Increasing the visibility of girls and women in program advertising can help demonstrate that your organization is inclusive. Research shows that it is important that imagery includes girls and women of different backgrounds and body shapes and sizes to help ensure that all women and girls can picture themselves participating in your sport.
Use double quotes to find documents that include the exact phrase: "aerodynamic AND testing"
Use double quotes to find documents that include the exact phrase: "aerodynamic AND testing"
The language used by coaches plays a significant role in fostering inclusive environments for 2SLGBTQI athletes. As a coach, some ways to make the language you use more inclusive include using athletes’ preferred pronouns and avoiding the use of gendered language, for example, by saying “hello everyone” rather than “hello guys.”
A study of professional athletes’ willingness to pay for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions reveals a promising intersection between sports participation and environmental sustainability efforts with a majority of participants showing readiness to financially support green initiatives. Key strategies include raising environmental awareness, demonstrating event sustainability, leveraging social influence, and collaborating with environmental organizations. These strategies may also attract eco-conscious participants, underlining the critical role sports can play in promoting environmental stewardship!
Did you know that a sports team’s promotion of plant-based foods can influence their fans’ eating habits? Studies reveal fans with a strong identification to their team are more inclined to adopt a diet rich in vegetables and less in meat when they’re aware of the team’s pro-environmental food initiatives. By fostering a sense of shared values and highlighting the health and environmental benefits of diets, sports teams can play a pivotal role in steering fans towards healthier and sustainable choices!
Mental health and mental health disorders affect people from all walks of life. Elite athletes face unique challenges in dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), with an estimated 1 in 8 experiencing this condition. This recent study explores the complexities of diagnosing and treating PTSD in athletes, highlighting best practice models for mental health screening and emphasizing the importance of involving the athlete’s multidisciplinary team for effective treatment.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication, interaction, and other behaviours. A recent study suggests that exercise programs designed to enable children with ASD to participate can significantly improve their physical literacy and motor skills, offering a potentially valuable framework for physical activity programming for children with ASD.
Optimizing performance in soccer requires collaboration among coaches, physicians, nutritionists, and exercise physiologists to provide tailored recommendations. A recent study offers valuable insights into essential factors, including hydration status and training load structure, crucial for optimizing body composition and health.
Coach mentoring in Para sport
In many ways, coaching athletes with and without disabilities is comparable as their training, dedication, and motivation to succeed are the same. However, there are contextual differences that make coaching in the Para sport setting unique. For example, it is important for coaches to have a strong understanding of specialized equipment, medication, travel considerations, and accessibility constraints to coach effectively (Alexander & Bloom, 2020).
Often, Para sport coaches must be creative in getting this unique contextual information. Sometimes it is through structured learning opportunities like sport-specific coaching courses or webinars, self-directed learning such as reading books, watching YouTube videos or talking to athletes, or learning from their peers through communities of practice or mentorship (Culver et al., 2020; Duarte et al., 2021).
Sports coach mentorship has received increasing attention over the last 25 years in pursuit of enhancing coach development (Lefebvre et al., 2020). One of the first studies on coach mentorship in Para sport was by Fairhurst et al. (2017) who interviewed 6 Canadian Paralympic coaches on their mentoring experiences. All coaches reported how mentoring helped them learn Para sport-specific coaching information, and perhaps most importantly, that structured mentorship would benefit coaches who often had a smaller network to connect with and learn from.
The mentorship program
In 2020, the Coaches Association of Ontario developed a year-long Para sport coach mentorship program designed to provide mentee coaches with a structured network to enhance their coaching practices. As Para sport coaching researchers, we were interested in understanding mentee experiences in the program, including what they gained from it and how to make it better in the future.
Our coaches
We had 29 mentee and 15 mentor coaches participate in this program. Mentor coaches were experienced leaders in their respective Para sports, while mentee coaches had less than 5 years of experience coaching in the Para sport context.
For example, some mentees had never coached in Para sport but were interested in learning in a proactive manner, some were coaching 1 or 2 athletes with disabilities in their programs, some had wanted to start their own Para sport programs, and some were coaching established Para sport teams. Mentor and mentees met for a minimum of 30 minutes per month and collectively completed 3 assignments, 3 webinars, and 3 workshops over the year.
