She Shoots, She Scores…2 Points !?! - That’s Coed Soccer
Those of you who have never played organized coed soccer (mixed football) will be surprised to learn that in some coed leagues (e.g. UC San Diego’s intramural leagues) your team wins 2 points when women score. First time I heard that (while playing one weekend in a coed 5 aside league in Santa Monica, CA) I was shocked and offended - until I took the field and saw that there was always at least one woman playing forward.
My admittedly casual research suggests that this rule is largely confined to “weekend warrior” leagues with a fair amount of inexperienced players (all coed leagues have rules about the ratio of 
men to women on the field, and ban or severely restrict slide tackles). Generally, when men and women are left to organize themselves, women end up in the goal and playing back. Put twenty two men and women on the field for a kickabout, and nearly every woman on a team will volunteer to play goalie before even half the men will have done the same. Regardless of experience, women will step into the box before men: This of course goes against all that people tend to think about femininity – the mentally and physically toughest position has got to be goalie, requiring a willingness to take ultimate responsibility, to confront attacks, to throw your body in the path of that attack. (An aside: Most people who used the uneven goal keeping at the World Cup to argue that ‘the women’s game will never be as entertaining as the men’s’ didn’t watch the final, and have never actually seen what women can do with just a fraction of the support and training available to their male counterparts. This was the subject of a great blog entry by David James. If you want to see a fierce woman goalie, check out the aptly named German keeper Nadine Angerer - best in the world - pictured above left successfully blocking a penalty from Marta in the last World Cup. ARGH.)
Anyway, among us amateur coed players, the division of labor that assigns women to the back four happens only because we all often place defense in the same category as washing dishes, and making the boys in the office a pot of coffee. Many men drift up, many women drift back in spite of themselves.
Personally, I started off playing defense and am still most comfortable with it – not because that’s where my limited skills lie, but because it’s the easiest role for me to play on a team. I like feeling helpful, supportive – I find it hard to put myself forward with the confidence of a goal scorer. I also like taking the ball away from people, I like the challenge, and I like the collaborative aspect of defense (you have to communicate with everyone else 
holding the line). I am a big Michelle Akers fan (pictured left, check out her autobiography) - there’s nothing like the level-headed, single-minded focus of a great defender to inspire a whole team. But if I don’t play up, I don’t learn if I can play up.
Anyway, leave it to social habit, and you’ll have co-ed games with men up front, and women on the back four: A bad idea with broken bones. Defense is really physical – especially when you have a lot of inexperienced players on the field, in an un-refereed game. You can take real beating – on average, guys are bigger, heavier, and have physics on their side. And, when you really get into the game, everyone forgets this – it’s hard to remember, “shit, if I really tackle him, I’m going to break my ankle”, or, “if I kick the ball as hard as I can at her, I might break her arm”. Fact is, in a good, hard game men and women play each other as people – we forget ourselves, and our differences - and unless everyone has a good skill level, there’s a lot of ugly tackling and dangerous play.
Furthermore, if you don’t have an outside mechanism pushing against habit, teams don’t play the ball to their own women players. People (men and women) on coed teams tend not to “see” women players – even when they are calling for the ball. This habit is harder to break than one might think.
THIS is why many lower-level coed leagues give women 2 points – not because it’s harder for women to score, but because without giving men and women a material incentive, neither gender will pass the ball to the women on the team, and neither team will place women on the forward line (even though, in the United States, many women playing in such leagues are more likely to have played competitive soccer through high school and college than their male teammates).
I learned the truth of this by playing on women’s teams after a long time of playing in co-ed situations. You get more time on the ball, and there’s also more pressure on you – you can’t drift in and out of the game. It’s both more fun (because you can play a lot harder against people your own size) and more stressful (because you are given more responsibility).
Interestingly, coed play is a relatively new idea here in the UK (see FA site statement about the topic and a 2006 Guardian story)- partly because there is so little out there for girls and
women in general. Girls can play with boys until they are 11 (the FA is experimenting with changing this), at which point they are disallowed from playing with boys (other countries, like Germany, allow girls to play with boys up to 17). There seem to be very few adult coed leagues out there - the whole idea poses some interesting challenges to the UK footie fan.
