5 Boys playing filed hockey

[Uncle Al]

This article states that the boys wear the same uniform as the rest of the girls on the team.
And the team is winning too

Uncle Al

[straightfairy]

Good for them, and none complaining about wearing a skirt, also good.

[RichardA]

Disgraceful what ever next men wearing skirts

[Kirbstone]

Alas, no team or action pics.
My MM in her young days was an international Ladies' Lacrosse player and on fun days her club team took on the local rugby club. The game was a hoot and an excuse for having a good party afterwards. Several of the guys donned lacrosse kilts/games skirts for the occasion, but reverted to normal gear after the game......alas.

T.

[skirtyscot]

Though the skirts are mentioned twice by the journalist, it seems that nobody else thinks they are of note. It's all about the boys being stronger than girls. None of the quotations are about skirts. There is no suggestion that the boys are unmanly or demeaning themselves by wearing them.

I've seen a video on You Tube about other boys in this situation. In their interview, they just say that the team play in skirts, so they wear them. People poked fun at them at first, but when it became clear the boys didn't mind wearing the team skirt, everyone gave up. Which of course is much as it is for men in skirts generally. Everyone loses interest in what you wear pretty quickly.

[skirtyscot]

But why is hockey a women's sport in the USA? There is men's hockey in plenty of countries.

In Scotland we have shinty, which is like hockey but without any rules. Tough sport!

[Caultron]

This probably goes back to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, passed by the US Congress in that year. It states (in part):

• No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance...

Over the years, the meaning of this has developed into a concept that schools should have equal numbers of girls and boys (or men and women) involved in sports, with both genders receiving equal funding. (College football, however, is somehow exempt from the equal-funding requirement.)

This has led to a problem because in general, more boys than girls want to be in school sports. But if you want, say, 200 boys in your total athletic program, you need to find sports that 200 girl's will sign up for. This has resulted in many schools dissolving teams men's like gymnastics and swimming, and adding women's sports like rowing and (ta-da!) field hockey.

Note that having both men's and girl's field hockey teams doesn't help to offset the large number of boys in sports like football and wresting. To do that, you need sports that more girls sign up for than boys.

Now typically there's only one field hockey team, just as there's only one wrestling team. This is because if you have separate boy's and girl's wrestling teams, and you want to have 15-20 boys in boys' varsity wrestling, you'd also need 15-20 girls in girl's varsity wrestling, and that can be tough. So there's only one wresting team, one field hockey team, and so forth.

So what's to keep boys from filling up the mixed-gender field hockey team? Make the uniform include skirts!

(BTW, before you condemn the entire TItle IX concept as stupid, note that it has produced significant advancement in girl's sports like baseball, basketball, volleyball, and soccer (which I know everyone outside the US calls football, but that word already means something else here)). And that prior to Title IX, many girl's sports were seriously underfunded compared to boy's.

[r.m.anderson]

Looking at the "This Article" posted by Uncle Al damn neat that the boys are wearing the same uniform as the girls.
The singlet top is cut with a tight closing at the arm pit - no "T" shirt or cap sleeve application.
In the first LARGE illustration the skirt length appears to be half way up from the knee.
Almost tennis skirt or skort length.
Enlarging the 2nd image the team player with the blue skirt appears to have dark colored knickers underneath.
I like the field hockey uniforms with PLEATED plaid (kilt type) skirts more so than the flat non pleated variety
because it is much more easily to pass of the casual aspects of the skirt looking like a Kilt.
For the locals where boys wearing the girls type of uniform is the norm probably nothing to comment on other
than 'What is the deal with the skirted guys using the men's room during intermission/time out' ?

"Skirted-Kilted-Skorted-Field-Hockey-Carry-ON"
rma

[Nolyn]

I remember a TV episode back in the black and white days, "My Three Sons" I think it was, in which the boy made a fuss about how boys couldn't play field hockey. The female coach told him he could play, but he had to wear the uniform. I remember the scene showing the boy with the skirt on coming out the the boy's locker room by himself, with the rest of the team coming out of the girl's locker room. I don't remember the rest of the episode or how it played out.

[knickerless]

I watched a bit of of a girls Hockey match from a window of a Railway Exhibition in Manchester a couple of years ago and it was about the roughest game I have ever seen. They were bashing seven bells out of each other. My wifes sister used to play it when she was younger and used to come home covered in bruises from head to toe.