Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9074-3

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Womens Precollege Sports Participation,

Enjoyment of Sports, and Self-esteem
David R. Shaffer & Erin Wittes

Published online: 16 November 2006

# Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract This study tested a model that specifies that the

psychosocial impact of womens precollege sports participation depends on the quality of their sports experience,
that is, on participants enjoyment of sports and the benefits
derived from athletic pursuits. A sample of 245 college
women (mean age=19.9 years) provided retrospective
reports of their precollege sports involvement as well as
assessments of their enjoyment of sports, perceived
physical competence, body image, gender role orientation,
and self-esteem. Consistent with past research, women
students precollege sport participation was a modest
predictor of their self-esteem in bivariate analyses. Follow-up analyses revealed that enjoyment of sports mediated
the sports participation/self-esteem relationship and implied
that female participants who find sports less enjoyable may
be at risk of experiencing declining self-esteem. However,
enjoyment of sports explained little unique variance in
global self-esteem after we controlled for the influence of
other sports-related benefits (e.g., improved physical
competence). Implications for those who hope to help
more girls reap psychosocial benefits from sporting
activities are discussed.
Keywords Sports . Enjoyment . Self-esteem
Sports and sporting activities play a prominent role in many
persons lives. Millions of spectators passionately track the
fortunes of their favorite teams and athletes, and a sizable
number of sports enthusiasts participate in one or more
This article is based on a Masters thesis conducted by the second
author under the direction of the first author.
D. R. Shaffer (*) : E. Wittes
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia,
Athens, GA 30602, USA
e-mail: dshaffer@uga.edu

athletic activities, either as formal participants in athletic

competitions or for recreational purposes. What benefits do
people derive from sporting activities, and to what extent
does their own participation influence their sense of self ?
Reasons for participating in sports are many and varied,
including, but not limited to, enjoyment of the activity, peer
and parental influence, presumed health benefits of participation, and an increase in physical conditioning/well-being
(e.g., Battista, 1990; Brustad, 1988; Cote, 1999; Holland &
Andre, 1994; Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1986; Snyder &
Spreitzer, 1979). Among the most common presumed
psychosocial benefits of sports participation is an enhanced
sense of self-worth. Research on male samples is generally
consistent with the latter assertion, which suggests that
sports participation may have both short-term and longterm effects on persons self-esteem (e.g., Pascarella &
Smart, 1991; Spretizer, 1994; Taylor, 1995; Vilhjamsson &
Thorlindsson, 1992).
Our focus in the present research centers on a presumed
motivation for participating in sports and psychosocial
benefits of such sports participation in young women. Several
researchers have noted that sports and athletic activities are
still generally considered to be a masculine domain (e.g.,
Koivula, 1999; Shaw, Kleiber, & Caldwell, 1995) and that
girls may have difficulty reconciling the physical and
competitive nature of sports with their emerging feminine
self-concepts (Eccles, Barber, Jozefowicz, Malenchuk, &
Vida, 1999). Yet, girls and womens participation in
athletics has increased dramatically in the past 30 years
(Schultz & Fish, 1998), owing, in part, to the passage and
enforcement of Title IX (Grant, 1995), a federal law passed
in 1972 that bans discrimination on the basis of gender in
federally funded institutions. Moreover, encouragement of
girls to participate in sports is apparent in such popular
cultural appeals as the late 1990s advertising campaign by

226

Nike that featured young girls pleading If you let me play

sports and then citing various health and psychosocial
benefits that purportedly result from sport participation,
including an enhanced sense of self-esteem.