Coed soccer is harder to organize than single-sex soccer, but it has some real rewards - I think we learn a lot about each other, about collaboration, about the integration of differences into a team. I think it does us gals good to compete with and against men, and vice-versa. (See Honolulu Advertiser story about coed play - from which the image right was pulled.)
I played with friends in a weekly kickabout for four years in Los Angeles, and we never instituted 2-point rule - we’d never heard of it, and would never have entertained it. None of us would have stomached it - least of all the women. We work out the division of labor together - and over four years of playing together and processing what it means to keep the game mixed and open, we’ve built up a good sense of each other’s strengths, and how to create a game that gets everyone involved (like a three touch rule).
In a world in which sexism didn’t exist at all, in which it didn’t inform how men and women think about themselves and each other, no coed league would need that “2 point” rule – teams would choose their line-up by skill and size. Until that day arrives, however, I’m happy to hear guys shouting to their back 4: “Mark the girl! Mark the girl!”
First published at ‘From a Left Wing‘.
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Ahmed? Are you there, mate? This is an example of a post that ocould be “freshened up” with a soft-core picture. Instead, I’ve got to see *urrghh* a group of ordinary looking schmoes and schmoettes. Where’s a soft-focus picture of a half-naked Scarlett Johansson when you need one.
Fuck me if I don’t find 2 points for a goal scored by a woman to be offensive. Fuck me indeed. Fuck me good and hard and long and with chocolate sprinkles on top. Would a goal by a female striker shooting against a male goalie be worth more or less than one taken against a female goalie?
Err.. wtf is with your name man?!?!
Kyle, Ipanema is a district in Rio do janiero, you can figure out the rest.
fromaleftwing, our gym teacher used to make this rule up when we were playing football and none of them found anything offesive about it. Truth is that when you have a mixed team of boys a girls, the lads are less likely to pass to a girl because “she is not good enough.” Now I have seen occasions when the girls were good enough and much better than some of the boys, but for the most part, passing the ball to a girl was something you would do if you wanted to be sportive - without letting your teammates know - and give the ball back to the opposition.
I am not *that sexist, but really some girls, even some of the ones who play in leagues, do not give a cookie crumble about football and are just there to get a breath of fresh air or chat with friends who might be interested. It sounds really reasonable (the 2 point rule) and it is a good incentive to get the girl involved in the game and make an otherwise uninetersted person seem valuable to the team.
NB if she is actually interested and good at football, than she has something to gain, nothing to lose. Many players take pride in hearing opposition player shout at their teammates “mark the guy in red!” Now “mark the girl!” will be a compliment of sorts, not an insult.
Jennifer:
This was a very interesting article.
When I began to play, many years ago, in North America, all of our teams were co-ed. We didn’t have enough coaches to go around, and even at that age group (9 to 11) there was a peaceful coexistence. Actually, some of the girls were much better, and there wasn’t much bias in passing.
In Washington, DC, near the National Mall, there have been adult co-ed formal and informal leagues for a long time. One Spanish acquaintance once told me, “Steve, the women aren’t as technical as most of the guys, but in terms of fitness, they run circles around us.” Age ranges for these leagues were quite diverse.
From my own experience, co-ed football/soccer initiated from a young age was very beneficial to all concerned.
Regarding Steve & Andrei’s interesting points: The most serious female players don’t play coed.
Experienced and committed women players find guys annoying - some of our stereotypes about male players:
1. guys don’t pass the ball (or do so too late)
2. guys think they are better than they really are (and will pass to any guy on the field before they’ll give the ball to you - even if you are totally unmarked, standing in front of an open goal)
3.guys shoot too early or too wide/high
4. guys think that they can actually kick a ball so hard it will go through the person standing in front of them.
Regarding the grain of truth in stereotypes about us:
Women do like to chat - after training yesterday we talked for two hours about women’s football, the trickiness of coaching, about Lyon & Umea, Marta, and the world cup. So far it’s been really rare for us to talk about anything but footie.
It is totally true though that many women are more likely to ask their teammates about their lives off the pitch than many men - but I don’t think that means they are any less interested in football.
I’ll bet that some women play down how much they are into footie when talking with men, because it’s not properly womanly behavior.
Interestingly, you never see that 2 point thing used in coed youth leagues. It’s for low level adult teams that need to unlearn bad habits.
