What sports do you play? Are there different men and women on the teams you play on? If so, do you like being on teams with only one gender? Or do you ever wish you could mix them?
Have you ever played on a team with both men and women? If so, how did it go? Would you try it again? If you didn’t like the game, what could have been done to make it better?
In “8 Players, 1 Heartbeat: A Game Men and Women Play Equally,” Jeré Longman talks about korfball, a Dutch sport where men and women play on the same team:
DELFT, Netherlands — The home coach put his team in a semicircle and used PowerPoint to give them a pep talk. He said that you don’t often get a chance to win the European Championship. He talked about analytics, but most of what he said was about how to be a predator. Rebound like bears, he said. Give out help as eagerly as wolves. Like tigers and panthers, attack.
The coach then sent his players out for the first Champions League final of korfball, which is a cousin of basketball that has been around for a hundred years. It is one of the most unusual games in the world, but it is also one of the most forward-thinking. It is a rare team sport made so that men and women can play together in equal numbers and with equal respect, value, and responsibility.
In some sports, like tennis and swimming and track and field, there are competitions where people of different genders play together. But these are mostly individual sports that sometimes involve teams. With a few exceptions, like pair figure skating, ice dancing, and ultimate Frisbee, men and women usually work together on teams. But korfball is all about working together in complex ways.
The article goes on to talk about how women players can have a clear advantage in the game:
As korfball got more exciting, top Dutch teams like PKC and Fortuna helped speed up the change from the traditional roles of men rebounding and scoring and women passing the ball. The motto of the PKC is that women should be in charge of an attack. When a team has more players who can score, they become more dangerous and hard to predict.
Scholtmeijer said that at this point in the development of korfball, the differences in skill between women and men are usually a bit bigger than those between women and men. This means that speed, anticipation, evasion, and shooting can give female players the edge they need to win games. On PKC, the women are better at shooting than the men.
Scholtmeijer, a former coach of the Dutch national korfball team, compared it to basketball by saying, “If you put five LeBron James on one team, it’s much harder to defend.”
The article also talks about how transgender people can play korfball:
This year, the sport’s governing body is likely to propose that, out of the eight positions on a court, four would be set aside for athletes who were born female and the other four would be open to anyone. Transgender women wouldn’t have to lower their testosterone levels like they do for track and field in order to be eligible.
Fransoo said, “We think we need to start from the point of view of being open to everyone, while also making sure that women can compete fairly.”
Read the whole article, students, and then tell us:
Korfball is a type of soccer. Would you like the sport to be played in other places? Do you think it sounds like a game you’d like to play?
The article has quotes from players and coaches who say that the fact that korfball is played by both men and women makes the sport more open and competitive. For example, PKC’s co-head coach Wim Scholtmeijer said that female players were very important to the sport. When it comes to speed, anticipation, evasion, and shooting, they can give their teams the edge they need to win. He also said, “I think that male athletes do better when they’re around strong women.” Do you think the sports you play would be better if both men and women could join? What’s the deal? Give a good or bad example of how you think they could change.
What do you think it would be like to play on a team where boys and girls “play together in equal numbers, with equal respect, value, and responsibility”? Carl Yerger, president of the United States Korfball Federation, said, “It really helps to build community and communication, just like the rest of society, where men and women work together to solve problems.” Do you think that mixed-gender teams could be helpful on and off the field?
Should there be more coed sports? What’s the deal? If so, what factors would have to be thought about? Does this structure not work for any sports?
Korfball was made so that boys and girls could play together. It has rules that make up for physical advantages and encourage talking to each other and working together. How would you change your favorite sport so that both men and women could do the same things? Or, what new sport could you make where players of both sexes are treated equally in terms of respect, value, and responsibility? In the comments, tell us about it.