Sports Participation and Girls Self-esteem

Previous research on the relationship between girls sports
participation and self-esteem is limited and somewhat
inconsistent. Several researchers have reported bivariate
relationships that indicate that girls (and boys in mixedgender samples) who participate in sports have higher selfesteem than those who do not (Butcher, 1989; Centre for
Research on Girls and Women in Sport, 1997; Koivula,
1999; Rao & Overman, 1986; Taylor, 1995). Other
researchers have reported that whether sports participation
is positively or negatively related to participants self-esteem
is moderated by participants gender role orientations and the
nature of the sporting activity; for example, individuals with a
feminine gender role orientation are most likely to derive a
sense of self-worth from participating in noncompetitive than
in competitive sports (Bowker, Gadbois & Cornock, 2003).
Yet, it is worth noting that sports participation has been, at
best, a modest predictor of global self-esteem for participants of either sex (e.g., Jackson & Marsh, 1986; Richman
& Shaffer, 2000; Spreitzer, 1994).
Jackson and Marsh (1986) suggested that sports participation influences self-esteem indirectly by enhancing such
sports-related contributors to self-worth as perceived
physical competence and a favorable body image. Recent
research with a female sample supported this viewpoint
(Richman & Shaffer, 2000). Specifically, a positive
bivariate relationship between girls participation in sports
in high school and their self-esteem during the college years
was mediated by the favorable impact of sport participation
on participants perceived physical competence, body
image, and masculinity and that in the absence of such
benefits, sport participation was associated with lower
levels of self-esteem (see also Marsh, 1998, for similar
results among sample of elite athletes). Thus, one reason
that relationships between sports participation and selfesteem are often modest is that sports affect girls in
different ways and seem to enhance self-worth only to the
extent that they promote other contributors to self-esteem.
Fig. 1 Path model of the proposed relationships among precollege sports participation,
enjoyment of sports, and selfesteem during the college years.

Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

Sport Enjoyment and Self-esteem

Although sports participants of both sexes cite health
benefits and social stimulation as reasons for participating
in sports, the most frequently cited motive participants give
is affective or evaluative in character: Sports are fun,
exciting, or activities that I enjoy (e.g., Battista, 1990;
Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1986; Snyder & Spreitzer, 1979).
This finding suggests an interesting motivational model of
girls sports participation that, to our knowledge, has not
been evaluated. Perhaps the positive relationship between
girls sport participation and self-esteem is mediated (or
moderated) by the extent to which girls report that they
enjoy sporting activities. Far fewer girls than boys regularly
participate in sports (Centre for Research on Girls and
Women, 1997; Eccles & Barber, 1999), and their participation often stems from formal and informal inducements
to participate from gym teachers, parents, siblings, or peers.
We propose that girls who discover that they enjoy sporting
activities during childhood or adolescence may experience
gains in self-esteem from their participation, whereas those
who derive little enjoyment from sports participation may
benefit little from, or even suffer psychosocially from,
continued involvement in activities they dislike or perhaps
think of as stereotypically masculine endeavors. Indeed,
Bem and Lenney (1976) found that partaking in behaviors
perceived to be more appropriate for members of the other
sex is often discomforting and produces negative feelings
about the self. Thus, one goal of the present research was to
evaluate the simple but straightforward mediating/moderating model depicted in Fig. 1 a model that specifies that
sports participation fosters the self-esteem of young women
who report that they enjoy sporting activities and that, at
lower levels of enjoyment, partaking in sporting activities
may actually undermine self-esteem.
Of course, empirical support for the above hypotheses
raises the issue of why girls might come to enjoy (or to
derive little enjoyment from) sporting activities in the first
place. We hypothesized that girls who come to enjoy sports
the most are those who can point to clear benefits that they
receive from their participation. Such benefits may be many
and varied, although it is likely that sports-related enhancements to such personal attributes as physical competence, a
favorable body image, and socially desirable masculine
characteristics such as assertiveness and a healthy sense of

Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

competition, contribute heavily to girls enjoyment of

sports and to any enhanced sense of self-worth they may
experience from their participation. A related corollary is
that girls who fail to experience such benefits derive little if
any enjoyment or enhanced self-worth from sporting
activities. Our research was designed to test these hypotheses as well as a prediction that derives from them, namely
that girls enjoyment of sporting activities may account for
little unique variance in self-esteem after controlling for the
effects of sports participation on such contributors to selfworth as physical competence, a favorable body image, and
a heightened sense of masculinity.

227

project. Each item was a declarative statement pertinent to

participants affective/evaluative experiences in sporting
activities (e.g., I enjoy sporting activities; I get excited
when thinking about my sporting activities; I often wish I
had chosen to participate less in sports [reversescored])
that was answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1=not at
all true of me; 5=very true of me). Internal consistency of
these items was quite acceptable in the present sample, with
=0.83. Thus, participants responses to the eight items
were summed to yield composite measures of sports
enjoyment. The mean score on the composite, which could
range from 8 to 40, was 33.94 (SD=5.10), which indicates
that the average participant in our sample derived a
moderate level of enjoyment from sports participation.1