It’s great to hear about people’s experiences playing in amateur leagues - there isn’t that much out there about this side of life on the pitch!
Thank you Rachel for your intelligent comments.
I don’t have any problem with the two goal rule, seems perfectly fair, and it does good for the level of the play, although it’s not likely to work out in higher level leagues.
At the rec league level here in San Francisco you find a good smattering of women who are simply better technically than the men, but not as fast. Every team I managed to put together had at least one supremely good woman player who played up top, or central midfielder/attack, the olde number 10 position. Usually the really good women had just moved into town, I got lucky finding them, and then when they found a higher league they moved on, to all of our regret. The women who weren’t as good got a glimpse of what was possible, the guys got used to passing the ball to women, and in the meantime the team did really well.
If the women get two goals, then for sure there would be a woman on top all the time, and the other forward has to be a good passer, not a fancy dribble and clobber guy. I think it’s helpful for both the men and the women players. The reason that most folks are in a rec league is they can’t really handle the ball that well, so untangling the darn round thing from underneath your feet–and not losing the ball to the attacker–comes way before passing. Passing requires looking up, which means you have to know where the ball is without looking at it all the time.
If however, there is that extra incentive of two goals if the woman scores, the self-absorbed concern with “my ball” gives place to a real urge to keep control of the ball and pass it to the lurking woman going forward. Most guys have a hidden gallant streak, and dishing off the ball for a two goal score and making the woman the star of the game makes him feel like a white knight. Post-goal hugs a possible additional incentive. At the very least it’s two goals, even if the guy is just dying to score himself, and wasn’t so keen on passing off the ball to a girl.
In higher rec leagues maybe it would work that you must have a woman in an attacking position, it would get the same result of getting the women involved and having good passing without giving extra points to the woman. Indoors this would work really well.
I’ve seen the best women in the world here in San Francisco, the National Team, the Women’s World Cup, and the CyberRays, and anything that encourages women to get involved helps the sport at the top. An adult in a rec league is really unlikely to get miraculously good enough to play at a really high level, but if she has a good time, feels women and girls get respect, it’s likely she might have her daughters go out for the sport, and who knows how good they might be? Mom said she might be a goal scorer.. The next Michelle Akers, Mia Hamm, Marta?
Just to the moderator of this:
You’ve let us down by allowing the first comment to be included. As Rachel said, it’s inappropriate. How about just taking it off, it makes you as a moderator look inattentive and not not good at your job. Comments like that are unnecessary, and you can avoid it.
Oops, sorry, the intelligent comments were by Jennifer Doyle, not a mythical Jennifer.
Cheers to the real author!
Point 1:
Is it really sexist to suggest that it is blatantly unfair that a goal scored by a woman is worth double of one scored by a man? I’m all for encouraging equality of sexes on the pitch, but come on people… can’t you see that it leads to a “token” woman striker and fuck all besides?
I just can’t see how it’ll work.
At the rec league level, I can’t see how a man is automatically better than a woman. Anyone who’s keener than the “kickabout-on-a-Sunday” player would have attained a certain level of competence, technique and fitness. I can’t see how an average woman would be significantly worse off than an average man. And I REALLY can’t see how a team would be THAT disadvantaged to neccessitate a 2-goal rule.
If you’re talking about encouraging beginners in a football side, I’m for it. But even then, it’s too big an advantage. And why would you only encourage female beginners?
Point 2:
The comment to Ahmed was regarding one of Jan Naymier(?)’s articles. Ahmed Bilal likes inserting pictures of pretty girls, and one of the readers called him out about it.
It’s a sin, I admit, but I’d rather see a picture of a pretty girl than one of a team of weekend footballers.
Jennifer, regarding your point 1 of male stereotypes, I can asure you it is not prejudice. From my experience of playing footy with girls, they are much more likely to let the ball go at once than the ‘good’ guys. Just ask me.
But now let us put ourselves in a somewhat fictional situation: Girls are overall better than guys at football and we are playing coed football. Naturally, since girls are good, guys get 2 points for each goal scored, while girls get only one point. Now, pretending that the end score is irrelevant (as it often is in coed leagues, I presume), you find yourself in a two on one situation. You and a guy on your team against the opposition goalie. Do you pass, or do you score yourself?
