As women's sport creeps out of the shadows, there's still a mountain to climb
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Version 0 of 1. At the age of 14 I first picked up a rugby ball; 17 years later I lifted the World Cup. This journey, with its remarkable ups and inevitable downs, was all thanks to one teacher: Lisa Burgess. She was my physical education (PE) teacher at Salisbury secondary school in Edmonton and captained the Wales women’s team. She saw my talent and sent me to train with the Saracens, a rugby union team, when I was as a teenager. It was largely her passion for the sport of rugby that filtered down and led me to a career in the game at the highest level. It has been surreal to watch the Six Nations from the sidelines following my retirement last year. It was unpredictable with Ireland emerging as worthy winners of both tournaments. The only area I would like to improve in the women’s game is the amount of media coverage the tournament receives. Some of the games were shown live on BBC1 red button and Sky Sports, but I truly believe coverage can improve and grow. The England v France women’s game was shown live on French terrestrial TV and was viewed by 513,000 people, which shows there is an appetite for it. There is still a mountain to climb, but women’s sport is slowly creeping out from behind the shadows. But we don’t just need to profile more women’s sport, more women also need to get up and active. Here at the Youth Sport Trust, where I work as athlete mentor manager, we are committed to engaging young people in physical activity from an early age so that they form good habits for life. We need more teachers like Lisa Burgess. Every day, I am involved in training athlete mentors to go into schools and use the power of sport to improve the lives of young people. I see first-hand the difference sport can have on otherwise disengaged young people. This weekend we will host 165 girls at our first Girls Active Camp at Loughborough University. Funded by Sport England and run in partnership with Women in Sport, Girls Active seeks to tackle the relatively lower levels of participation by girls in PE and sport. Its focus is providing a support framework to enable schools to develop their own tailored approach to tackling the issues of lower participation, poor body image and a lack of understanding of the benefits of PE and sport. We will work directly with those girls on the brink of walking away from PE and physical activity, and challenge them to each recruit five more students from their school to get active. The camp empowers girls to take more responsibility over their own health and wellbeing. Ultimately it will create more advocates for women’s sport as we continue to push for gender equality. That really matters to me because that is how I got into sport. My teacher gave me great advice when I first started out, and I want to pass that on. When I get to the camp in Loughborough I will be advising girls to get out of their comfort zones because that is the only way you can get better. Content on this page is provided and funded by the Youth Sport Trust, supporter of the PE and school sport series on the Guardian Teacher Network. |