Materials and Methods

Participants
The sample consisted of 245 female introductory psychology students from a large southeastern university who
participated as part of a course requirement. The mean age
of participants was 19.9 years. The majority of sample was
European American (91%), 6% defined themselves as
African American, 1% as Asian American, and 1.6% as
Native American, Biracial, Hispanic, or other.
Antecedent Measures
Sports participation Precollege participation in sporting
activities was measured by asking participants to make
quantitative and qualitative assessments of their precollege
sporting activities using indexes developed earlier by
Richman and Shaffer (2000). The first measure, Sport
Years, asked participants to indicate the total number of
years during grade school, junior high school, and high
school that they had voluntarily taken part in athletics of
any kind as active participants. Participants could select
from seven possible responses (0=less than 1 year; 6=more
than 6 years). The second measure, Sports Involvement,
asked participants to indicate how personally involved in
sports they perceived themselves to have been prior to
coming to college (1 = not at all involved; 5 = very
involved). These two measures proved to be internally
consistent (=.75) and were combined to form a composite
index of precollege sports participation with scores that
could range between 1 and 11. The mean for this sample
was 8.44 (SD=2.49), which indicates moderate precollege
sport participation overall.

Physical competence The 62-item Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PDSQ) (Marsh, Richards, Johnson,
Roche, & Tremayne, 1994), designed for adolescents and
adults, was used to assess several dimensions of physical
competence. Each item consisted of a declarative statement
that was rated by participants on a 6-point Likert-type scale
(e.g., I am good at coordinated movements; I feel good
about who I am physically); higher scores indicate more of
each attribute. The internal consistency of these items in our
sample was quite high, = 0.95. Thus, we summed
participants responses across the 62 items to form a
composite index of perceived physical competence. The
mean score on this composite, which could range from 70
to 372, was 265.0 (SD=48.63), which indicates that
participants had moderately positive perceptions of their
physical competence.
Body image Body image was measured using the Body
Esteem Scale (Franzoi & Shields, 1984), a 35-item selfreport instrument that assesses participants feelings about
their bodies with respect to weight control, sexual attractiveness, and physical condition. Each item was rated on a
5-point Likert-type scale to describe strongly negative (1)
to strongly positive (5) feelings. The internal consistency of
our participants responses to the 35 items on the scale was
quite acceptable, with =0.91. Thus, we summed participants responses to form a composite Body Image index.
The mean score on this composite, which could range from
35 to 175, was 124.29 (SD=19.64), which indicates that
our sample had moderately favorable body images.
Gender role The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ)
(Spence & Helmreich, 1978) was used to assess participants gender role orientations. The PAQ is a 24-item

Intervening Variables
Enjoyment of sports Enjoyment of sporting activities was
assessed with an 8-item instrument designed for this

Copies of the Sports Enjoyment Scale are available, upon request,

from the first author.

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Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

instrument that produces indexes of masculinity (instrumentality), femininity (expressiveness), and androgyny.
The PAQ asks respondents to indicate on a 5-point scale
(2=not at all; +2=very) the extent to which each of 12
traditionally masculine attributes (e.g., competitive) and 12
traditionally feminine attributes (e.g., emotional) are selfdescriptive. Respondents who score above the sample
median on both the masculinity and femininity subscales
are classified as androgynous, whereas those who score
below the median on both subscales are classified as
undifferentiated. A desire to maximize power prompted
us to treat participants scores on the masculinity and the
femininity subscales as continuous variables rather than to
classify participants into discrete gender role subgroups.
Participants responses to the masculinity and femininity
subscales were internally consistent (=0.76 and =0.75,
respectively). The mean masculinity score in the present
sample was 21.38 (SD=4.13), whereas the mean femininity
score was 25.04 (SD=3.91).

Outcome Variable
Self-esteem Participants global self-esteem was assessed
by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), a
10-item instrument that consists of five positively worded
items (e.g., On the whole, I am satisfied with myself) and
five negatively worded items (e.g., I feel as if I do not
have much to be proud of). Each item was rated on a 5point Likert-type scale (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly
agree), and responses were summed, after reverse-coding
the negatively worded items, to yield a composite selfesteem score that could range between 10 and 50.
Participants responses to this instrument were internally
consistent(=0.87). The mean self-esteem score was 38.38
(SD=6.90), which indicates that, on average, members of
this sample had moderately positive self-evaluations.