Now imagine the excat same situation, but the end score is very, very important. Let’s say it is 2-1 to the opposition and it is the last minute of the game (the state final). What would you do then? (remember, the guy on your team is not certain to score, but you are).
I would score myself in situation two, but am likely to pass in the first one. Then again, I am not a girl.
Bob, you have to understand mate, the pictures are a part of the article. You cannot throw a picture of a playboy bunny in an article in which you are talking about sexism in football. Seriously!
Andrei, why not? Ahmed did it in Nayimer’s(?) “top losers of 2007″ article. And wouldn’t a picture of a playboy bunny be an elegant counterpoint to sexism in football? Meaning, that substituting one form of sexism (not passing to a girl because she’s a girl) for another (a girl scores double a guy) is comparable to a Playboy Bunny feeling “enpowered” by exposing her breasts for a whole lotta dosh. The Bunny gets financial security, an opportunity to advance in life, fame and social standing (of sorts), but trades in her dignity. Likewise with the women who score double. Yes, they get more of the ball and score more, but they LOSE because they’re no longer seen as genuine players, but seen as just a loophole to exploit.
That’s how I feel about it, anyway. I’m Ipanema Bob.
P.S. Kyle, Ipanema is a beach where Brazilians prance about in skimpy bathers. There’s a song “The Girl from Ipanema” which encapsulates that vibe. I’ll go further, but I don’t want to corrupt your impressionable young mind. You can do a much better job yourself with internet porn.
And I think it’s perfectly justifiable to stick pictures of pretty girls just about everywhere - inside school lockers, glove compartments, bedroom windows, bathroom mirrors, ceilings, floors, photo frames… so why no in an article about sexism in football? You might as well have something nice to look at while to contemplate equality on the playing field.
I believe the Voyager satellite has a CD of all the human tongues on earth, an atlas of the world, a Radiohead CD and a huge stack of Playboys circa 1980.
Great comments. I’ve noticed that gallantry thing - and benefited from it. There is nothing quite like a good passing exchange - I’m a lousy shot, so regarding Andrei’s question, I’d pass to the guy - not because in this theoretical game he’d get the 2 points, because I’m not likely to get the 1!
Women and men do have different patterns - I was just talking to a coach about how women coming into the game seem to have less experience “reading” the ball than guys. And I think it takes many of us gals some time to learn to look at the goal - to take risky shots.
Honestly, my posts are about football, including the post about that Man U party. The fact that when a woman writes in about sexism in football you get people like Ibanema Bob writing in wanting pictures of babes, and talking about everything in the posts except actual football goes right to the problem. I.B. has likely never actually bothered to really get to know women’s football - so, I’m especially grateful for the conversation with those of you who have, and have something to share about it.
And here’s a thought for the day: Olympique Lyon Ladies (who knocked out the normally overwhelmingly dominant Arsenal Ladies in the Champions L tournament) are not only professional, they train with the men in the days leading up to big matches. When they arrived at Gatwick, the men’s tourbus was there to pick them up. Cheers to Les Lyonnais! (Got that info from The Offside.)
JD
I found this article thought-provoking and well-written, thank you for posting it. It reminded me of my primary school days, when a couple of girls used to play with us, one of whom was vastly better than the huge majority of guys. She was totally accepted and if some idiot refused to pass to her because she was a girl, we’d all just converge on him and wrestle the ball away.
I actually think that within Ipanema Bob’s first comment there was an interesting point regarding varying points according to the gender of the goalie. If the “two points” rule is entirely based on the idea of encouraging boys to pass to girls, then the goalkeeping presence is largely irrelevant. However, I cannot but feel that within the rule survives a vestige of sexism since it departs from the notion that everybody thinks girls aren’t good enough. And despite David James’ honourable article, I still have yet to see a top class female goalkeeper who could hold a candle to the male ones.
I’ll bet Angerer can more than hold her own. She’s a monster.
That’s a very interesting article Jennifer.
I’ve been playing Indoor Co-ed soccer for over 3 years now at McGill University (Canada), where we actually call it Co-Rec (standing for “recreational” instead of “educational”, which when you think about it, sounds better IMHO). Because of field availability, the only time we organize a Co-Rec league is during the winter, when we play indoor 5 vs. 5 soccer. The rules are you need to have 2 guys + 2 girls + 1 goalkeeper (gender non-specific).
