Girls Just Want to Have Fun, But Do They Get To?

Having two young daughters of my own, I have begun to develop a growing terror at what their experiences may be like in high school in several years, based on what the ugly underbelly of the average day holds for many girls I work with in a different setting from the classroom, where they can flow in and out and often seemingly blend.
Having coached girls for 15 years and seen them transform into young women, I learned of their insecurities, their body image issues, but was often amazed at their fierce loyalties, their innate toughness, the emotional and physical toll that they were willing to submit to in order to not let down their teammates, their families, and even their silly old coach. They were willing to get smelly, dirty, even bloody in their quest to be great, and I was enthralled at watching them transform into tough minded physical specimens of young womanhood. Confidence and power and fulfilment was what I got to see so many times.
Now, dealing with and meeting with the "others" on my campus, I , witness more and more the frailty that comes with their daily life as females. Sexual harassment, bullying from both boys and other girls in a dozen different ways, impossible standards of size or beauty, and generalized anxiety that comes from being 1 in a 1, 000 or so seems to overwhelm too many. In the last year, I have had conversations or helped girls deal with issues with anxiety attacks over testing and college, frustration and anger with a father who "only feeds me because he has to", a hopeful addition through foster care to our school after a long time being expelled for violence against a teacher, and a dark-eyed knot of anger flaring from one who made threats about a gun being brought to school. Pregnancies occur from all kinds of financial backgrounds, and there is optimism but also white-eyed terror from what is to come. Girls "cut", they find themselves in tenuous and dangerous relationships out of a craving for affection, and they sometimes are kept in a state of suspended animation/puberty by fearful parents, and I relate to that last one too closely. For what the future holds, I can not enable a rosy hue, a secure end, nor shield them completely from harm.
My best effort is try and normalize the situations with these girls, be in the moment with them, and hope that that when they ride out the storm, that they aren't too battered to continue forward. That in this brave, new world, only a few generations from a set pathway for females, that they embrace the opportunities in education and career that so many are now able to grasp. That their armor is forged from within and is of unbreakable strength. That they don't just survive but thrive.