How we collected and analyzed the data
We conducted focus groups (Krueger, 2014) at the half-way point of the program and individual interviews (Smith & Sparkes, 2016) at the end to understand the strengths of the program, preferences regarding coach learning, and recommendations for improvement.
We talked to the mentee coaches in groups halfway through the program and interviewed them individually at the end. This helped us find out what was good about the program, what kind of learning coaches prefer, and how we can make it better.
We used a method called reflexive thematic analysis to understand more about how mentee coaches learn from their mentors and how it makes them feel more confident in coaching Para sports. Reflexive thematic analysis is a way of studying people’s experiences, views, and perceptions in detail.
Our results: Experiences of coach mentorship
All coaches were grateful for the opportunity to take part in the mentorship program. Mentee coaches appreciated having a supportive, knowledgeable, and genuine mentor to guide them in a context where they had little to no experience.
Mentorship provided the mentee coaches an opportunity to get tailored coach development specific to their needs, goals, and coaching situations:
“I think I would have had a lot of problems if I wanted to start [a Para sport program prior to mentorship]. I wouldn’t have known where to start. But going through this whole program, it’s really helped me to understand ‘this is what I need to do’ and get the resources needed. I’ve learned a lot, it’s been so good!” (Janet, Interview).
One of the main reasons for joining a Para sport-specific coach mentorship program was to learn about disability-specific information from a more experienced Para sport coach. Coaches valued learning about classification and appropriate terminology:
“I learned more about classification. I figured if you broke your neck at the shoulder blades, from their downward you will be paralyzed but that’s not [necessarily] true. You could be paralyzed but still have function down your arms so it was a learning curve for me because [my mentor] jumps up and down on his chair like there’s no problem.” (Mackenzie, Interview)
“I always thought that it’s so important for everyone to be treated equal, no matter if they have a disability or not. Now my word is ‘inclusive’… He also advised me [of] certain terms we should not be using, so we have to be more careful in the choice of word.” (Erin, Interview)
Along with the learning opportunities offered through the program, like disability-specific webinars, mentee coaches felt their Para sport-specific coaching ability and confidence improved based on their mentoring experiences.
At the end of the program, we asked our mentees to provide advice for incoming mentee coaches based on their experiences. Mentees suggested that coaches ask questions, be adaptable, and trust their mentors:
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You’re there to learn as a coach, to improve your coaching, to educate yourself. Mentors are there to help you, to assist you, so you can further your coaching.” (Erin, Interview)
“I think just be open minded with everything and feel the excitement and passion that your mentor has.” (Yvonne, Interview)
Conclusion
Our study was the first that we know of to explore mentee coaches’ experiences in a one-year structured Para sport coach mentorship program. We saw that coaches valued the opportunity to learn from someone more experienced and knowledgeable who could guide them along their coaching journey.
In a setting characterized by a small community of coaches and limited opportunities for connection, it is essential to continue providing opportunities for Para sport coaches to network in pursuit of high-quality coach learning for all.
To access the full published academic paper, click here.
From a U of A varsity ski club to the Canadian Birkebeiner and the Olympics, women have always been part of the landscape of winter sport.
When Lyndsay Conrad dove into her archival research on early 20th-century ski history in Alberta, she found women were missing in the standard narratives, yet leap out in old University of Alberta yearbooks from the 1930s.
“We were finding that you need to dig a little bit deeper to find evidence about women,” says Conrad, a first-year graduate student in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation.
Now, Conrad and her colleagues on the Ski Like a Girl research team at the U of A are working to ensure the history of women and girls in Nordic skiing is remembered and heard.
“Women were skiers; they were also leaders and builders of the ski clubs, ski industry and tourism,” says PearlAnn Reichwein, professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation and research team lead.
“We are bringing women and girls to the forefront of these projects,” says Reichwein. “In that way, we’re working to reshape the history of skiing and Western Canada.”
In a recent paper, Reichwein analyzes the Canadian Birkebeiner’s origins, dating back to a frigid winter day for the first loppet in 1985. Women made up half of the grassroots organizing committee, and women and girls participated in the loppet.
The full 55 km course represents the tale of legendary Norwegian Birkebeiners transporting the infant Prince Haakon Haakonson. Outdoor educator Glenda Hanna, formerly with the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the U of A, was the first person to carry her own baby while skiing the event.
