Yup! Team sports have never been my thing (I’m a lane line/net kind of girl), but all of the women I know that do co-ed sports were college athletes. The women that “just” did club sports in college join the women’s leagues.

Man, you really have some head-scratchers in that comment. “Women are there to socialize” “Men who judge women before playing are idiots” “Men who judge women before playing with them are probably right.”

...except pretty much all the women featured in the article and many of the commenters here are former varsity college players. They’re literally begging to be allowed into the competition, and you’re saying they can’t take it.

Some people actually enjoy competing hard for the sake of competition,

“What happens when we actually play is all incidental”

I’ve subbed in for absent women (well-woman- my sister liked to join these things) in several leagues in Maine, and it was *always* as intense as the article describes. So, not just NYC.

Thanks for saying it more clearly than I could have!

Yeah, this wouldn’t work against a lot of the “bad” guys. It would threaten their masculinity to have a woman yell at them, and could result in more aggression. We’re socialized to say it nicely because we’re socialized to not put ourselves in danger. The Aggro Morons are the problem, and they’re hard to predict. Thus…

I don’t mind. Granted, my preferred method of sport is Sandlot-style, WTF is the score type of play. I don’t join these leagues, though.

You know who you sound like, right?

*Given the same training level* is key here.

...funny, girls are just told, “Don’t hit.”

One time, in High School gym class (coed at my school), we did water polo as a sport.

You think that would have mattered!

The men were breaking the rules of the game in playing rough. Tearing an ACL shouldn’t be a normal part of ANY recreational league.

The biggest assholes on the team are NEVER the good ones. My anecdote: I filled in for my sister’s co-ed KICKBALL team because they didn’t have enough people to play otherwise. I walked off the fucking field after 10 minutes because the asshole “Captain” decided to scream at me for not playing exactly the way he…

Oh, man, I never finished that series- It *was* fun!

I was gonna say- that’s the Pledge, moron.

I’d love it if he’d responded with, “It’s fine, I guess.” But I guess then I’m asking him to lay down his life, so maybe that’s asking too much.

It’s like how undercover cops can’t lie about being undercover. Sports players *have* to tell you the truth about how they feel about ‘Murica.