The Big Book of Girl Stuff

by Bart King

  The first trick a skater usually learns is the Ollie. An Ollie is when the skater kicks the front part of the board up off the ground and then lands on it again. To do this, she needs to have her back foot pretty far back on the board (to press down) and her front foot behind the front wheels (so there’s less weight there.)

  There are all sorts of other flips, shoves, grinds, board slides, grabs, and stalls to try to master, but just keep in mind that when it gets down to it, a skateboard really is transportation. You don’t need to get hung up on tricks to enjoy yourself on a board!

  Outdoor Sports

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Not Afraid to Be Alone

  An athlete doesn’t have to compete with other people. For example, just getting out into the great outdoors is a terrific way to get exercise. Whether it’s jogging around a track, hiking on a trail, surfing, or cycling, everything’s better in the fresh air.

  Let’s look at running. All you need are some shoes and yourself. But you don’t have to run alone; it’s a great exercise to do with others too. And there’s a huge variety of distances and routes you can run. Running not only helps with your strength and endurance, and it’s also great for your body’s overall health.

  If you’re just getting started with running, distance and speed aren’t important at all. Just listen to your body and go for as long you can. Or, if you don’t like running, a fast walk is easier on the joints and has the same benefits. Hoof it through your neighborhood, explore a city, or go hiking in a park. And hey, there’s also rock climbing, windsurfing, waterskiing, snow skiing, snowboarding, or kayaking, just to mention a few.

  *Maybe you like the idea of the outdoors, but it’s just too cold outside. Brrr! Try “fake” outdoors activities like indoor rock climbing, stationary bike riding, or surfing in your bathtub.

  Sports Bras

  Don’t let discomfort stop you from playing sports. Just get a good sports bra! You will probably want the type called a compression bra. Be sure to try it on before buying one. The bra should have good ventilation and no clasps that dig into your skin. To find out if a sports bra is right for you, jump around a little in it to see if it works properly.

  Tennis

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Not Afraid to Be Alone

  Tennis has some of the cutest outfits of any sport. And no wonder! The game was invented by those famous fashionistas, the monks. About a thousand years ago, French monks used to play a game called jeu de paume. In this game, a monk would get ready to serve a ball to his opponent, but before he did so, he’d yell, “Tenez!” It was to make sure that the other person was ready: Tenez is French for Attention. (Yes, this is where tennis got its name.)

  Anyway, French people played jeu de paume for centuries, but it took an Englishman named Walter Wingfield to write out the rules for it. Wingfield tried to rename the game sphairistike, which was not very catchy. (Wingfield also thought that tennis could be played on any surface, including ice. This gives a new meaning to “brrrreak point.”)

  Tennis is great exercise for your legs and heart, and it is also good for your footwork, which could make you a better dancer! This is also one of the few sports where the top women players get as much (or more) attention as the men do. Look at Venus and Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova; really athletic and really feminine. What a great combination! (Other related sports you might want to consider are badminton, pickle ball, racquetball, handball, squash, and even ping pong.)

  Look Out! After the match is over, be careful! This is when most tennis injuries occur. You see, the winner tries to leap over the net to shake hands with the loser. And then the winner’s foot gets caught in the net, and, well, ouch.

  *Can you name the outdoor competitive sport with players competing directly against each other that has more officials than players? That’s right, it’s tennis! How’d you guess?

  Softball and Baseball

  Athlete Types: Fiery Competitors, Social Players, Quiet and Thoughtful

  This is the number one team sport in the United States. Whether you play girls’ softball or Little League baseball, you’re going to get good practice with high skill activities like batting or pitching. (These are great for hand-eye coordination.)

  Softball and baseball also get you to use your mind with teamwork and strategy. Because it has a lot of “down” time, softball is definitely one of the more social team sports. If you want to get as much exercise as possible, become a pitcher. They burn more calories than any of the other players!

  *Want to be the coolest player on your team? Bring gum or sunflower seeds to a game and share them in the dugout.

  Bad Joke Alert!

  Q. Why shouldn’t you play softball with big cats in Africa?

  A. Because they are cheetahs.

  Water Sports

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Not Afraid to Be Alone

  Swimming and diving are the ultimate individual sports. Not only do you usually compete by yourself, you can’t talk underwater. (Scientists believe that one girl in a hundred can whistle underwater. See if you have what it takes!)

  There may not be any sport that exercises more muscles in your body than swimming, and it’s great for your heart as well. Swimming is sort of like running because it has a huge variety of short, sprinting events as well as longer events that require endurance.

  One thing that serious swimmers all have in common is that they get up early in the morning for their workouts. Hitting the water at 6:00 a.m. can be a challenge for some sleepyheads.

  Good News! If you swim a lot and have light colored hair, the chlorine may turn it slightly green!

  Swim Strategy Tip! If you are on a swim team, bring a bottle of your own swimming pool’s water to any AWAY swim meets you go to. Before your event, pour your bottle of water into the pool. This “friendly” water will help you swim faster!

