Team Sports Give Girls a Career Edge.

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Author: Capozza, Korey

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By age 14, girls abandon sports at a rate six times greater than boys. Here's a compelling new reason to keep them in the game: Athletics-long seen as a boot camp for boys headed for business careers--is also crucial for women's success, new research shows.

In an OppenheimerFunds survey of 401 highly successful American women, 82% of those polled played sports in junior high, high school or college. Team activities, they said, helped them succeed in a competitive work environment.

The proof is in the paycheck: 41% of the women surveyed--physicians, lawyers, and CEOs earning $75,000 or more--described themselves as athletic. Other studies have shown that only 17% of women at all earning levels describe themselves this way.

Sports may help women shatter the glass ceiling by teaching them unwritten rules of the business world. "Teams are how corporations are structured. Involvement in athletics is how boys have always learned to be competitive at work," says Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation. According to a University of Virginia study, 80% of female leaders in Fortune 500 companies had participated in school sports.

The rest of the story: Activity cuts the risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, cancer, and bone fractures. Exercise also helps girls build higher confidence, protecting them from a negative body image and the peer pressure that leads to early (and unhealthy) risk taking, studies show.

The message: Get your daughter started now. Girls who don't participate in sports by age 10 have just a 10% chance of being active at 25. "There's still a great deal of pressure on girls not to pursue sports and to be popular in other ways," Lopiano says. The good news: More than 2.74 million girls participated in sports in 2001, an all-time high. Here are five ways to encourage your daughter:

1. Take her to a women's sports event, such as a WNBA game, a local college soccer match, or a high school field hockey contest.
2. Connect her with a coach who will foster her skills. "Programs that teach skills breed success, and success makes for fun, and fun means she'll continue playing," says Lopiano.
3. Give her sports equipment and books about her chosen sport.
4. She's no Mia Hamm? Try different sports and physical activities-- from tennis to kickboxing, skateboarding to race walking--until she finds one that engages her. "The real secret is to expose your child to as many sports as possible until she finds one that's really right for her," says Lopiano.
5. Show your support In a new study of 180 families with preteen girls, University at Albany researchers found that 70% were active when both morn and dad encouraged them. Parents helped in these key ways: They got their daughters signed up for sports: drove them to practices, cheered them on, got active with them on weekends, and even coached their teams.

Another way to make sports fun: Rent a sports-themed movie about girls and women-try Bend It Like Beckham or A League of Their Own. Watch it with your daughter.

PHOTO (COLOR): Fun now--benefits for the future

PHOTO (COLOR): Future CEOs start here

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By Korey Capozza