Results
Preliminary Analyses
Although the sample was overwhelmingly European American, we first evaluated the possibility that a demographic
variable, participant ethnicity, might be associated with the
primary variables of interest in this study. When participant
ethnicity was added to regression analyses that included all
other variables of interest, it did not account for significant
additional variance in either the proposed intervening
variables or the consequent variable of self-esteem. On the
basis of these results (and because no predictions were
made regarding ethnicity effects), we did not include the
participant ethnicity variable in subsequent analyses.
Bivariate Analyses
Bivariate correlations among all the variables were calculated to determine their degree of interrelatedness and to
establish a foundation for further analyses. Intercorrelations
among variables for the sample appear in Table 1. As
expected, greater precollege sports participation predicted a
more favorable body image, greater perceived physical
competence, more flexible gender role attributes (i.e.,
greater masculinity), greater enjoyment of sports, and
(marginally) higher levels of self-esteem. In addition, the
proposed intervening variables were reliably associated
with the consequent variable, global self-esteem. That is,
women with more favorable body images, greater perceived
physical competence, a stronger sense of masculinity, and
who derived greater enjoyment of sporting activities
reported higher levels of global self-esteem. It is interesting
that femininity (or feminine expressivity) was not associated with the proposed antecedent variable (sports participation), although it was modestly correlated with the
consequent variable (global self-esteem).

Table 1 Intercorrelations among the antecedent, intervening, and consequent variables.

Variable
Antecedent
1. Precollege sport participation
Intervening
2. Enjoyment of sports
3. Physical competence
4. Body image
5. Masculinity
6. Femininity
Consequent
7. Self-esteem
*p = 0.06
**p < 0.05
***p < 0.01

0.65***

0.44***

0.20***

0.24***

0.02

0.56***

0.33***
0.64***

0.32***
0.53***
0.37***

0.06
0.00
0.10
0.10

0.12*
0.26***
0.32***
0.47***
0.50***
0.15**

Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

229

Fig. 2 Path model of the relationships among precollege sports participation, enjoyment of sports, and self-esteem during the college years.

In sum, precollege sports participation was correlated

with all of the proposed intervening variables and with selfesteem during the college years (albeit modestly), and all of
the proposed intervening variables were reliable predictors
of self-esteem.

tionship. No support was found for moderating effects. That

is, a regression analyses that included the interaction term
between sports participation and enjoyment of sports, with
self-esteem as the criterion, revealed no interaction effect
after we controlled for the variance in self-esteem attributable to the main effects in the model.

Testing the Enjoyment Model

Standard path analysis (Darlington, 1990) was used to
evaluate the plausibility of a mediational model that
specifies that precollege sports participation would positively influence the self-esteem of young women to the
extent that they enjoy such activities. First, the proposed
intervening variable (enjoyment of sports) was regressed
onto precollege sports participation. In the second step,
self-esteem was the outcome variable, and enjoyment of
sports was treated as a predictor. Significant pathways that
emerged from these analyses appear in Fig. 2.
The path model accounted for a significant portion of the
variance in womens self-esteem, Total R2 =0.36, p<
0.0001. As can be seen, sport participation predicted
enjoyment of sports, which in turn, was a significant
predictor of global self-esteem.
Recall from the bivariate correlations that precollege
sports participation was positively correlated (r=0.12) with
self-esteem. Note, however, that this relationship was
reversed from positive to significantly negative when the
proposed intervening variable of enjoyment of sport was
included in the path model. It thus appears that participants
sport enjoyment totally mediated the relationship between
sports participation and self-esteem: Earlier sport participation appears to foster self-worth to the extent that girls
enjoy their sporting activities, but may actually undermine
the self-esteem of girls and women who find sporting
activities less enjoyable.
Although the path model is consistent with a mediational
model of the relationships among sports participation,
enjoyment of sport, and self-esteem, additional analyses
were performed to determine if enjoyment of sport might
have moderated the sports participationself-esteem rela-

Does Enjoyment of Sports Stem from Beneficial Correlates

of Sport Participation?
Although enjoyment of sporting activities appears to
mediate the relationship between sports participation and
subsequent self-esteem, we hypothesized that enjoyment of
sports results from tangible benefits associated with sports
participation and may account for little unique variance in
participants self-esteem after controlling for such benefits.
As expected, the bivariate analyses in Table 1 revealed that
such sports-related benefits as physical competence, a
favorable body image, and masculinity were reliably
associated with sports participation and with participants
enjoyment of sports. A hierarchical regression analysis was
then performed to test our hypotheses. The outcome
variable was self-esteem, whereas the predictors, entered
in five steps in the order listed here, were sports
participation, physical competence, body image, masculinity, and sports enjoyment.
A summary of this analysis appears in Table 2. As the
table indicates, precollege sports participation was a
marginally significant predictor of participants self-esteem
during the college years. Moreover, entry of each of the
proposed benefits of sport participation at Steps 24 (i.e.,
physical competence, body image, and masculinity)
resulted in significant changes in R2, which indicates that
each of these variables made a unique contribution to
participants self-esteem, Total R2 =0.42. Finally, sports
enjoyment, entered at Step 5, failed to increase R2, which
indicates that this variable does not contribute uniquely to
womens self-esteem after controlling for the main effects
of sports participation and benefits that appear to result
from sporting activities. Notice, also, that the relationship

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Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

Table 2 Summary of hierarchical regression analysis of sports-related predictors of womens self-esteem.