Reichwein argues that the Canadian Birkebeiner was crucial in negotiating terrain for the winter sport and conservation stewardship, creating broader impacts for sustainable heritage tourism within the area now included in the Beaver Hills Biosphere east of Edmonton.
“It began with a ski instructor’s love and passion for getting everybody involved in cross-country skiing,” she says.
“Ski instructors from the Riverside cross-country ski school, friends, families and many others volunteered their time to make the Canadian Birkebeiner idea come to life.”
The loppet — a mass participation cross-country ski event with food and celebration — was a vessel that carried the founding organizers’ sport-for-all philosophy, according to Reichwein. Its 40th anniversary is next year.
With a focus on Nordic skiing, the Ski Like a Girl research team hopes to fill a gap in the history of Canadian skiing and inspire equity, inclusion and diversity in sport and active living.
An unequal jump
Ski jumping is at the centre of PhD student Charlotte Mitchell’s research and 12-year athletic career with the Altius Nordic Ski Club in Calgary.
Through her research, Mitchell discovered the rich history of women’s ski jumping dating back to the late 1800s, when the sport was a popular spectator event that included women despite barriers to competition.
“Women were encouraged not to ski jump,” says Mitchell. “Their bodies were used against them, to not allow women to compete or train in sport in general, and in ski jumping.”
Despite those limits, women’s ski jumping grew as a sport over more than a century of advocacy, including efforts by Mitchell as a teenager who joined a lawsuit against the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee by elite women ski jumpers in protest of a men’s-only Olympic event.
Using autoethnographic research methods including creative nonfiction writing, photography and videography, Mitchell shares her plaintiff and ski jumping history to connect with broader exclusion experiences in sport for women and girls in Nordic skiing.
“Canada is under the assumption that things are more equal here,” says Mitchell. “Having the Olympic Winter Games held here with no women’s event in ski jumping was really a shock.”
Mitchell hopes her work will inspire sport communities to push policy boundaries and prioritize coming together to generate change in sport and society.
“This fight is definitely not over.”
Sport for all
Photo evidence found in the University of Alberta archives and original Evergreen and Gold yearbooks from the U of A Library helped Conrad’s research efforts to share the history of the university’s Varsity Ski Club.
“Nordic skiing in the 1930s was a very lively scene for outdoor winter recreation, and it took place in the river valley,” says Conrad. “Clubs built their own cabins and ski jumps and had competitions as well as recreational Sunday tours starting right from campus.”
A key tenet of the club was the “sport for all” ethic, which emphasized getting as many students out skiing as possible, Conrad explains.
Archival work led Conrad to point out that the Varsity Ski Club also served as an incubator for early female leaders on campus, helping women gain skills and leadership experience.
Alumni include Peggy O’Meara, a former ski club secretary treasurer who became the first female physician in the Canadian Armed Forces, and Marjorie Bowker, the first female family court judge in Alberta.
“They were leaders in sport at the university and then became leaders in their field,” says Conrad.
“I thought that was pretty amazing.”
In the snow-covered landscapes of Canada, where winter sports reign supreme, a quiet change is trying to take root; one that seeks to empower Indigenous youth through the world of snowboarding. Spearheaded by Canada Snowboard’s Indigenous Program, this initiative aims not only to introduce more Indigenous athletes to the sport but also foster a sense of community, cultural pride, and opportunity for growth.
“My goal is to have more Indigenous athletes, more Indigenous representation, especially within Canada because at Canada Snowboard we strive to be the world’s leading snowboard nation,” says Canada Snowboard Sport Program Coordinator Quinn Thomas, a driving force behind the program’s revitalization efforts.
The Indigenous program’s journey began in 2015 with the establishment of the First Nation Snowboard Team, which later evolved into the Indigenous Life Sport Academy (ILSA). Since then, the program has undergone a revamp, driven by a passionate commitment to increase Indigenous representation within the snowboarding community. As Canada Snowboard strives to be a global leader in snowboarding, it recognizes that achieving this goal requires embracing and celebrating the diversity of Indigenous cultures.
At the heart of the Indigenous Program’s mission is the belief in Indigenous leadership guiding Indigenous youth.
“We want to have Indigenous leaders leading Indigenous youth. We want to honour and preserve their way of doing things. That coupled with information from Canada Snowboard on how to deliver content, how to build athletes, how to get more people snowboarding,” says Thomas. “Essentially developing Indigenous coaches so that they can also develop Indigenous athletes.”
