How football helps a shy child speak up
Calling for the ball, telling a teammate she is being closed down, saying something useful after a mistake. Football makes a child talk, and most of the talking is not with words.
A football pitch is an awkward place to stay quiet. The ball arrives whether or not a girl has said she wants it, and the teammate about to be tackled from behind needs to hear about it from someone.
So the game makes her talk, and it does it without anyone sitting her down to practise. She calls for a pass. She tells a defender she is covered. She says something after a mistake that either helps or does not, and she finds out which within about a minute.
Just as much of it is listening. A session is a stream of instructions, half of them while she is running, and a player who does not take them in ends up out of position with everybody else where they should be. That is a quicker lesson in listening than any classroom gives.
And a surprising amount of it has no words at all. A raised hand, a glance, a run that tells a teammate where the pass should go. Our squad speaks a mix of languages between them, and the girls who share none of each other's words still play together perfectly well - which tells you how much of a team's communication was never verbal.
Parents notice this one at home before they notice the football.