Step 1
Sports Participation
Step 2
Physical Competence
Step 3
Body Image
Step 4
Masculinity
Step 5
Sport Enjoyment
Total R2 = 0.42**

R2 change

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

0.025*

0.12*

0.12*

0.09

0.13**

16**

0.22**

0.09**

0.08**

0.53**

0.35**

0.18**

0.18**

0.35**

0.35**

0.35**

0.25**

0.25**

0.08

*p < 0.06
**p < 0.01

between sport participation and self-esteem changed from

marginally positive to significantly negative after the
presumed impacts of sports participation on physical
competence, body image, and masculinity were entered
into the model. This finding implies that girls may not
benefit (and could suffer) psychosocially unless their
participation in sporting activities results in such benefits
as enhancements in their physical competence, body image,
or sense of masculine instrumentality.

Discussion
Previous research on the psychosocial impact for girls of
participating in sporting activities is limited and somewhat
inconsistent. Although several investigators have argued
that sports participation can have a salutary effect on girls
self-esteem, the resulting sportsself-esteem relationships
are typically modest and subject to qualification (see for
example, Bowker et al., 2003; Richman & Shaffer, 2000).
One potential shortcoming of previous research is that it
typically fails to consider the quality of girls sports
experience, that is, how much girls enjoy the sporting
activities they undertake. Given that enjoyment is the most
frequently cited reason that participants list for partaking in
sports, we chose to evaluate a mediating/moderating model
that specifies that girls who enjoy sports would benefit
psychosocially from their participation and that, at lower
levels of enjoyment, continued sports participation may
have a negative impact on self-esteem. Our data were
consistent with these premises. Not only did sports
participation predict sports enjoyment which, in turn,
predicted girls self-esteem, but the marginally significant
positive relationship between sports participation and selfesteem became significantly negative after we controlled

for the influence of sports enjoyment. Thus, consistent with

our model, these outcomes indicate that (1) earlier sports
participation fosters self-esteem to the extent that girls
enjoy their sporting activities, but (2) could actually
undermine the self-worth of girls who find sporting
activities less enjoyable.
Our next concern was to explore some potentially
important reasons why girls differ in their enjoyment of
sports and to determine whether sports enjoyment might
make a unique contribution to girls self-esteem after
controlling for the effects of those factors that might
contribute to their enjoyment of sporting activities. There
are, of course, a multitude of reasons why girls might enjoy
sports. In this project, we focused on three sports-related
benefits that had, in previous research (cf. Richman &
Shaffer, 2000), totally mediated the positive relationship
between girls earlier sports participation and later selfesteem: perceived physical competence, favorability of
body image, and masculinity. As expected, each of these
proposed contributors to sports enjoyment predicted precollege sports enjoyment and self-esteem during the college
years in bivariate analyses. Moreover, each made unique
contributions to self-esteem after we controlled for the main
effect of precollege sports participation. Finally, our
analyses revealed that the sports enjoyment variable did
not account for any variance in participants self-esteem
after we controlled for precollege sports participation and
such presumed sports-related benefits as increased physical
competence, a more favorable body image, and an
enhanced sense of masculinity. This finding was anticipated
and simply reflects, we believe, that (1) girls enjoy sports to
the extent that they perceive themselves as benefiting in
some way from sporting activities, and (2) the perceived
benefits, rather then enjoyment per se, explains any positive
effect of earlier sports participation on the self-esteem of
college women.

