A new rule requiring two girls to be on the court at all times during team handball games has been implemented for the fall 2016 season.

Team handball is a co-ed game played with one goalie and six court players, whose objective is to outscore their opponents by throwing a ball into a goal. Handball is a corollary sport, meaning it aims to open interscholastic sports participation opportunities to all students, especially among those with disabilities. Per corollary sports rules, team handball requires half of the players on the court to have a disability, whether it be mental or physical. The new rule now also requires two girls to be among the seven players on the court at one time.

“[The rule was made] to ensure continued participation on the part of females in team handball,” Dr. William G. Beattie, Director of Systemwide Athletics for MCPS said. “The number of female participants seemed to be decreasing each year, and increasingly male participants were dominating play.”

Since the CHS handball team has a majority of male athletes, having two girls on the court at all times limits the amount of time each male can play and forces the female athletes to play significantly more. Although female participation is increased, equal opportunity for the players is lost.

According to Beattie, the rule requiring two girls to be on the court was made instead of making a rule that forces the coaches to give the players equal playing time. He reasoned that the rule was more appropriate because other co-ed sports have a set number of female to male ratio and varsity sports don’t enforce equal playing time.

Although the new rule is trying to increase female participation, no one can force more girls to play the sport. However, for the girls who do choose to play for the CHS team, they are given the same chance to play as any other player. CHS handball coach Evan Rosenthal prioritizes giving the players equal playing time instead of playing the higher-skilled players more often.

“It shouldn’t matter your grade, your gender, your ethnicity, or anything like that for you to get on the court,” Rosenthal said. “Everyone should have an equal chance to play.”

Although he sees the importance of the rule, Rosenthal doesn’t believe that a rule should be made to enforce equal playing time, since the players should receive equal opportunity to play in the first place. Rosenthal believes other coaches should play everyone equally without being forced to do so.

“There are certain schools that only play guys every single game and they leave the girls on their team on the bench,” Rosenthal said. “That’s not how it works here. We want to make sure everyone gets on the court and that everyone has a fair chance to play.”

The CHS handball team had to forfeit their first game against BCC on Sept. 21, since they were unaware of the new rule and at the time had no girls on the team.

According to senior handball player Dan Alpert, the new rule penalizes the players for something that they can not control. Since no girls wanted to be on the handball team at the time of the first game, the players, who were excited to play, had to forfeit.

Since the Sept. 21 game, the team was able to recruit six girls to play. However, all but one of the girls quit before the Oct. 20 game against Whitman, forcing the team to forfeit again as it could not meet the requirements of the new rule. Although the team had adapted to the rule prior to the Whitman game, they were once again negatively impacted by a factor that they could not control. Alpert still feels that the rule should be retracted.

“It makes MCPS look sexist because they’re pretty much saying that girls can’t compete against guys,” Alpert said. “I don’t think this is true. I think that no matter who’s playing on the court there is gonna be better players and there are gonna be players that aren’t as good as others, but I don’t think it has to do with gender, I think it has to do with how well you know the game.”

Although the rule’s intentions were to equalize playing time and promote fair gameplay on the court, Alpert claims that the disadvantages have outweighed the benefits for the CHS handball team.

“MCPS tends to do a lot things that they think are gonna help, but ends up hurting, and I think this is one of those examples,” Alpert said.

Although to some the rule appears to be counterproductive, for a short time at CHS it successfully achieved its purpose of increasing female participation, as seen with the increase of girls on the team.

“We will assess the opinions of the coaches on the rule upon the conclusion of the season,” Beattie said.