If your collection of Community Games medals started to peter out once you started rocking your first AA bra, you’re not alone.
While most of us threw ourselves into PE in primary school and considered after-school GAA sessions more craic than we could handle, this enthusiasm abruptly waned as we began navigating the minefield that is puberty.
As friendship groups don’t tend to develop at the same time – Thanks for that, Mother Nature – puberty and its onset felt like a round-the-clock assessment of yourself and your team mates.
While some girls were busy taping their boobs beneath their GAA jerseys, and even more were refusing point-blank to wear small white shorts, others were watching from the sidelines questioning why they were still rocking a cami-top and wondering if cramps really did justify that extra bag of Haribo at the end of a match.
And along with these feelings of awkwardness, flashes of confusion, bouts of self-consciousness and days of discomfort, a huge number of us decided it simply wasn’t worth the effort and ultimately hung up our football boots and downed our camogie sticks.
And nothing’s changing.
According to the most recent Always Confidence and Puberty Survey, 64% of girls will have quit sport by the end of puberty while a staggering 80% admit that they don’t feel they belong in sport – something which former Olympian Sonia O’Sullivan wants to address with the #LikeAGirl campaign.
“For me, it’s about being a role model and trying to inspire girls not to give up,” says Sonia. “We all go through it, but puberty can be such a challenging time for girls, who may feel really self-conscious about lots of things and start thinking you can’t or shouldn’t do certain activities.”
And while, in theory, it sounds totally doable, it’s a lot less clean-cut when you're crippled by feelings of self-doubt and struggle to play to the best of your ability due to physiological changes which only 43 bars of chocolate and a hotwater bottle can fix.
Acknowledging that all of this can wreak havoc on a girl's confidence in both her ability on the pitch and herself, Sonia urges: “Ride the storm. Accept that there will be challenging times when you participate in sport, but remember you WILL get over this hump.”
“Accept that sometimes things will hold you back and you may not be as good as once were, but remember your time will come around again." she urges. "Lower your expectations of yourself for now and remember why you took part to begin with."
In a time when phrases like #FitFam and #LadiesWhoLift have made it into everyday vernacular, we all know the benefits of keeping fit and staying active, but when you’re a 16-year-old girl with a head full of doubts and a body with what seems like a mind of its own, sport mightn’t seem like the answer.
But it seems it actually can be, or will – at the very least – help more than hinder.
“Everybody needs down-time and a release,” Sonia acknowledges. “Participating in sport can give focus, increase confidence and help with doubts or fears.”
And for those ladies who have refused to step back from the sport they love, but resent the lack of interest in female sport, Sonia’s with you on that one.
“I was going through the papers today,” she began. “And even with Wimbledon, there was spread after spread on the mens’, and only a small amount on the women.”
The former Olympian acknowledges that in many sports, women appear to need more than just ability and talent to get the media coverage they deserve, but can’t wait for a time when this is no longer the case.
“Sport is sport," she insisted. "Not mens’ sport or womens’ sport. Sport is sport.”
You heard the woman, and we just wish our 15-year-old selves had too.
