Games Girls Play: Understanding and Guiding Young Female Athletes

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.

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!

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!!

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