Throughout high school, a lot of the boys that were on the football team were notorious for their drinking habits at sixteen and seventeen years old.  At my school, it kind of went hand in hand; if you were on the football team (or any other sports team, for that matter, except for like, the golf team or something) it was a given that you were a possible alkie-in-training with a wicked hot-headedness to boot.

However, while boys in school were rumored for their alcohol-consuming ways, it was well-known that their female counterparts in sports and recreation were the boys’ polar opposite: straight-edged good girls that wouldn’t even attend the weekly drinking parties.

A recent study solidifies my “normalcy” whilst attending high school.  The New York Post reports that indeed, girl jocks in high school were far less likely to participate in “risky” behavior on the social scene.

The Post states that both girls and boys were much less likely to suffer depression in their high school years, however athlete males were 1.4 times likely to engage in binge drinking and also 1.3 times likelier than female athletes to engage in fighting.

Why do I personally think this is so?  You could potentially blame it on hormones and testosterone and all of that a-typical garbage, but really, what it is (right or not) is kids being kids.  Practically every Hometown, USA high school student body has a percentage that fit perfectly into this stereotype.   It’s boys being big-balled boys and it’s over-achieving females that need to get their perfection-aggression out in a constructive way beyond the classroom.

6 Responses to “Female Jocks Not As Likely To Engage In Risky Behavior”

1. Kai says:

   November 11, 2009 at 3:19 pm

   Isn’t this fairly steady across men and women in general? NOT universal, but I have the idea that on average, men go for the risky behaviour more often than women, and it wouldn’t be suprising that it would hold up for teen athletes. Most extreme sports are predominately done by men. Most stupid accidents are from men between 16 and 45. I think there’s just something to average tendencies.

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2. taylor says:

   November 11, 2009 at 4:17 pm

   I would also suggest that it’s partially due to the same thing that still plagues workforces: the notion that women have to work twice as hard as men to be as good as men are. When I was in high school, and even now on a collegiate level, female athletes simply couldn’t do to their bodies what excessive partying entails and still perform well on the field or court. Is it really a wonder that it’s easier for a 200-something lb boy to put away a few beers on Thursday night and then recover by a 7 am practice than it is for his 100-something lb female counterpart? And girls are simply not as bulky as boys, meaning they have to work much harder to achieve the performance level demanded of them. Maybe female athletes aren’t just “over-achieving females”–maybe they just take what they do seriously, and maybe it’s time for the boys to pay attention.

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3. Christine says:

   November 11, 2009 at 5:46 pm

   I don’t think this study included enough girls soccer teams. I don’t know about anyone else, but the girls soccer teams at both my high school and college were loaded with girls that liked to go out and party on the weekends. I don’t have anything against soccer players at all but this is just my observation throughout high school and college.

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4. Bia says:

   November 11, 2009 at 8:43 pm

   I’m sorry, but I have to completely disagree. At both the two high schools I attended and my college now the female athletes (all sports) are consistently the girls who drink the most, party the most, and get into the most trouble. I think a lot of it comes from the group dynamic, that these activities are sort of part of what the team does and are an expected thing for members to participate in.

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   • Sydney says:

     November 11, 2009 at 9:09 pm

     Same here.

     The female athletes and cheerleaders are by FAR the biggest partiers at my university.

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5. Syd says:

   November 12, 2009 at 10:52 pm

   BAHAHAHA! Former volleyball player, swimmer, and cheerleader. Trust me, this study is bull. If anything, this is just proof of the fact that female athletes are smarter about lying and hiding their debauchery. When one girl was booted from the swim team for such behavior, it wasn’t ‘GASP, what an anomaly,’ it was ‘why was she so block headed as to do it where she could get caught?’

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