked at each other with these big eyes and said ‘Uh oh, we’ve got some work to do.’”
Before the Rec. Department began trying to even out sports participation, it was much more difficult for girls to get involved in sports.
“When Catey McCreary was inducted into the [Piedmont High] Hall of Fame, she gave an amazing speech about growing up in Piedmont at a time when there was not equal access to sports for girls,” said Play Like a Girl Parent Volunteer and Piedmont Mayor, Betsy Smegal Andersen. “She had to play on boys’ teams to get playtime for soccer and baseball.”
Mayor Andersen expressed how happy it makes her feel that times have changed in Piedmont.
“It’s just wonderful now that we have water polo and we have flag football. When I was growing up, we had Powder Puff, which was one game a year where the girls were allowed to play,” Andersen said. “Now, girls can play flag football, as a season, as a sport. It’s wonderful.”
