CONTRIBUTED BY ANSLEY WASHBURN
Female participation in sports, most notably in cross country and soccer, has increased over time. Long-term coaches have noticed jumps in participation from below 15 players to above 50 players on certain teams.
Walk around the campus and you will see an abundance of female athletes, ranging from track phenoms to soccer superstars. However, turn the clocks back 19 years and athletic culture at the high school would be drastically different. As Brookline soccer coach Chan MacVeagh put it: “It is hard to imagine, but in 2002, it wasn’t really cool to be a female jock.”
The most extreme growth and change has occurred in the girls soccer and cross country programs. The girls varsity soccer team first reached the playoffs in 2011, and since then, they have consistently stayed competitive. The team finished the season second in their league. The girls cross country program has increased their numbers from a dozen to near fifty and steadily achieved success, winning their league and placing fourth in the state this year.
Rob Sprague, who is the former head coach of the girls varsity soccer team (GVS) and has coached in the soccer program for 12 years, said throughout the time he has been at the high school, the number of girls trying out for the program each season has increased tremendously.
“I remember when I first started, we never had cuts. In fact, sometimes we were short of players, and injuries gave us a big problem,” Sprague said. “Now, we’ve got somewhere between 75 to 80 girls, so that’s really changed quite a bit over the last 12 years.”
Coach Mike DeYoung, who has been at the high school for 19 years and is the head coach of the girls cross country program, said the number of girls in the program has also grown significantly compared to when he started in 2001.
“When I started, there were only 12 girls on the team,” DeYoung said. “This year, we had 44, and before [the] COVID-19 [pandemic], we had numbers in the low 50s for a couple of years in a row.”