Maryvale girls gain confidence through volleyball program

Life as a teen or tween can be tough, particularly for girls.

That's why an Arizona State University partnership with a community center in west Phoenix is building confidence in girls through teamwork, mutual support — and learning how to serve a volleyball.

Girls find navigating their young lives more difficult than boys do, according to a 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. The CDC wrote that while all teens deal with growing mental health challenges, “girls fared worse than boys across nearly all measures” when it comes to navigating incidents of violence and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In 2021, nearly three in five U.S. teen girls felt “persistently sad or hopeless,” the CDC said.

Please click here to read the entire ASU News article, including how Kailei Foltmer, a PhD student in the school, helped create the program.