Breaking out of old patterns of thinking: So much for men’s sports: women play American football according to the same rules
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The National Football League (NFL) will also host the season games in Munich and Frankfurt am Main from 2022. A practical reason to take a closer look at and normalize the role of women in this sport on International Women’s Day.
One of the most important principles in American football is diversity. Regardless of age, gender, origin and physical condition: every athlete will find a suitable position here. It doesn’t matter what your physical constitution is, you’re part of the team. A reality that is already lived on the field, it is sometimes different off the sidelines.
No pure male sport
Let’s be honest: American football is still largely regarded as an all-male sport in which physique plays the biggest role. We should have said goodbye to such a stereotypical way of thinking long ago. Yes, on the one hand it’s about physical strength, which of course women also have – just on a different scale. On the other hand, to understand and implement the game in all its complexity. And men and women are much closer together than you think. Because women and girls have been practicing this sport for decades, playing by the same rules as their male counterparts. There is no difference.
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American Football: New ideals dominate as role models
The NFL shows us how. Let’s take Laura Young as an example. The American was hired by the “New York Giants” as operational director of the coaching staff and is therefore largely responsible for the development of the team. But women, like Virginia McCaskey, have been leading teams, some of which are worth billions, very successfully at many other levels for several years. In 2014, Shelby Osborne and in 2019 Toni Harris attracted attention by becoming the first players on a male college football team not just to kick the ball – a first. Furthermore, the NFL founded a support program that specifically enables women to take on a managerial or coaching position.
Nadine Nurasyid is proud: “I worked really hard for it.”
While the establishment of women as (assistant) trainers is comparatively fairer in America, people in Germany are still holding back. The Munich club, the “Munich Cowboys”, is already pioneering and trend-setting. With Nadine Nurasyid, a woman was hired as head coach for a male Bundesliga team for the first time ever. It didn’t matter to the club that she was a woman, according to club president Werner Maier in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” in November 2021. Rather, the decision resulted from the combination of years of experience as an active player and her commitment as a position coach for different clubs and national teams, as well as her previous occupation as sporting director for Munich in the years 2019/2020.
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So is American football still considered a purely male-dominated sport? In view of the developments, probably not. More and more ambitious, ambitious women who want to make a difference in the sport are coming into focus. This not only applies to the management and coaching, but also to all those players who train hard every day, acquire specialist knowledge and are passionate about doing what they love – namely playing American football. Even if there is still a lot that can be done in terms of equality, sport with all its facets offers good opportunities to live diversity at every level and to leave outdated conventions behind.
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The original of this post “So much for men’s sport: women play by the same rules in American football” comes from Bunte.de.
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BUNTE.de
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