Sex Roles (2006) 55:225232

Limitations of the Present Research

Clearly, this is a correlational study that relies on
retrospective reports of prior sports participation and does
not conclusively establish that involvement in sporting
activities is causally related to either changes in self-esteem
or to the variables presumed to mediate the relationship
between sports participation and self-esteem. Accuracy of
retrospective reports can always be questioned. Although in
this project we did not measure how involved our
participants were as collegians in sporting activities, we
can point to data from prior samples drawn from the same
population as our participants that indicate that retrospective reports of precollege sports participation reliably
predict college self-esteem and current perceptions of
physical competence, body image, and masculinity, whereas measures of participants college sports participation do
not (Richman, 2001; Richman & Shaffer, 2000). This
provides some evidence that our measure of precollege
sports participation was not merely a stand-in for current
sports participation. And, unlike college students reports of
global self-esteem, earlier participants retrospective reports
of high school self-esteem were not significantly correlated
in previous research with their reports of body image,
physical competence, or masculinity during the college
years (Richman & Shaffer, 2000). Although not definitive,
such observations increase our confidence that earlier sports
participation could well have meaningful effects on the
models intervening variables and on self-esteem that were
not qualified by participants current levels of sports
participation or their prior levels of global self-esteem.
Nevertheless, results from this and earlier studies would
certainly be bolstered by a prospective study that provided
corroborating longitudinal data. Ideally, researchers would
collect data from participants in at least three waves: (1)
before they begin athletic participation, to establish a
baseline for self-esteem; (2) during their periods of
participation, to assess any immediate impacts of sporting
activities on the models intervening and criterion variables;
and (3) after athletic participation winds down or ends to
assess the longevity of the effects. This design would yield
the kinds of longitudinal data that come closer to
illuminating any causal links among sports participation,
the proposed intervening variables, and self-esteem.
We also wish to caution against treating the experiences
of our highly educated and predominantly White samples as
the norm and failing to consider that any psychosocial
impact of sports participation may reliably differ for young
women from other educational and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Indeed, racial/ethnic variations in womens body
image and endorsement of gender-typed traits (Harris, 1994;
Myers, 1989) are reasons to suspect that any effect of sport
participation on self-esteem could vary across populations

231

and that our findings may not be at all normative for

Women of Color.2 Thus, future researchers might strive to
oversample participants from minority groups and to treat
the diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds of
study participants as integral to model building rather than
simply assuming that a middle-class cultural context
represents the norm for all young women.
Conclusions and Implications
Despite its limitations, the present research clearly extends
existing knowledge by (1) proposing how the quality of
girls sporting experiences (as indexed by sports enjoyment)
and specific correlates of these evaluative judgments might
influence the relationship between sports participation and
self-esteem and (2) generating some plausible support for
this model. Our findings also provide some clues about why
the apparent psychosocial impacts of sports participation are
modest in scope. Simply stated, sporting activities affect
different girls in different ways. Sports participation appears
to foster the self-esteem of girls who enjoy sporting
activities because they perceive themselves as benefiting
in some ways by their participation. But in the absence of
these positive outcomes, participating in sporting activities
may have little psychosocial impact or could actually
undermine self-worth. How? For some participants, social
comparisons undertaken during sporting activities may
highlight just how physically uncoordinated or incapable
they arean inference that may undermine their enjoyment
of sports and their sense of global self-worth. Other girls,
who may be facing increased pressures to conform to
gender-stereotyped behaviorspressures that are common
among adolescent girls (cf. Hill & Lynch, 1983; Ruble &
Martin, 1998)may derive little psychosocial benefit from
sporting activities if they are concerned about the nontraditionality of their behavior as participants in a masculine
activity or about others potentially negative reactions to it
(Koivula, 1999; Richman, 2001).
The finding that sports participation might actually
undermine the self-worth of some girls has implications
for physical educators, parents, or anybody else who might
encourage girls to partake in sporting activities. The goal,
we believe, should be to find ways of illustrating to
participants the benefits they might incur from sportsenhanced physical capabilities, weight control, learning to
be more appropriately assertive, or even that their efforts,
no matter how minor, might contribute in important ways to
team objectives and shared goals. Accordingly, gym classes
2
Although race/ethnicity did not explain additional variance for any
measure in our model, the fact remains that our small number of
participants of Color may not have been sufficient to detect
meaningful racial/ethnic differences in the sport participation/selfesteem relationship.

232

and formal team sports might prove beneficial to larger

numbers of girls if educators, coaches, and parents were to
emphasize and to devise ways to measure and illustrate the
physical and psychological gains derived from formal and
informal sporting activities, and to concentrate less on the
outcomes of competitive sports or the physical deficiencies
of the less athletic girls under their tutelage. In short, we
believe that there are steps that adults can take to highlight
how girls can profit from participating in sports so that
more of them will enjoy such activities, remain physically
active, and reap both physical and psychosocial benefits
from their participation.

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