Between coaching girls' sports and taking some courses in education law, yeah, I've glanced over this once or twice! :-)
You're absolutely right about the chicken and egg thing. It's hard to generate interest in something that doesn't yet exist, and it's hard to justify creating something when you can't prove sufficient interest. That makes it easy for the folks in charge to maintain the status quo. It takes an organized effort in significant numbers to establish "sufficient demand," and that takes a bit of doing, especially when people would rather not see the demand.
Nobody believed we would have enough "interest and ability" to field separate girls' and boys' JV soccer teams at our school; I finally got permission to try, with no district supplement for JV. As it happened, we've been having JV for both genders for two years now, and in both seasons, the girls have come out in significantly greater numbers than the boys. Just goes to show that you're right...if you build something that they feel they want to be a part of, the girls will come out.
