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Anna Geary: Why Girls Quit Sport ***NEW***

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Series overview

Anna Geary is on a crusade to find out why teenage girls give up on sport and exercise.

Huge numbers of teenagers give up sports during their teenage years, and girls are 3 times more likely to give up than boys. By the age of 13 -15 teenage girls are living by the label “not sporty” according to research from Sport Ireland. For presenter Anna Geary, sport has played a vital role in her life and she is desperate to understand and investigate the drop-out rate among teenage girls.

This series follows 4 time All-Ireland winning Cork Camogie captain as she takes on her biggest challenge yet: to create a Ladies Gaelic football team from the students of Ringsend College, a school on the outskirts of Dublin city where just a handful of female students play sports. In just 8 weeks Anna will have to  encourage the girls to sign up, turn up, and form a team which is ready to play against other school teams in a GAA blitz. Meeting experts throughout, Anna will look at current research which aims to explain the current state of play, and learn some startling statistics about the impacts of inactivity on teenagers’ mental health.

Episode one

Episode one sets out Anna’s stall. She is disheartened by the apparent apathy of teenage girls to the sport. Sport has given Anna some of the best experiences of her life so she wants to gain a deeper understanding of the drop-out rate, and wants to show teenage girls the positives they can gain from being physically active.

Professor Niall Moyna meets with Anna to explain how big the problem is in terms of figures, and explains the ramifications of inactivity on future generations’ health.

Crosscut with her agenda is a profile of Ringsend College, a secondary school where only a handful of its female students play sports. Some of the female students explain the reasons why they gave up sports, why they never wanted to play, and how they currently spend their free time.

Anna pitches her idea of forming a Gaelic football team to the female students and is surprised that over 30 girls sign up. Returning for the first training session the following week with Orlagh Farmer as her co-coach, Anna is surprised that most girls turn up. Between training sessions, we meet the 6 main characters outside school to get an insight into their lives, whether it’s finding time to exercise in between studying, trying to spend less time on social media, or working part time.

Anna chats to Dublin County player Carla Rowe to find out what are the elements that have kept her in sport, and learns current research from Dr Bronagh McGrane about teenage girls’ mental health and how sports can improve this.

With the first few training sessions going well, the unexpected happens and the Government announces that schools will be closed for the foreseeable future. The programme ends with Anna wondering how she can continue the process if contact sports are not allowed.