Women’s Sports Week Highlights
In honour of Women’s Sports Week, Beyond Sport have compiled a number of news stories relating to the progression of the female game and its pioneers around the world. These sports vary from rugby, football, ice hockey and running:
Clare Daniels hoping to inspire the next generation of female rugby referees
The first female official in Aviva Premiership Rugby history, Clare Daniels, has urged girls and women to take up officiating as she looks to inspire the next generation of female referees.
As part of Women’s Sport week, Daniels has called upon girls and women thinking of trying officiating for the first time to give it a go as she looks to promote the game of rugby to more females.
Daniels made history by becoming the first female official in an Aviva Premiership Rugby match when she was made fourth official for Bristol vs Exeter Chiefs in September 2016 – something that will live long in her memory.
Last season, Daniels completed another first when she was named as assistant referee for Exeter’s Anglo-Welsh Cup clash with Cardiff Blues – making her the first female assistant referee in top-level men’s rugby.
She has already set the record for the most caps as a referee in women’s Test matches, and has now been a match official development officer for the RFU for over six years.
Read more here.
UEFA partner Leaders to promote Women’s game via Generation XX Series
European governing body UEFA has partnered with conference organiser Leaders for the Generation XX Series to promote dialogue and profile of the women’s game.
The new series began with a ‘think tank’ on June 20 as part of Women’s Sport Week and there will be two further events before the end of the year as well as monthly intelligence piece and a red-carpet evening to kick off Leaders Week 2017 in October.
The objective of Generation XX events is to bring stakeholders together to stimulate the growth of women’s sport and accelerate the pace of change.
UEFA has launched its pan-European women’s campaign, Together #WePlayStrong, as part of its push to make football the top sport for women across Europe, and has formed a dedicated team to achieve this.
Read more here.
Twitter to Live-Stream Women’s Hockey
As director of the players’ union for the National Women’s Hockey League, Anya Battaglino has been particularly interested lately in observing how the streaming of W.N.B.A. games on Twitter might attract new audiences to professional women’s sports.
So far, the data has been encouraging. For the first streamed game, between the Phoenix Mercury and the Dallas Wings on May 14, 1.1 million unique viewers tuned in on Twitter. According to a W.N.B.A. spokeswoman, subsequent games on Twitter are averaging nearly one million unique viewers a game.
So when Battaglino found out last week that the fledgling women’s hockey league was close to reaching a similar agreement for Twitter to broadcast its weekly games, she recognized an opportunity for growth for the league, which begins its third season in October.
Read more here.
“Run4AllWomen” Inspires Women to use Running to Foster Change
After Alison Désir organized, participated in and returned from a 240-mile relay run across five states in three days from Harlem, New York to Washington, D.C. this past January, the 32-year-old was surprised with the question she got next.
“We got back [to Harlem], and of course, everybody was like, ‘what’s next?’,” she told NBC News. “On the one hand, I thought, ‘was this not enough?’ And I started thinking — as a woman — what it means to ‘do enough,’ and always feeling like you need to do more.”
The relay effort garnered national media attention and ultimately raised $103,000 for Planned Parenthood but Désir said she quickly saw the potential of what more she could do with the momentum.
Upon her return to Harlem, Désir soon connected with Mary Arnold, 38, and Jennifer Villany, 44, — who had both been involved with coordinating and carrying out the operations, logistics, and planning arms of the D.C. run, before logging miles along the route themselves — in order to brainstorm ways to sustain the momentum they had generated.
They soon came up with an idea for an initiative, Run4AllWomen, adapted from the name of their original GoFundMe campaign, ‘(Four Women) Run For ALL Women,’ in order to train and empower women around the country to use running in their communities to foster and sustain change.
Read more here.