Girls Tackle American Football With the Guys

09/21/2013

Welcome to As It Is! I’m June Simms in Washington.

On our show today, we hear about college students who have come up with an imaginative way to increase creativity among children.
                            
Also, tennis, badminton and table tennis are some of only a few sports in which men and women compete on the same team. Rarely does this happen in American-style football. In fact, many school districts in the United States bar girls from playing football. But today, we hear about an American high school where three girls have joined what is normally an all-male sport. We begin with that report from Avi Arditti.

Girls a Rare Sight on Boys’ Football Team

Football season has begun at schools across the United States. This year, one high school football team is a little different than most others. It is the one from TC Williams in Alexandria, Virginia. They have Brianna, Tiffany and Josie on the team. Head coach Dennis Randolph says he did not object when the unusual request came his way.

“About 25 girls that have said you know ‘hey we want to play football,’ and I say ‘well come on out.’ But they don’t show up because this really is not for everybody. It takes a special person to come out here and play football. Tiffany and Brianna and Josie are atypical.”

Brianna Smith is a kicker. This is her third year on the TC Williams team. She once played soccer, but her father asked her to try football. At first, she was not so sure.

“Honestly, I ask myself that every day. Like ‘why did I decide to play a guys’ sport?  But it kind of just grew on me. And then after I made that first field goal, I just knew that it was my sport.”

But there are some restrictions to playing on a boys’ team. The pre-game locker room experience is a big part of being on a high school team. But the three young women cannot take part in it.

“It’s sad, but at the same time, there’s nothing we can do because we’re girls -- we can’t go in the locker-room while they’re getting ready. We just have to quickly get dressed and find out what we’re doing next.”

Teammate Jeremiah Clarke says he treats the young women like any other players on the team.

“We don’t treat them any differently than we would if they were just a guy. So when I found out I was like, ‘whoa, a girl can play football?’  I mean you just adapt, and it’s nothing really big.”

Brianna Smith’s father is a football coach for a local college team. He makes sure to be on the field to give his daughter pointers throughout the games. He says her bravery motivates others.

“Male and females will see a lot in her because she will be able to say to them, ‘Hey, if I’m a female and I can play football, anything that you choose to do in life, of course you can do it too. All you have to do is be committed, work hard and be disciplined.’”

“Honestly when I’m older I would just like to say ‘oh yeah, I did that.’  I finally can say I finished my high school seasons and I completed something that a normal girl wouldn’t do. And just to tell people that I have actually done something like that is just amazing.”

She now dreams of playing football in college. She has the next two years to gain the attention of college football programs. But for now, it is all about TC Williams -- winning and getting a chance to help the team. I’m Avi Arditti.

You are listening to As It Is, from VOA Learning English. I’m June Simms.

source : learningenglish.voanews.com/

Climate Scientists Call Decrease of Arctic Ice ‘Unprecedented’

Welcome back! I’m Caty Weaver. The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. The panel is a committee made up of hundreds of scientists. Last week, an IPCC working group released a report about climatic conditions around the world. Today, we will tell you what it says.                      

                             
And later we visit India where shrinking glaciers and melting Himalayan snow could affect millions of people below.

Scientists are surer than ever before that the Earth is warming and that human activity is to blame. That is the message of the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As we hear from Christopher Cruise, the report’s findings will help inform policy makers and the public as they consider action to fight climate change.  

One-hundred-ten governments approved this scientific agreement:

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20^th century.” 

The head of the World Meteorological Organization, Michael Jarraud, spoke at a press conference about the new report.

“It should serve as yet another wake-up call that our activities today will have a profound impact on society, not only for us, but for many generations to come.”

Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass and glaciers continue to shrink, the report says. It calls the decrease of Artic sea ice, “unprecedented,” meaning nothing like this has been noted before. The report also examines the mean rate of sea level rise. It says that since the middle of the 19^th century, the rate is higher than at any time in the past 2000 years.

