"As a witness to one lost opportunity after another, Anne Marie De Barros has spent years in the Boston public schools wondering when one of the most glaring inequities in Massachusetts high school sports would end."
Now she knows.
Beginning next fall, eight Boston public high schools where girls never had a chance to play varsity soccer - an option available to nearly every other high school girl in Massachusetts - will field varsity teams for the first time. Five other Boston high schools where students had no access to any level of interscholastic girls soccer will launch their first junior varsity programs, with an eye to making them varsity teams in 2011.
The girls soccer teams are among the first beneficiaries of a sweeping overhaul intended to bring comprehensive sports opportunities and academic support to thousands of Boston’s student-athletes.
De Barros, the junior varsity girls soccer coach at Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, said she no longer will struggle to explain to her players, some of the best in Boston schools, why they have been treated as second-class citizens. The Burke girls will play their first varsity schedule next fall, removing the junior varsity stigma that has discouraged college recruiters from considering them for athletic scholarships.
“I’ve heard too many girls say, ‘The city doesn’t care about