Re your article (More than 1 million girls in the UK lose interest in sport as teenagers, 7 March), it is common for teenagers to have irregular and intense menstrual cycles. No one should be made to feel that they should push past that, or not listen to their bodies at that time.
I dropped out of sport as a teenager because I couldn’t be as good as I wanted to be and because (with hindsight) I was emotionally exhausted by school. After only a couple of years, I started being active again on my own terms, without coaching or persuasion, and I have been a non-competitive multisporter for 20 years.
Everyone should be allowed to take time out as they grow and figure out their priorities. The focus should be on why people don’t start sport again when they’re ready to.
Saying girls “drop out” and are “pushed out” makes it girls’ problem to resist. Let all teenagers learn to listen to themselves, free from judgment. Let them back off in sport, try out other things or simply take time out while they develop. Increase the emphasis on making it usual for people to start or restart sport after the school years are done.
And maybe competitive sport should address its attitude to what coaching perceives as critical strength development years in puberty. I suspect that sport’s hang-up about people dropping out when young is more about its fear of the training opportunities that are lost than concern for the welfare of individuals.
Emily Taylor
Edinburgh
• One of the biggest barriers to girls taking part in sport is that so much of it is competitive. If the aim is fitness and good health, then the focus needs to change. Many girls hate getting cold, having to wear revealing or ugly sportswear and not having privacy in changing rooms. Many prefer cooperative rather than competitive activities. So let’s fix that and introduce dancing, yoga, tai chi, long walks, climbing, sailing and group challenges. And let those who want to compete get on with it. I remember on one school journey the girls all succeeding in group challenges while the boys fell out with each other and sulked. “Because”, as one girl said, “they all want to be boss.”
Jane Lawson
London
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