Looking for a League of their Own
Growing up, Amy Burk was shy. She always hesitated to tell people she had a vision impairment. Every thing changed when she was introduced to goalball, a team sport designed for those with vision impairments. Burk had enjoyed playing sports all of her life, but it was the team environment that helped her realize for the first time she wasn’t alone. From there her confidence steadily grew. Burk is 26 now and she’s been playing ever since. This past summer, she competed in the Rio Paralympics where the Canadian women’s goalball team placed sixth.
Yet at the highest level of para-sports, female para-athletes remain underrepresented. Para-sports are facing a gender parity issue, especially at the highest level in team sports such as sledge hockey and wheelchair rugby. This is mostly due to a lack of participation.
Janice Coulter, the president of Women’s Sledge Hockey of Canada, says the International Paralympic Committee will not approve the sport until there are enough teams to make competition possible. There are already competitive teams in Canada and the U.S. but programs still need to be built across the world, especially where there are already men’s sledge hockey teams.
Currently, the women’s national team is busy travelling the world and promoting the sport so they can see it in the Paralympics one day. They compete in demo events and invite potential players to try the sport.
Yet, this lack of representation may be a part of a larger trend. In 2009, a study done by the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute found that only eight per cent of girls compared to 14 per cent of boys met the recommendations of the Canadian Physical Activity guidelines. However, nearly all of the parents reported that their kids were very physically active. Only 19 per cent of Canadian women participated in sports compared to 35 per cent of Canadian men.
While these statistics aren’t broken down by able-bodied and para-athletes, the trend seems to extend to both arenas. Often, it’s hard to convince young girls to get into a sport if they don’t see it on TV.
“There needs to be more media outlets (covering) the Paralympics,” says Claire Buchanan, a member of the women’s national sledge hockey team. “I feel that through more mainstream network coverage, Paralympic sport can promote more inclusion of women and get more women excited to become para-athletes.”
So, elite athletes try to build from the grassroots level. It’s all about getting out into the community, promoting their sport to young girls and getting them excited to try it out and stick with it. Often this is done through demo events, open tryouts or even word of mouth. At the tryouts or demos, it’s all about creating a great first experience for the young girls who are brave enough to try. The sled, which is made up of two blades, is fitted to a players specifications. That way there’s no fumbling with the gear; it’s all about how fun sledge hockey can be.
But being a female athlete doesn’t come without challenges. Sometimes, in an effort to keep competing, the women play with the men. Meghan Mahon, a goalball and blind hockey player, knows she has to keep with the challenges of playing together.
“(Blind hockey) is a male dominated sport. It hasn’t been too bad, but you definitely have to work a little bit harder, skate that little bit faster, just to keep up with that natural stamina with men’s sports,” she says.
Whitney Bogart, a goalball player for nearly 15 years, has seen the lack of equity in other countries.
“In general, women are not seen as equal and you put a disability on top of it and it’s not fair,” she says. “We’re all equal.” Women athletes are passionate about being involved in sports because they present opportunities that would not have existed otherwise.
For Burk, being an athlete opened up a whole new world for her: travelling to different places, meeting new people and fierce competition.
“I’ve made so many friends around the world that I know that I never would have the opportunity to if I wasn’t involved in sports,” she says.
EQUITY AT THE PARALYMPICS
There are still two team sports still don’t have women’s teams or competition in the Paralympics.
SLEDGE HOCKEY
In an effort to increase female participation, sledge hockey teams are allowed to include one female player on their roster of 17. If a woman is included, the team may add another male player making their roster total 18.
WHEELCHAIR RUGBY
The sport is considered mixed, but men continue to dominate the rosters.
Canada’s national team has one woman on their roster, Miranda Biletski. She
was named the best 1.0 [her sport classification] at the division 11 nationals two years in a row.
*Editor's note: a previous version of this article referred to the numbers of players on a sledge hockey team incorrectly. The error has been rectified.
