This story by Briana Brady and Liberty Darr was first published in the Shelburne News on Aug. 6, 2026.
For anyone with a period, the anxiety is familiar: the worry that standing up from a seat or bending over to pick something up might reveal a red stain, that a tampon or pad might leak and everyone else will notice.
For girls playing for their middle school or high school sports teams, a new initiative from the Vermont Principals Association contends, the worry adds to the reasons why one in three girls quit sports by the time they’re 14 years old.
For Lauren Young, the VPA’s executive director of activities and athletics, there’s one obvious solution: no more white shorts.
On the first Thursday of every month, Young said, the VPA hosts a “Girls and Equity” conversation. The organization invites coaches and athletic directors, primarily women, to talk through the issues that girls might be facing when they participate in school sports. Most importantly, Young said, the group has also been hearing from the girls themselves.
Different girls’ teams from schools around the state have shared about their lived experience, Young said, and have covered issues from harassment to small crowd sizes.
“Then (there’s) this whole thing around period anxiety and being comfortable in their uniforms,” Young said. “Which, man, that goes back decades for me — having a uniform that fit and I felt confident in.”
The VPA has made available small grants for schools interested in phasing in darker shorts for their girls’ teams. With support from the National Federation of State High School Associations and the GRL Initiative (Young’s organization promoting women’s leadership in sports), the state association is helping schools buy new shorts for their teams. They’re also getting a discount on uniform bottoms from BSN Sports.
“When I put the requests out for what people needed, I was just overwhelmed with how many people took me up on the offer,” Young said.
She said the VPA needs about $20,000 more to complete the requests for this year.
Lamoille Union High School Athletics Director Tim Messier was one of those who responded to the call.
“I literally just heard from one of the vendors who’s working with the VPA today,” Messier said recently.
Messier, who has been the high school’s athletics director for 35 years, is a staunch supporter of Young and the initiative. He jumped on board quickly to get a batch of darker colored shorts ordered for the fall season. The only downside, he said, is that this initiative started gaining real traction during this summer season, when most people are away or on vacation. He’s now looking forward to getting the conversation rolling during a fall sports season orientation later this month.
“What we decided here at Lamoille was to emphasize the concept of choice and options,” Messier said, adding that the school had already ordered replacement white and blue uniforms due to usual wear and tear, particularly for soccer uniforms. “And then in contact with the VPA and the vendor, they suggested for a color match that black would probably go best with our present home and away uniforms.”
He said the conversation should always center on what the student athletes are most comfortable in, and now they will at least have that choice.
“As I told one of my coaches, it just means it’s another set of shorts that we distribute in the beginning that they’ll have in their gear bags,” he said.
Stowe High School Athletic Director Tim Albertson said that when he arrived five years ago, the girls’ soccer team began wearing only black shorts. The next goal: finding comfortable dark shorts for the girls’ basketball team to wear with their white tops.
Stowe girls’ soccer coach Tyler Post said he initially broached the topic with Albertson, recognizing that when it rains, white shorts can become see-through. Post said the conversation and decision to switch was a no-brainer.
“The girls fully supported doing that,” he said. “I don’t even know if any of them voiced being super uncomfortable about it, but we also realize, what’s the point if anyone even feels slightly uncomfortable about this?”
Champlain Valley Union High School is also replacing the shorts for the girls’ soccer and basketball team uniforms this year. Girls on all the other teams, such as volleyball and Ultimate, already wear black bottoms.
Renee Breault, the school’s activities director, is one of a handful of female athletic directors in the state. Breault said both she and Tucker Pierson, the coach for the school’s field hockey and girls’ lacrosse teams, have been regular attendees at the VPA’s Girls and Equity meetings.
While she said some of the girls are skeptical of getting rid of the white shorts on their away uniforms — they’re worried about how it will look — Breault wants her students to feel comfortable in their bodies while they play. That goes for all athletes.
“We often have both males and females that might not be comfortable in the size uniform that is either left over for them or that’s available to them,” Breault said.
Sometimes it’s just the size, but it might also be the cut. For example, Breault said, wrestling singlets are often ordered in a cut that doesn’t take breasts into account. However, wrestling is growing in popularity among girls; Vermont this year is, for the first time, adding girls-only wrestling competitions.
According to Young, helping schools get rid of white shorts is just one piece of the puzzle.
“We can do this one thing, but then we really need to start teaching girls about their bodies,” Young said, pointing to the fact that most sports research is focused solely on men.
She said, for example, girls and women are eight times more likely to have an anterior cruciate ligament tear, but there isn’t any research into why. She wants girls to feel comfortable vocalizing to their coaches what might be going on with their bodies.
There’s also a cultural change that needs to happen, Young said. Along with reports about period anxiety, the VPA has also been getting reports from athletes about misogynist or homophobic remarks at games aimed at shaming girls’ bodies. While she’s been working with schools to address these things, there’s more progress to be made.
“We can’t keep putting girls out into environments where they’re battling so many different things, and who knows what the rest of their day looks like, or the rest of their life looks like,” she said. “This is the one place that they’re supposed to go out and do the thing they love and enjoy it.”
Messier likened the shorts initiative to broader conversations about the culture within school sports, things like placing more emphasis on the socio-emotional health of student athletes and realizing the truth in the adage, “It’s OK to not be OK.”
“One thing I’m proud about, and I think every school works hard to do, is to provide our students and student athletes the ability to connect with at least one adult in the building,” he said. “And if they’re not comfortable with an adult, they’re often very comfortable with their peers, and that’s where the connections they have are so significant.”
