Episode Two
This episode begins with a recap of the team, the demoralising statistics of teenagers and exercise, and the new challenge that faces Anna where contact sports, and the mixing of school years, are off-limits for the foreseeable future. On the first day of the school’s reopening, the Principal and Vice Principal explain why it is important that the students feel some sense of completion to what they have trained for, and the need to find a safe alternative to football.
Anna meets with Psychotherapist Joanna Fortune to learn how the lockdowns have affected teenagers disproportionately, and former Dublin manager Jim Gavin explains that any form of exercise is invaluable to teenagers and gives them an outlet with physical and psychological benefits.
As the girls come back to training, divided between two groups, Anna and Orlagh announce that they will now be running a group marathon as GAA is off the cards. This is the safest way that the girls can train individually while still coming together as a team. To see what baseline they are starting from, Anna gets them to run 1km and checks their time and fitness. She is surprised at how unfit most seem, with many stopping to walk multiple times. Anna sets them homework and the cameras follow the girls running together outside of training and see their changing attitudes towards exercise. Encouraged by their newly appointed captain and vice-captains, we follow the girls training towards their final challenge: the group marathon.
The series ends with a montage of the girls running with sync from the girls explaining what the process has meant to them, how they have bonded with their friends and how they feel about themselves. For Anna it’s been a steep learning curve, and she reflects on what she has learned about the process, and the importance of participation.
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.