Thomas, who is Métis on his paternal side, believes this collaborative approach emphasizes mutual respect and partnership, allowing Indigenous communities to shape the program according to their unique needs and values.
The program’s structure mirrors Canada Snowboard’s general coaching program, with a focus on building community coaching. Thomas developed a community coach program that’s currently in the trial stages through the Coaching Association of Canada’s (CAC) locker, and its aim is to show that snowboarding “isn’t just for competition, it’s recreational too.” Its goal is to make it easier for people in rural communities to have access to resources and coaching knowledge, and to continue to develop without having to travel.
The community coach program is part of Thomas’ 5-year roadmap. The ultimate goal? From community coach workshops to Canadian Association of Snowboard Instructors (CASI) instructor courses, the program aims to equip Indigenous coaches with the skills and knowledge to instruct and mentor youth in their communities.
By starting with instruction and community coaching, the program aims to create a solid foundation for aspiring athletes to explore the sport at their own pace, whether for recreation or competition. Essentially breaking down barriers and fostering inclusivity in winter sports.
Collaboration with organizations such as the Indigenous Sport Council of Alberta has been instrumental in furthering these initiatives. By forging partnerships with entities like the Edmonton Ski Club, efforts have been made to increase access to snowboarding, allowing more families to experience the joy of the sport. While still in its early stages, the partnership with the Indigenous Sport Council of Alberta shows a promising beginning.
However, the journey is not without its challenges. Thomas says accessibility remains a significant barrier, particularly in regions where access to snowboarding facilities is limited or cost prohibitive.
“Like anything past the lesson stage of things, it gets more difficult to go to a ski hill,” notes Thomas. “And I think the industry really pushes people towards the resorts, but all you really need to go snowboard is a hill and the will to walk up and down and do a couple of turns.”
To address this, Thomas is exploring innovative solutions such as the creation of hike parks in urban centers and gear libraries to provide affordable access to equipment. Thomas is also looking at building strong partnerships with provincial and territorial Aboriginal sport bodies and snowboard associations as another key strategy for expanding the program’s reach. By collaborating with existing organizations and community leaders, the program can leverage local expertise and resources to support Indigenous participation in snowboarding.
“We want to keep letting them know that the sport is here, and we want you to come and snowboard,” Thomas says. “And with this coaching program, we want to give the communities the tools to run it on their own.”
Also instrumental in bringing snowboarding to Indigenous communities is the only Indigenous male athlete on Canada’s national snowboard team, Liam Gill.
“He [Liam] does a lot for the community, but he does it on his own,” notes Thomas. “He and his family are amazing.”
Gill, a 20-year-old halfpipe athlete, is a member of the Dene First nation Liidlii Kue in the Northwest Territories. After competing in the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, he drew the attention and support of Indigenous communities across the nation.
Following the 2022 Games, Gill has been ‘paying it forward’ by helping Indigenous youth try snowboarding. First on his own in the N.W.T, then near Banff at the Sunshine Ski Resort. In May 2023 with the help of a legacy grant from the Canadian Olympic Committee, Gill was able to bring kids to a private ‘Liam and Friends’ event. Along with having fun, Gill’s goal was to help make snowboarding accessible to Indigenous youth, regardless of financial barriers.
“By travelling to the Northwest Territories, Liam brought snowboarding up there and he’s shown the community some of the things we’ve been talking about,” Thomas explains. “Like how you can find a hill and do a few turns… they showed you could use a snowmobile with a bucket on the back to tow people up the hill, or hike or walk up and then you can just slide around. That’s the magic of snowboarding.”
Thomas knows firsthand the impact of seeing someone with a similar background achieving success. Reflecting on a time when he was at an event called the Gathering and was approached by a young athlete after giving the land acknowledgement.
“They thought it was awesome to see someone like me, who is also like them, leading something. It was probably one of the most inspiring things for me and it’s what also helps me to drive this program and keeping figuring it out how we make it even better.”
Not an easy feat but Canada Snowboard is solid on their commitment. And as this roadmap unfolds over the next 5 years, its impact is poised to extend far beyond the slopes, leaving an indelible mark of empowerment and accessibility within Indigenous communities across Canada.