Canada’s dairy farmers are supporting girls and women serious about sports across the country with the Fuelling Women Champions initiative and its new grant program.
Fuelling Women Champions was launched last year to advocate for female athletics in Canada. This year, the organization started the Champions Fund to offer 20 grants of $5,000 to female athletes, teams and organizations.
Campaign ambassador and Olympic medallist, Natalie Spooner knows how difficult it is for female athletes to pay for sports.
“I think all around it’s not funded the best and there’s even a lot of elite athletes that struggle daily to keep up their training,” she said. Spooner played with St. Albertan Meaghan Mikkelson on Team Canada. The pair partnered up for the second season of The Amazing Race Canada.
The Toronto Furies forward said she’s seen a big change in the last year since the initiative was started. Spooner’s league, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), is one of the initiative’s partners and she was grateful that Fuelling Women Champions helped bring fans to CWHL games and even assisted in getting some games televised during the last season.
Spooner spoke about the discrepancy that exists between support for men’s and women’s sports. According to a report done by Fuelling Women Champions and the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity, women’s sports only received four per cent of the coverage on national sports television networks in 2014. A four-year investigation of the country’s two most circulated newspapers found that they only dedicated five per cent of sports coverage to women. The study also found that 99.6 per cent of sports sponsorship dollars go to males.
Spooner also mentioned that much of the female sports coverage has focused on physical appearance in the past but that this has seemed to improve in the last few years.
With the increased sponsorship money and media coverage, it is much easier for men to make sports into careers. The initiative hopes to change that by helping women fund their passions as well as spreading awareness about the opportunities there are for women in sports.
“When I was little I dreamed of playing in the NHL,” said Spooner. “It was OK but now there’s a women’s league that girls can dream to play in, so I think that this is just awesome because girls didn’t know about the league and now it’s just getting awareness out there.”
She said getting women’s sports on TV is important. She predicts that the coverage would encourage people to come to games. The income from ticket sales and exposure to sponsors would help women become full-time career athletes. Spooner has personal experience trying to find a balance between making a sufficient income and playing hockey.
“Now that I’m older, and after you graduate from college, it is just that struggle between can hockey be a career or am I going to go back to school or find a job, then at the same time you want to put your full foot forward to make Canada proud,” she said.
She’s not going to give up her athletic goals or her support of women’s sports anytime soon though. Spooner said she first started playing hockey and soccer to follow in the footsteps of her three older brothers. She found her passion in hockey and never looked back.
“Sport brought me so much growing up and it still does, I’m still playing, so I want girls to experience the same thing, not only for the health benefits of it but it teaches you a lot about teamwork, a lot about yourself, and confidence,” said Spooner.
The research report found that only 41 per cent of girls aged four to 17 and 48 per cent of adult women participate in sports.
Spooner had some advice for those who are looking to join the athletic community.
“Don’t just try one sport and give it up. You can try multiple sports because one of them I’m sure you’re going to love and going to want to keep playing.”
Any female Canadian athlete or athletic group aged 13 or older that wants to take their sport to the next level is eligible for the Champions Fund grants. The application deadline is September 29, 2016.
Visit www.womenchampions.com for more information and to apply for the fund.
