...different people have different abilities.

Who knew?

Now hopefully they won't be putting all redheads into their own separate leagues anymore!

(Disclaimer: I'm being sarcastic. I believe it's sexist to pretend that ALL women must be less skilled at any and all sports than ANY man. I suggested doing away with leagues that seperated by sex once here and got trashed for such a shocking! idea.)

Good to see them compete against each other -- and happy that the young women won.

Caveat -- this is a 13 and under competition. I wonder if it were a 16 and under if the result would be reversed.

I say this because I will never forget a conversation with a parent of a girl on the varsity basketball team when I was coaching the Freshman and serving as a varsity assistant.

Dad "We should fire the coach and make you the new coach. When I coached these girls we won the AAU national championship with these girls in 4th and 5th grade."

Me "Nope. Coach is doing a great job. And you can't compare 4th and 5th grade to now, sir."

Dad: "We won everything. Coach has them losing. He needs to go."

Me "Let me ask you this. How tall was your daughter in 5th grade when you won the last championship?"

Dad: "About 5'7 the same as she is now."

Me: "How many girls on the other team were as tall as her back then?"

Dad : "Only a couple. SO she was great in the post and coach never uses her in the post, now."

Me: "You realize that RIVAL TEAM A has all five starters as tall as your daughter or taller now right. She isn't put in the low post because the other girls eventually hit their growth spurts. If I remember Julie and your daughter have been the same height since they were in junior high. They used to be the biggest girls in the league and now they are just average height."

[It went on, the best two girls on that AAU team were now stars at the catholic school in town... so not really the same team. Also, his daughter always played indoor soccer during basketball season and blew out her knee twice. Rival Team A's coach used his daughter as an example why if you played indoor soccer during basketball season she would cut you on the spot, because you couldn't be relied upon late in the season. Lack of basketball practuice time in offseason comapred to soccer, etc....]

But back to my point...at age 12 or13 many of the girls will be more physically advanced than the boys (not all, but many). By age 16, most the boys should have had some serious growth spurts and development of strength.

I'd love to see the rematch in 3 years. I would hope that the girls would win, but likely the added growth over those three years would allow the boys to win, unless the skill levels were astronomically different.

I keep thinking of the women in that movie Hidden Figures.

NASA’s black “human computers”.