'Strides being made but plenty more to do' - Maguire

Women In Sport

To mark International Women’s Day on Monday last, Cavan Sports Partnership are this week undertaking a campaign to increase awareness of Women In Sport, an area which is on an upward curve, according to Community Sports Hub Co-ordinator Aisling Maguire.

Former Cavan ladies football star Maguire, who recently retired from county football explained how Cavan Sports Partnership are striving to implement Sport Ireland’s Women In Sport policy document which entails a four-pronged approach to development.

“There is a Women In Sport policy from Sport Ireland that the Sports Partnerships are linking into and trying to work towards and within that, there are four pillars,” Maguire told The Anglo-Celt this week.

“Leadership and Governance is one pillar and that’s about trying to get involved in leadership roles basically as volunteers and the people who make sport happen. Trying to get more women and girls involved in that side of things.

“Then there is active participation which is sort of self-explanatory. Our whole thing in the Sports Partnership, in our strategic plan, is sport and activity for life for all and what we’re really trying to do is trying to increase participation for all females and trying to decrease the gradient of men to women in terms of participation. We are trying to close that gap.

“It’s about trying to get females active and for life, not just in school as part of PE or in a team sport where they might get to a certain age and not be able to do a team sport any more. It’s about trying to have options there to allow them to be physically active for life, be that walking, cycling, swimming or whatever. We also run older adult programmes and Women In Sport specific programmes.

“There is a broad spectrum there and we link in with the secondary schools as well to run activities for females. The idea is to get more females involved and to focus on that drop-out for young girls, that teenager group, 13 to 17, trying to reduce that drop-off.”

The second area the Sports Partnership focuses on is visibility.

“Visibility is about trying to increase the profile, to work with the newspapers, radio and media in general to try and raise the profile obviously but also to get the clubs, groups and schools to put more emphasis on using females as their role models and their ambassadors for sport and physical activity and using them to then inspire the next group.

“There is a bit of work to be done on that and this campaign is getting the ball rolling on it and trying to keep those links up and encourage clubs and groups to get those ambassadors.

“Coaching and officiating is a huge one. There are fitness instructors and that side of things but this is something that we need to work with the NGBs, the clubs and the sports throughout the county on to identify and provide a pathway for females as they get into coaching and refereeing and being mentored and brought along.

“Those are the four pillars and the Sports Partnership are trying to work towards achieving that. The participation one is one we work on already but we have to put further emphasis on the coaching, the volunteers and then working with external groups for the visibility pieces as well.”

Maguire believes that definite progress has been made but it is a case of lots done, more to do.

“Definitely, there has been an improvement but with a little bit more work we can see huge strides,” she said.

“Participation over the last number of years has been a huge issue and people have been highlighting areas within it, whether it be drop-out of girls or trying to get people active. We have a lot of success with older adult programmes, running them in community groups for maybe women who have retired or might never have done any activity and are trying a pilates class or a walking group. It’s a social thing as well.

“We are actually seeing people active for longer, it’s not a thing that sport or physical activity is closed off till you’re in your 20s or 30s. now we are seeing people being active for longer, it mightn’t necessarily be sport but some form of physical activity and more regular which is good.

“The other strands, we do need to work on as I say across all sports. We want girls to go to a sport or activity and see a female coach or a female referee or official as a role model. I think once you start seeing those role models, there will be a huge uptake and increase, no more than in participation.”

She believes that Cavan is quite strong relatively speaking compared to other counties of a similar size around the country.

“In terms of profile, we are fairly punching for the size of the county across multiple sports. To name just a few, we have the likes Leona Maguire, Ceire Smith, Aisling Sheridan, Britney Arendse, Leanne Kiernan, they are all internationals from Cavan and across different sports. And then we have the likes of Roisin O’Keeffe who has just picked up a camogie All-Star award and a number of other high profile sportspeople within the county itself.

“It’s brilliant to have these people excelling and I think we need to get better at consistently promoting them, trying to increase the coverage. We can how many people are talking about the Women’s AFL now because it’s visible since the games started being shown on TG4 regularly.”

• To find out more about starting your journey as a participant, coach or volunteer, log on to www.cavansportspartnership.ie or follow Cavan Sports Partnership on social media.