Well, not unlike the ‘girl-goal = 2 points”, when I first started 3 years ago there was this weird rule that in order for a goal to be scored, a girl had to touch the ball past the half line, otherwise the goal didn’t count. That to avoid having games of 3 vs. 3 played, where guys didn’t pass to the girls at all. Personally I thought it was a very stupid rule, and when I became the league coordinator, we decided to remove it.
As it turned out, the fear guys wouldn’t “use” the girl players was completely unfounded, and the rule change allowed to have much more entertaining games, where girls were actively involved. In fact (though it will come as no surprise to you since you’ve lived in North America) girls in Canada are usually quite skilled when it comes to playing the beautiful game, so “passing it to them” has never been a problem these last years.
Based on what I just said, you can guess what my opinion will be on the “girl scores = 2 points” rule. As Ipanema Bob pointed out (I can’t believe I’m quoting the guy who wrote the first post
), the implicit statement you’re making by adopting the rule is that “girls are no longer seen as genuine players“, they are judged to be “a handicap”. In my opinion, much in the same way as girls shouldn’t expect preferential treatment during a match (e.g. will I personally shy away from a rough, but legal, challenge just because my opponent is a girl? No I will not… because if the girl has got true skills, she can’t just expect I’ll let her run around unopposed), they shouldn’t be considered “wild cards” who are worth 2 points instead of 1.
Now, while I can certainly value the advantages of the rule (which you outlined, such as for instance players feeling more motivated to put girls into striker positions) in leagues where the girl-guy technical disparity is huge, I believe that it is entirely up to the female players to rise up to the challenge, and bring the game to our (the men’s) level. It’s the best way for them to improve I think.
At McGill, ball’s in your court girls.
Great article!
At my university, we don’t have two point rules for soccer. For American football, flag rules, teams receive 8 points instead of six when a women scores or throws the touchdown pass, two more than a man.
I like playing soccer with women; we won intramurals at my university last year, and the winning goal was off a pass that I delivered to my friend, and she hammered it home for the win. They are just as capable and it is enjoying to play with the opposite sex.
What’s this thing about referring to me in the third person? I’m not a reference, people. I’m flesh and blood like the rest of you. Unless of course, you’re snootily disregarding my obviously odious presence - but still discussing my points, which is a pretty fucked up way of doing it.
Anyway, Jennifer, I’ve got to call you up on something from that Man Utd post from your aleftwing blog. I haven’t followed the Jon Evans rape claim, so I don’t know if it’s real, false, or still under investigation. Still, you made a comment that you would passively condone (my words) a false rape claim if the women felt she’d been offendeded by boorish behaviour from troglodytes. That’s really, really wrong. It’s hard enough for genuine rape cases to be proved without having the waters muddied by false claims. Plus the obivous fact that there’s a distinction between criminal behaviour and just acting like a complete and utter fuckwit.
Anyway, I think the whole “pretty-girl-on-the-blog” issue is being taken out of context. Please refer to the “Biggest Losers of 2007″ article by Jan Nayimer(sic), and pay attention to the exchange between Ahmed Bilal and Frankie. I didn’t start it; I just like stirring the pot.
Anyway, I’m Ipanema Bob.
Given the points that have been made before that girls which take football seroiusly do not play with guys and that girls from Canada (well, Marco meant to say Montreal - home of McGill University), there is a little correlation I can make to something which has happened to me last year.
I was part of a very strong team in my high school intermural soccer tournament which blew past everyone into the final, only to meet there a team which consisted of girls like the kittens that Jennifer mentions on an article on her blog (http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.com/2007/12/hugs-on-sexism-hollywood-uniteds-sister.html) which got to the final in similar fashion.
After a tight game, we lost fair and square on penalties. They were better than us and it was gard to believe. I have not underestimated girls playing football since and I am not about to give a girl a right to score 2 points per goal until I have seen her play.
Anyway I hope that guys who typically think very little of girls when it comes to sports read this and understand it. Or maybe it would be better if it happened to them. Changed *my perspective on girl footballers.
PS. I had only seen one of the five girls play football beofre we played them.
PS2. I should have sent this to Marco’s writing competition, but I didn’t think of it in time.
Bob…
No pretty pictures for this one, some other time maybe.
Jen - loved the article, but I’ve already told you that.