Hot take: If you really, really love sports, chances are the game’s final score isn’t actually the most important part. And sometimes, it might not even be the sport itself. 

Real sports fans know (hear me out) that the best part of any game is the joy: the exhilaration of scoring a goal, the roar of the crowd, the victory dances, the chants that somehow everyone knows—or, from the stands, hugging it out with everyone when someone on the field makes an unbelievable play. If the game itself was all that mattered, we’d watch it by ourselves in a dark room. But where’s the fun in that? The joy is what keeps us coming back for more. 

For too many girls though, that joy is interrupted. Girls are often treated like outsiders in sports spaces—and, worse, research conducted by Dove shows that 1 in 2 girls who have quit sports have been criticized for their body type, pushed out by pressure to look a certain way.

Fortunately, that tide is beginning to change. More than ever, organizations are making sure girls not only feel like they belong in sports spaces (on the field and off), they’re actually able to experience the same excitement, celebration and joy that made them fall in love with the game in the first........

© Upworthy