ASYLBASH, Kyrgyzstan — On a muddy field in Kyrgyzstan, eight teenagers on horseback thundered back and forth playing a Central Asian version of polo known as kok-boru. But instead of mallets, they used their bare hands, and in place of a ball was a headless dead goat.

Sixteen-year-old Begimai Bakirova galloped along while trying to hold onto the goat carcass as it slowly slipped down her horse’s flank. Two boys rode on either side of her, jostling, yelling and grabbing for the goat. Spectators scattered from the sidelines as the riders and horses approached at full gallop.

The game was not an unusual sight in Asylbash, a village of a few hundred wood and clay homes near the Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, where kok-boru is the national sport. The unusual sight was Begimai — a woman — in a game that has been played for hundreds of years almost exclusively by men. Last year, Begimai and five other teenagers formed the first women’s kok-boru team in Kyrgyzstan.

“Every girl has her passion,” said Begimai, whose short black ponytail stood out among the crew cuts on the pitch. When people tell her that kok-boru is “not for women,” she said she tells them that if a woman has the skill and the desire, then kok-boru is for her too.

“I would like more parents to let their girls play,” she said.

Despite negative comments online and criticism in the village, Begimai’s team has been inspiring a small but growing number of women and girls who want in on the rough-and-tumble sport.

...Read the rest in The New York Times