  *Synchronized swimmers have routines that are performed together to music. For a swimming party idea, be creative and put together an “unsynchronized” swim routine that is a disorganized mess!

  Before diving or jumping, ALWAYS MAKE SURE THE WATER IS DEEP ENOUGH TO DIVE INTO. And don’t jump off of anything higher than a regular diving board. (These are usually just a meter over the water’s surface.) Once you know it’s safe, you can warm up with a nice Cannonball. Extra Olympic points are awarded for creating a big enough splash to get someone wet who isn’t in the pool.

  Once you have mastered the Cannonball, it’s time to try its variations.

  The Can Opener: This is a Cannonball with one leg extended in front

  The Watermelon: a backwards Cannonball

  The Hammerhead: a headfirst Cannonball

  If you think you can handle it, the toughest of all these Olympic dives is the Flying Squirrel. Jump into the water with your arms behind your back, grabbing your ankles!

  *Next time you go swimming at your local pool, you may want to keep your head above water. Little kids get in that warm water and just can’t help themselves. Experts say that public pools have more pee than chlorine in them.

  Volleyball

  “You can be an athlete and be strong—and also be a girl.”

  —Gabrielle Reece

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Social Player

  If you want to take out some aggression, spike a volleyball! Volleyball is an exciting sport with lots of breaks in the action, and lots of girls take part in it. It is the third most popular high school sport in the U.S., and beach volleyball and college-level volleyball have also evolved into really popular sports.

  Unlike other competitive team sports like basketball, there is never any physical contact with the players on the other team in volleyball. This is nice if you prefer not to bounce off of other people! But volleyball can still be an aggressive sport. There are still lots of opportunities for dramatic plays, saves, blocks, dives, and spikes.

  Basketball

  Ath
lete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Social Player

  Basketball is one of our favorite sports! Maybe that’s because it is one of the few team sports that you can practice by yourself. Think about it: You can practice dribbling and shooting anytime, but in other team sports like volleyball or baseball, you have to have at least one other person to practice.

  And talk about exercise! Playing basketball takes skills (like using both of your hands) with every kind of body movement there is. In just two minutes of playing basketball, you could be throwing, running, changing directions, and jumping.

  Another good thing about basketball is that there’s a position for every type of player. It’s tough to have a good basketball team without a range of sizes. So if you’re a big girl who doesn’t mind some physical contact, you can be a superstar!

  *In 1896, the score of the first official women’s basketball game was 2 to 1. One reason was that the rules stated nobody could dribble more than three times.

  Canuggling

  Athlete Types: Fiery Competitor, Social Player, Crazy Girls

  Now this is a really different sport. “Canuggling” is easy to describe, but hard to do. First, three people get in a canoe. One person stands in the middle and juggles, while the other two paddle. Believe it or not, this is a sport because while you do this, you can race other canoes full of people doing the same thing! (No, we did not make this up.)

  Figure Skating and Ice-Skating

  “Skating is joy.”

  —Bonnie Blair

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Not Afraid to Be Alone

  This is a sport people often associate with women. Whether it’s ice-skating, figure skating, ice dancing, or ice hockey, they all combine elements of dancing with skating. (Okay, not so much with hockey.) That makes skating one of the most highly skilled sports around. If you’ve gone skating, you know that just staying up is tough; your whole body is supported by only two thin metal edges! And like Michelle Kwan’s dad says, “No matter how good you are, the ice is still slippery.”

  Who knew? A “double axel” has nothing to do with cars.

  If you are serious about ice-skating, be prepared for a lot of practicing. Most competitive ice-skaters practice about 650 hours a year. They compete for around 42 minutes a year. (Compare this to say, a soccer player, who practices about 200 hours a year and competes in games for about 40 hours.)

  *Figure skating events are the highest-rated television sports events for women.

  Martial Arts

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Not Afraid to Be Alone

  If you want to develop speed, confidence, and self-discipline, you may want to look into some of the martial arts, like judo or tae kwon do. Plus, one bonus of studying martial arts is you get colored belts as accessories to your outfits!

  You don’t have to study kung fu death grips to develop your mind-body connection. For example, although tai chi and yoga are not necessarily martial arts, they do share many elements with them. (And they are not just for old people, okay?) Martial arts, tai chi, and yoga emphasize flexibility, balance, and stretching. They can also help you become more graceful in your movements, which is always a plus! And you will get terrific muscle toning as well.

  *Girls have found that the mental and physical balance these sports require helps them deal with stress and changes in their moods.

  Golf

  Athlete Types: Quiet and Thoughtful, Fiery Competitor, Social Player

  Golf is one of the fastest growing sports for girls. About 40 percent of all new golfers are women, and young golfers like Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer are making headlines. Maybe one reason for golf’s popularity is that it doesn’t matter what size or shape a golfer is. If she practices, she can do well. Just walking a golf course is good exercise, and the game is so challenging, golfers don’t even realize they’re getting a workout. It is also a really good game to practice focus, concentration, and self-control.

