We're eliminating white shorts for Vermont's female student-athletes.

If your first reaction is "wait, why is that a thing?" — trust me, I've been there. I used to think uniform color was the least interesting thing about youth sports. It's not. It's one of the quietest reasons girls are quitting.

Let me tell you what changed my mind.

What the girls actually said

A few months ago, in one of our Girls in Sports + Equity Conversations, the topic came up almost offhandedly. A student-athlete raised her hand and said, "Look good, feel good, play good."

Then another girl added that she dreaded game days during her period. Another said she sat on the bench longer than she had to. Another said she skipped a team picture. Another said she'd quietly stopped going to practice entirely one week a month.
None of this was on any survey. None of it made it into a participation report. It came out because we asked — and because, for once, somebody listened.
What they were telling us was simple: the uniforms weren't working for them. Specifically, the white shorts. And the anxiety that came with them wasn't about vanity. It was about menstruation, visibility, and the very real fear of leaking on a turf field in front of their classmates, parents, and whoever else happened to be holding a phone.
I spent twenty years in education and athletics before I heard that clearly. I'm embarrassed it took this long. I'm also not going to let it take any longer.

Why I took it seriously (the too-much thread)

I've spent a lot of time writing about what happens to girls and women who get called "too much." Too intense. Too competitive. Too loud. Too emotional. Too visible.

We tell girls from a young age to stop taking up space. Then we wonder why they stop showing up.

If we actually mean what we say about not asking girls to shrink, the very first thing we should do is stop building their anxiety into the uniform. A white pair of shorts shouldn't be the thing that determines whether a kid plays her sport that day. And yet — I've now talked to enough girls to know that, for some of them, it absolutely is.

This isn't about aesthetics. It's about access.

The research caught up with what the girls were telling us

For a long time, the response to athlete concerns about white shorts was some variant of, "you're overthinking it." That's harder to say now.

In 2023, sport-science researchers published a study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (Mengelkoch et al.) showing that women's soccer teams wearing white shorts averaged 0.32 to 0.37 fewer points per game than teams in dark shorts across two decades of international tournaments. No such pattern showed up in men's soccer. The researchers linked the gap to menstruation-related anxiety affecting focus and confidence.

A 2024 Adidas/UEFA survey of amateur and elite players found that 65% of menstruating players cite period leakage as their number-one concern while playing. A Youth Sport Trust study the same year found that 6 in 10 girls report feeling anxious about playing sport because of period leaks.

And the National Women's Soccer League eliminated white shorts from its 2024 uniform lineup entirely — citing player feedback. If professional athletes with private locker rooms, customized kits, and medical staff are naming this as a barrier, we should be paying attention to what it looks like for a fourteen-year-old in a shared locker room with one pair of shorts.

The evidence is not overclaiming that white shorts cause worse performance. The evidence is saying — clearly — that they create avoidable anxiety. And avoidable anxiety in adolescent girls doesn't stay in the uniform. It shows up in attendance, in retention, and in the long, quiet exit from sport that happens somewhere between ages 11 and 14.

The NFHS rules already allow this

I want to head off the biggest concern I know people will raise: aren't we going rogue on NFHS?

No. And it's worth saying that clearly.

The National Federation of State High School Associations — the governing body for interscholastic sport in the United States — does not require white shorts in any girls' sport. Not soccer. Not basketball. Not lacrosse. Not field hockey. The rules ask for team-colored consistency and contrast with opponents. Color choice is up to the team.

Field hockey doesn't even require a skirt. Neither does lacrosse. Both sports explicitly allow shorts, kilts, or pants. The white skirt and white shorts you see at most high school games are tradition, not regulation.

That means Vermont is not breaking rules by moving away from white uniform bottoms. We're making a student-centered choice inside rules that already allow it.

Why this matters so much in Vermont specifically

Here's the piece that took me a while to put together. When I started looking at the demographics of Vermont's public school population, the equity dimension of this work got much bigger.

61.4% of Vermont public school students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, according to the Vermont Agency of Education's 2024 report. That's roughly two in every three kids in our schools.

A sixteen-year-old from a family struggling to afford period products is not going to speak up when the uniform she was issued makes her anxious. She's going to sit out. She's going to quietly stop showing up. She's going to be one of the girls in the "kids quit sports" data who is actually being quit on by the conditions we built for her.

This is what I mean when I say uniform choice is access. We know girls are more than twice as likely to quit sports by age 14 as boys. We know low-income girls quit at even higher rates. If uniform-related anxiety is one of the contributing factors — and the research and the student voices both say it is — then fixing it is one of the most concrete, immediate, cheapest levers we have.

What we're doing, and how you can help

I'm proud to share that the NFHS Foundation has awarded the Vermont Principals' Association a $20,000 grant to directly support this work. The grant funds three interconnected efforts:

Uniform replacement support — offsetting costs for schools phasing out white uniform bottoms, prioritized by demonstrated need
Period products — ensuring menstrual products are accessible in locker rooms, training rooms, and travel kits across participating schools
Education programming — bringing medical professionals into middle and high school programs to educate girls about their bodies, their cycles, and how to advocate for themselves as athletes

We're pairing this with a multi-year phased rollout that respects school budgeting cycles, an evaluation plan that tracks participation before and after implementation, and a replicability framework so that other states can adopt this model. This isn't about one state going its own way. It's about building something other people can run with.

If you're an athletic director or educator in Vermont: watch your inbox. More information is coming, and we want your voice at the table — not after decisions are made.

If you're a parent, student, or coach: share this. The girls in your life need to know that their discomfort was never imagined, and that someone is listening. Send it to your daughter, your niece, your team's group chat.

If you're a potential corporate partner or sponsor: this is a scalable model, backed by an NFHS-aligned governance structure and a replicable study design. We are actively looking for partners on period products, uniform support, and education programming. Reach out at [your contact email].

If you're a researcher or program leader in another state: we plan to publish a replication playbook at the end of year one. Subscribe to the newsletter below and I'll make sure you're the first to get it.

What's coming next in this series

Over the next few days I'll be publishing two follow-up posts: one on what the research actually says about why girls quit sports and how menstruation fits into that story, and one on the emerging science linking the menstrual cycle to ACL injuries in female athletes — including what coaches and parents can actually do with that information.

If you want those as they go live, the newsletter's down below.

And if you've ever been a girl who sat out because of her period, or a woman who's still quietly doing it — I see you. This is for you. Let's build something better.

Dr. Lauren Young is the founder of The GRL Initiative and Executive Director of the Vermont Principals' Association. Follow @thegrlinitiative for more on girls in sports, leadership, and why we stopped fitting rooms that weren't built for us.

The Real Reason We're Getting Rid of White Shorts