While soccer may have always been seen more as a male-dominated sport, strides have been taken to see more female talent cultivated.
With the kick-off to the Bayview u-16 Youth Cup in just under a month, the club will also create a platform for promotion of ladies soccer with a curtain-raiser match between its ladies’ side and an invitational team still to be identified.
This match will take place on Saturday 22 June ahead of the platinum section finals at Strandfontein Sports Complex.
While there has never been a rule against girls in the tournament – with one or two players joining boys teams, there are currently no girls teams in the competition. Something organisers hope to address in the future of the tournament.
Eben Loff and his wife, Petra, are the team coach and manager.
“We started the team three years ago with seven or eight ladies,” says Eben.
Having started at a time when there were little to no dedicated ladies’ teams in the immediate vicinity, the team took great losses in invitational matches in the beginning, but they kept on. Now they have two teams, a girls’ and ladies’ team with the girls’ team currently undefeated.
“We had a lot of girls playing in the boys teams. There was an advantage for the girls, because they could play two years up from the boys team, like being 12 in the u-10 age group,” he says.
Universal sport
From the age around puberty, this became particularly difficult as their bodies developed and boys were more weary of this, says Eben.
“Soccer is a universal sport,” says Bayview chair Mark Rodrigues. “There is no gender and we have a belief at Bayview that everyone is equal and should be treated equally with equal opportunities.
“If you are a girl or a boy it doesn’t really matter. If you love the game this is where you come to play the game.”
Having had to forfeit a recent match due to player numbers, Eben describes the great sportsmanship among teams, who leant players from their teams to make up the numbers so that the girls could still play.
“We are not worried about the points, we just wanted to play the game,” he says.
One of the girls was also recently scouted by Ubuntu Cape Town, as the top goal scorer in the local football association (LFA).
Rodrigues says there is greater focus from the LFA to also have more senior ladies teams, which is great for the promotion of female soccer.
Kick-off for the tournament will be on Youth Day, Sunday 16 June and run for the duration of the week, except for Eid day. Finals will be on Saturday 22 June for its four cup sections.
- People’s Post, Tygerburger and City Vision are proud media partners to the event. Visit our social media pages for daily updates, fixtures, images and other digital content around the competition through out the week. Also read more here.
