Customer Reviews

Games Girls Play: Understanding and Guiding Young Female Athletes

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
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This book is a must read for parents of young girls. Through her experience as a competitive figure skater and sports psychologist, she clearly has the knowledge necessary to aid parents of girls interested in sports. I found this book to be extremely helpful as our family began to navigate the road to competitive sport for our 7 year old daughter. This is a must read for all families with daughters who are playing sports either competitively or recreationally!

Be aware, this book is more like Sports Psychology 101 than it is understanding and guiding female athletes. If you are a coach working with female athletes and you are looking at better ways to coach, read some of the UNC Womens National Team Soccer books. If you are looking for an intermediate book on Sports Psychology with examples using female athletes, this is what you get. It deals with individual issues for specific athletes with little applications to team sports. Parents who are looking to help their daughters with some psychology issues will find this book helpful. However, the remedy is usually seek professional help. This is an unique and rare sports psychology book geared towards female athletes.

I have coached club volleyball for six years and have been a club director for three years, a lot of the lessons that Dr. Silby presents are pretty lessons that I have learned over the years through sheer hard lessons. I wish that I had this book to reference when I first started to coach young women.

Dr. Silby's book has been less a revelation but a reinforcement of what I had learned these last few years. This is not to say that I learned nothing from the book, on the contrary, I feel like I have gained important nuanceson communicating with young women and allowing them to tell me how I can help them get better and stronger both physically and mentally. An invaluable book indeed.

The only slight problem is that the book is geared toward the coaches of both individual sports and team sports, so not all the lessons are applicable completely.

I would recommend this book for anyone who coach, or are looking to coach. The lessons embodied in the book will make the road to success in coaching much smoother.

As a father of 10-year-old and 6-year-old multi-sport female athletes (and their 4-year-old sister fast on their heels), and a coach of my girls' soccer and softball teams, I feel relieved that someone with the personal experience of having been an athlete and now working with athletes took the time to share their experiences and advice. Since my daughters also all figure skate, the personal experiences of the author's skating career are particularly insightful. Dr. Silby does an excellent job covering a wide range of topics and providing poignant positive examples for parents and coaches to use to better enjoy and improve their athlete's trying, joyous, frustrating, and fulfilling young lives. Thanks, Dr. Silby!!

What an incredable book! As a skaters mom, I found it insightful,informative, and amazingly DEAD ON! My 12 year old daughter has gone through all the doubts and anxiety that comes with the sport of Figure Skating. This book has been a wonderful guide to handling all the situations that arise. Even if your skater is an amazing talent and you never come across the problems of self-esteem, performance anxiety, or "bad skate days", you must, MUST BY THIS BOOK ANYWAY...JUST IN CASE!

This is a fantastic book for coaches & parents of female athletes who participate in individual sports! It is particularly helpful when dealing with teen girls! Would recommend this book to all who want to see their athlete succeed & work through this emotional period in their life.

If you are a parent of a daughter beginning her journey in soccer (or, any other sport) - this book is a must! AND, don't be afraid to buy one for your daughter's coach. It's well written with points of particular interest outlined in each chapter. My daughter even enjoyed reading it with me.

I have worked with Ms. Silby and it is a pleasure to read the book she has written.

This book is the best I've ever read on the subject of young female athletes; Silby and Smith have a complete understanding of the challenges faced by girls who are involved in athletics, and the book gives example after example of how a young female athlete can cope with various critical issues. As the step-father of a female high-school athlete whose team won the Maryland soccer championship, I can attest to how valuable the book has been to her.

Silby knows her stuff, and Smith's prose is clear, concise, and always on the mark. Interestingly, Smith is also the co-author of the book, "Just Give me the Damn Ball," written with football-star Keyshawn Johnson.

If you've got a daughter involved in athletics, this is the book for her (and you'll find it useful, too). I can't recommend the book more highly--it's great.