  *The odds of hitting a hole in one are about 13,000 to 1.

  Another advantage of golf is that you can wear a cute outfit! Although blue jeans aren’t allowed on some golf courses, most other clothes are fine. Just remember that a round of golf can last around four hours, so it may be chilly when you tee off and hot when you drop your last putt. Bring a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen.

  The biggest downside of golf is that it costs money. You need a golf bag and a bunch of clubs and balls, which are not cheap. You also have to pay to get on the golf course. It’s also a very good idea to get lessons if you’re a beginner. Try to get some free ones!

  *The first woman to play golf was Mary, Queen of Scots. During her rule in the 1500s, she called the young men who carried her bags “cadets” or “caddies.” And the name stuck!

  Gymnastics (and Flexibility)

  Athlete Types: Not Afraid to Be Alone, Fiery Competitor

  Gymnastics has been around for over 2,000 years. Talk about history! There are four major events in gymnastics, and they all require balance, grace, and strength. Because of this some people feel that gymnasts are the most athletic of all sports participants.

  Because of the skills involved with gymnastics, this is also a sport that requires a lot of practice. It’s not really for the casual athlete. Gymnastics makes it possible to increase your flexibility with training and stretching. Plus, there is evidence that female hormones help make girls flexible! Still, some people are just naturally “extra-stretchy.” If you have a friend who is super-flexible, you may call her “double-jointed.” This isn’t quite accurate as nobody actually has an extra joint in her shoulder or hip.

  The joints of your bones have a protective padding called “cartilage.” And if a girl has stretchy cartilage, she will also be stretchy. A girl’s ligaments also help decide help how flexible she will be. Ligaments are bands of tough tissue that connect bones together. And some people have looser ligaments than others. So if you know someone who can pull her thumb to her wrist or put her ankle behind her head, just sniff and say, “Cartilage and ligaments, that’s all it is.”

  *Jumping on a trampoline is fun!

  Squirrel Fishing

  And finally, the most fun and exciting sport of all time . . . squirrel fishing

  Supplies: Fishing pole (or a stick with long string), unshelled peanuts, squirrels.

  If there are squirrels near where you live, try this nutty new sport! To get the squirrels interested, sprinkle some loose peanuts around the area. You’ll laugh so hard that you burn lots of calories with this sport.

  Ways to Compete:

  1. Who can get the most squirrels interested in her peanut?

  2. How long does the squirrel stay on the line before getting the nut?

  3. How many nearby people think that you’re a nut?

  Dance and Cheerleading

  “It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer.”

  —Shanna LaFleur

  Dancing

  Dancing really can be as tough as any sport, but it’s also an art. Maybe because dancing is a form of personal expression, we think that girls are usually more interested in dancing than boys. After all, girls will dance with each other, while many boys won’t dance at all!

  Dancing is important to all humans; there are almost no cultures in the world without their own dances. These dances may be for traditional performances or religious ceremonies. For example, in Hinduism, the gods created the universe by dancing! Another use for dancing is storytelling. Hula dancing dates back to ancient Polynesia. The dancers’ movements and facial expressions (even their eyes) are used to tell a story. And ballet dancing (which dates back to the 1400s) was originally used for storytelling as well.

  *In traditional ballet, the male dancers are always supposed to be looking at the ballerina. (And when a ballet calls for an ugly ballerina, a man has to play her!)

  Dancing en pointe, or up on the toes, was not originally part of ballet. It came about in the early 1800
s as a way of making the dancers appear lighter and more graceful. The shoes used to dance en pointe have toes reinforced with paper and burlap; a professional dancer will wear out three pairs of these shoes in a week.

  Famous Last Words: Ballerina Anna Pavlova was famous for playing the role of the swan in the production of La Mort Du Cygne (the Death of the Swan). Her last words were, “Get my swan costume ready.”

  Some dancers eventually rebelled against traditional ballet because they thought it was too dainty and “girly.” Women like Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan wanted a less formal dance that could allow for more personal expression. In the early twentieth century, these pioneers of dance helped to create a new style called “modern dance.”

  Martha Graham’s new dances were intended to make people feel emotions. Shocked audiences sometimes “booed” her performances, but Graham stuck with her style. Her vision ended up starting a revolution in dancing. And since Martha danced until she was 76 years old, she was around to see many of the changes she created.

  This opened the door to all sorts of new dance possibilities, and some of them have been pretty wacky. For example, a woman named Jenefer Davies Mansfield put on a “NASCAR Ballet” production in 2004. It had 20 dancers, all wearing racecar outfits prancing and leaping on a racetrack stage. The dancers would leap and run, racing with (and sometimes crashing into) each other. They even had pit crews!