September 7, 2006

By Lauren Heaton

Regardless of whether they are girls or boys, all of the players on the FC Springs U-13 traveling soccer team are excited to play in this year’s recreational league. But when competition in the Miami Valley Youth Soccer Association league begins this Sunday, Sept. 10, it may be only the boys who are permitted to play.

According to Jim Hardman, who helps coordinate youth soccer in Yellow Springs, the MVYSA board of directors revised its regulations over the summer to prohibit girls from participating on a boys team in the league. Yellow Springs does not have enough girls for a separate girls team this year, said Lauren Miller, a parent and FC Springs assistant coach. But the league has not responded to the request team members, parents and coaches have made for an explanation for the league’s exclusionary policy.

League registrar Carol Maas and her husband, Hank Maas, the league’s scheduling director, declined to comment to the News and referred questions to Kate Huffman, president of the MVYSA board. Huffman did not return calls or e-mails this week.

Kevin Barkow, director of the MVYSA U-13 division, said he didn’t know what the regulations were or why they changed suddenly over the summer. He also said he didn’t know if having girls on a boys team would be a problem in the league or not. In the older divisions, the physical difference between girls and boys would make more of a difference than it would in the younger divisions, he said.

As players who stand a head above several of their male FC Springs teammates, Mariah Martin and Paloma Wiggins don’t understand why the soccer association won’t allow them and four other Yellow Springs girls to play in the league anymore. The local team is not a boys team or a girls team, it’s a soccer team, and they’re part of it, they said.

“It’s not like we need special attention or coaching, and we’re not asking for anything extra,” Wiggins said. “This is the only way we could play.”

Some years Yellow Springs has enough girls and enough boys to field both a girls team (the Yellow Springs Belles) and a boys team (FC Springs) in either the U-12 league for youth between 10 and 12 or the U-13 league for youth between 11 and 13, Miller said. But other years, when there haven’t been enough girls for a girls team, the girls joined the boys team and played in the boys’ league, she said.

According to Hardman, who has coached in the MVYSA since 1999, the league has never prohibited girls from playing on a boys team, and Yellow Springs has always filled in spots on the boys’ roster with girls when needed. In addition, he said, over the years Yellow Springs has played against other co-ed teams both in the MVYSA and at tournaments against teams from other leagues.

The Miami Valley soccer association operates under the regulations of the Ohio South Youth Soccer Association and the United States Youth Soccer Association, whose online rules clearly address the issue of gender on a soccer team, he said. A girls team is a team made up entirely of girls, and all other teams are considered boys teams, he said.

“I have not been able to get a clear explanation as to what the board’s rationale was in passing this ban,” he said.

The boys on the FC Springs team don’t like the new regulations that, according to player Jaime Scott, may force the team to lose “some of our best players,” without whom, his team “wouldn’t be able to compete.”

Aaron Reporter-Harshaw sees the rule banning girls from boys’ teams as discrimination, not unlike the racism that separates black people from white people, he said. Reporter-Harshaw, who is considering boycotting the league, also worries that without the girls, his team may not have enough boys to fill the minimum number required for a team in the league.

Julie Ford, whose son Taylor Ford plays on the team, said several of the boys were scheming about ways to undermine the decision, such as showing up to a game with the boys crying and the girls acting tough. The players, 11, 12, and 13 years old, Ford said, are at a vulnerable time in their lives when they’re trying to figure out their roles. Divisions like this that suggest that “girls aren’t tough enough, send a terrible message to both the boys and the girls,” she said.

Miller and other parents wonder if the regulations are even legal, considering the teams in the MVYSA league often play on fields at both public schools and public parks.

The Yellow Springs coaches and parents plan to register the boys team as a coed team to force the issue, while they continue to try to appeal the league’s decision, Miller said. They have considered pulling the team out of the league and scheduling scrimmages with teams who don’t mind playing against a coed team, she said.

According to Wally Rehm, a parent of an FC Springs player, the girls are neither better nor worse than the boys on the team, but they play like all the other members.

“Because we’re not a big community, we’ve always put two teams together, and we accept that as being part of a small town,” he said. “But we don’t accept that now it keeps the girls from playing at all.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com