Gender Equality at Junior Jayhawk Camp?
Click here to see a slide show of a basketball camp for boys and girls
Girls and Boys play together on the same court at KU summer basketball camp. Well, at least they play on the same court at the Junior Jayhawk Camp for girls and boys entering grades 1-5. At the camps for older kids, separation by gender is done for the obvious reason that males have natural biological advantages in size and muscle mass. In fact, boys past the fifth grade would attend the Bill Self Kansas Summer Basketball Camp, and the older girls would attend the Bonnie Henrickson.
At the grade school level, the coaches of the Junior Jayhawk camp don’t feel that it is necessary to shelter the female players from the male players. Jamie Boyd, a senior on the KU women’s basketball team and an instructor at the Junior Jayhawk camp, doesn’t think that the girl players are at all outmatched by the boys. “Nobody’s physically developed yet, so it doesn’t matter much,” Boyd said.
It is quite true that the skill level of an eight-year-old leaves something to be desired in the basketball arena. Girls and boys alike frequently commit traveling and double-dribbling violations during scrimmages. Most of the time, the coaches let it slide without blowing the whistle. They say the main purpose of the camp is to have fun, which would be harder to do if the coaches were stopping the game every time some kid took more than two steps after picking up his dribble.
Mike Wetzel, a Chicago resident who showed up at camp on Thursday to watch his younger cousin Brianne play, agrees with Boyd about gender differences on the court. “I even saw a couple of girls dominate some of the boys,” Wetzel said. Wetzel likes the idea of boys and girls playing on the same court. He said that basketball is great for facilitating healthy interaction between the two genders.
Boyd’s and Wetzel’s quotes may have painted a picture of total gender equality at the Junior Jayhawk camp, but that’s not exactly the case. The physical differences between boys and girls are taken into account when organizing scrimmage teams. Katie O’Connor, a coach on the KU women’s basketball team as well as at the Bonnie Henrickson camp, said they try not to put too many boys on a team. The boys are faster and stronger than the girls, even if both lack stellar b-ball skills.
Katie O’Connor coached women’s basketball at Virginia Tech with Bonnie Henrickson before they both came to KU. Needless to say, it requires some patience to coach at the college level and then attempt to teach grade-schoolers the same skills. When asked how well she likes the contrast, O’Connor said, “Kids are cute. I think it’s a lot of fun.”