Danielle Fluegge graduated high school as a multisport athlete. Ten years later, as the head of the “All Girls, All Sports” clinics, she ran through the halls just trying to get girls to consider trying out for the basketball team.
“As a basketball coach, [I noticed that] our numbers declined since I started here six years ago to the point where, now, only 10 girls tried out for the varsity [basketball] program,” said Fluegge. “After seeing that drop off in numbers, [Athletic Director John Catalano] and I sat down to talk about this issue, and that’s when we just got fed up and said, ‘Let’s just try something.’”
The “All Girls, All Sports” clinics were created. The clinics are aimed at sixth to eighth grade female athletes to encourage more participation in sports once they reach the high school level. High school female athletes from each sport go to the middle schools to host 10 minute “mini-clinics.” Each mini-clinic consists of an activity that shows the significance of the respective sport, and the group of middle school girls are rotated through the various teams’ activities during the clinic.
“We were noticing that girls who don’t make a middle school team tend to stay away from sports, so we want to try to reach out to the kids who are interested in playing different sports,” said Fluegge. “Middle schools also don’t have all the sports that we have, so it kind of opens their eyes to what we have to offer.”
Fluegge said the idea to set up the clinics came from a realization that struck her two years ago.
“We lost a really good basketball player to club volleyball,” said Fluegge. “I sat there thinking that if we keep losing these kids, we run the risk of not having enough teams to represent us when we go to other schools. And that’s a scary thought.”
Junior Maggie Washelesky said she quit volleyball and basketball in high school to specialize in soccer because she has the dream of playing on the U.S. women’s national soccer team. In order to make her dream a reality, she said she had to sacrifice her participation in volleyball and basketball.
“During my volleyball seasons, my practices would go till around 6:00 [p.m.],” said Washelesky. “Soccer practice would start at around 6:15 [p.m.], so I would have to be rushing to get to soccer from volleyball without much time to grab a snack or have any down time. I would also then get home around nine and be so tired [that] it would be really difficult for me to get all my homework done.”
Fluegge said that focusing on one sport is not an excuse to necessarily quit other sports.
“I was a three-sport athlete in high school,” said Fluegge. “I went on to play basketball in college, but I did play volleyball and soccer when I was at [Glenbrook South High School]. I graduated 10 years ago. Life has not changed so much that you cannot play three sports or two sports.”
While senior Stephanie Domijan is not opposed to the goal of the clinics, as a swimming clinic host, she said that they may be more effective if the middle school girls were informed differently.
“It would be beneficial to have maybe someone coming and talking during [a middle school] gym class during the day, rather than after school…so more [of the students] understand what the clinics are about,” Domijan said.
This marks the second year of the “All Girls, All Sports” clinics. Last spring, the clinics were piloted at Maple Middle School. Fluegge said that 25 middle school girls showed up at Maple last year for the clinics. When the clinics returned this year, 40 girls from Maple and 75 girls from Northbrook Junior High School participated. Wood Oaks Junior High School elected not to have a clinic and no girls showed up at the Field Middle School clinics.
In April, Fluegge plans to open up the Glenbrook North athletic facilities to all of the middle school girls in Northbrook. She said girls can bring their parents to test out the activities and equipment that GBN has to offer.
“I didn’t touch a basketball until I was a sixth grader,” said Fluegge. “I wasn’t as talented as all these other girls on the team, but I was so much taller [that it] was a natural fit. [Basketball] ended up paying my way through college, but if I hadn’t tried it, I wouldn’t have realized my true potential.”