The working group also examined the connection between extreme weather events and climate. Brenda Ekwurzel is a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group. She has worked with the scientists who prepared the IPCC report.

“The most we can say is that extreme events dealing with coastal flooding and extreme heat, (we have) very, very high confidence with these events being highly linked to climate change.”

She says the report blames human activity for half of the increased warming over the past fifty or so years. One such activity is the burning of fossil fuels in factories, buildings and cars. This produces heat-trapping gasses.

Past IPCC reports have led the way to international agreements like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It ended in 2012. The United Nation’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, says the new report will help move new climate talks forward.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is sometimes criticized as appearing to be too conservative in its predictions. But, Ms. Figueres says this report is right on the mark.

“Everything that we thought we knew about climate change has been underestimated, that we will have much faster and much more intense effects from the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So, it’s a very sobering message that calls for a more invigorated and more accelerated policy response to address that.”

Government leaders and climate experts will get a chance to do that at the climate negotiations next month. The talks will take place in the Polish capital, Warsaw.

I’m Christopher Cruise.

You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English.

Now we go to the northern Indian state Himachal Pradesh to look at the effects of rising temperatures right now. The town of Manali is in the Kullu Valley. It is economically dependent on the thousands of people who travel up the Himalaya Mountains every year to escape the heat of the Indian plains.

D.S. Aditya is manager of Sterling Resorts in Manali. He says many people like to visit a snow-covered pass that lies about 50 kilometers up one mountain.
“Wherever you go like there’s one destination, this is famous. If you visited Manali, Rohtang is main attraction. Because of the snow.”

The Rohtang Pass has many more visitors now than it did 10 years ago, thanks partly to the growing financial success of India’s middle class. In summer months, more than two thousand vehicles crowd the narrow mountain road.

Ravi Thakur of Himalayan Caravan Adventure has lived in Manali since he was a child.
“Twenty years ago, we could count how many cars are here in Manali. Now, if you come in season time, we do have traffic jam for four, five, six kilometers on the Rohtang Road.”

Visitors enjoy the beauty of the pass. But environmentalists are warning about the increasing traffic on mountains and glaciers.

J.C. Kuniyal is a scientist at the GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development. He is studying temperature changes in the Rohtang area. He says temperatures in the Kullu Valley have risen be about six-tenths of a degree Celsius. That is about the same as the average increase worldwide.

But, what worries him is the effects of uncontrolled tourism on the mountain ecosystem.
“I have seen that the regions which are facing a high influx due to floating population or human activity, there aerosols are increasing. These are supposed to be the main causes to melt the Himalayan glaciers.”

The aerosol gases come both from diesel-powered vehicles and burning of wood for cooking by local people. The smoke leaves thick black ash on the glaciers. This causes them to absorb, or take in, more heat.

Local people are witnessing the effects of climate change and human activity on glaciers. Ravi Thakur has been walking the mountains since childhood. He says he has seen a loss of mountain snow and glacial ice.
“We keep going every year, almost to the same routes, and I have seen that glaciers, they are receding. In 15 years I have seen that big change.”

That has raised concerns. The area’s local glaciers are the headwaters for rivers like the Indus and the Ganges. The two rivers are the source of fresh water for millions of people in South Asia.

Pradipto Ghosh is a director at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.
“If the present trend of gradual loss of net glacial mass continues, then over time the flow from the glaciers would reduce.”

Scientists say there is serious concern about water for agriculture on the Indian plains. Arun Shrestha is a climate change specialist at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal.
“Those communities, their agricultural system relies quite heavily on melt water.”
Some people, like mountain guide Ravi Thakur, worry about possible changes in the future.
“Till I leave my life, we won’t be facing those scarcity of water, but later on, the coming generation, they will have problems.”
Environmentalists will continue trying to establish how deep those problems might become.

 And that’s As It Is for today. I’m Caty Weaver. Thanks for joining us!

source : learningenglish.voanews.com/