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Hi squad - welcome back to another bumper edition of Level The Field. It’s the most exciting time of the AFLW - finals time! All the tweets that come out after the men’s AFL final saying that “footy is over for another year” (🙄) are once again proving to be an absolute lie. Who knew?! Sports continue to exist even after men stop playing them. The AFLW finals are kicking off, and have us at the edge of our seats - with female excellence is on full display (I mean…when is it not?). We have a lil ticket giveaway incoming….so watch this space!

Speaking of, the Sydney Swans had their FIRST ever AFLW finals win as they brought an end to the Gold Coast’s season. Chloe Molloy was the absolute star of the game - read a recap if you missed it. The Swannies are now through to the semi-final against Adelaide. Are you going to the game? Have other plans to celebrate/cheer on the girls? Let us know by emailing us over at [email protected]!

Another absolutely massive thing to celebrate - the ParaMatildas absolutely killing the IFCPF Asia Oceania Championships!!!!

In case they aren’t on your radar, the ParaMatildas are Australia’s national soccer team for women and girls with cerebral palsy, an acquired brain injury or those who’ve had a stroke. They’re amazing and we love them very much. And it would make our Editor-In-Chief Hannah’s heart very happy if they got even half as much love and passion as we all gave the Matildas.

The team defeated Japan 2-0 in the final of the IFCPF Asia Oceania Championships to become the CHAMPIONS of Asia and Oceania! The team is full of absolute guns including a dear friend of Missing Perspectives, Tamsin Colley (do yourself a favour and follow her on Instagram now).

In other really exciting news, the Matildas and Socceroos are set to get their “fair share” in a new “benchmark” collective bargaining agreement. Football Australia and the players union, Professional Footballers Australia finally agreed on a new four-year national team collective bargaining agreement that will guarantee that the players will receive more for the revenue they generate. Under the Matildas’ new pay structure, players could earn anywhere between $125k and $160k per year. To be honest, we think they deserve more than this, but hey, it’s a start?

Last thing before we leave you in peace to rock-n-scroll your way down this newsletter; we had a debate in the office this week around shared values and beliefs when entering into relationships. We’re putting these two questions to our subscribers: 1. Would you be in a relationship with someone who didn’t like sport? 2. Would you date someone who didn’t know who Sam Kerr was? We seriously want to hear from you - email [email protected] STAT.

Chat soon,

Missing Perspectives

(PS our podcast episode featuring athletes and legends Chloe Dalton and Lucy Small is now one of our most downloaded! It’s an episode seriously not to be missed - we’ve included a sneak peak teaser reel in this newsletter…so keep scrollin and let us know what you think!).

The Exclusive with Ashtyn Hiron: The importance of #BTS people in #BTS sports

I’ve always been enthralled by female athletes who excel in their greatness and yet sometimes people don’t even know that their sport exists. They’re so good at what they do but because the world hasn’t caught on to it yet, or the sport doesn’t get mainstream media attention, they're somehow lost in the mix and undervalued by society.

Every low-lying sport has those special people behind the scenes that simply work hard and truly believe in what they’re doing. PhD Candidate and Strength and Conditioning Coach Leanne Snyder is one of them - she’s hyper-focused on helping those who need it the most and is making it her life’s work to develop under-resourced female athletes.

“You can make the most impact in those sports by providing them basic resources,” Snyder said.

American-born and now Perth-based Snyder is working with the Australian Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Team (WCB) at the WA Institute of Sport. Each athlete has a disability that directly impacts how they train and her job is to understand their capacity and individualise programs for each player.

“The basic first step is you have an understanding of their competition demands,” she said. "With Wheelchair Basketball, we don't actually know what the physical demands are. The point is, it’s such a basic need to inform training and Wheelchair Basketball doesn’t have it yet.”

Regardless, even as WCB builds up resources they continue to be successful. The team placed first at the Asia Oceania Zone Championships in Thailand last year and are now preparing to qualify for the Paris Paralympics.

It’s more than just whipping people into shape - it’s thoughtful planning, research and preparation to ensure bodies are able to handle the physical and mental load. Through her years of research and personal experience, including tearing her own ACL twice during her competitive Lacrosse career, she’s learned that a lot of female athletes are injury prone because they don’t have education, support or professionals guiding them through their training. So she filled the gap.

“A lot of the challenges of the sport are similar to what able-bodied sports face, there’s just not as big of a setup pathway for these athletes and it adds another layer of exclusion when it’s women's sport PLUS disabled sport, which is unfortunately even further removed from mainstream sport attention.”

The 30-year-old is also a Physical Preparation Specialist for Artistic Swimming Australia. If you don’t know what these women do, then take this as your cue to do a quick Google search. Because WOW. It’s a hybrid form of swimming, gymnastics, and dance - complex routines performed in the water. 

Thanks to funding from the nation's richest person, Gina Rinehart, the Australian Women’s Artistic Swimmers are full-time athletes. Since becoming a fully funded centralised national program, Australia has immensely improved their world ranking, now qualifying and preparing for the Paris Olympics in July 2024. 

Note to self: add Artistic Swimming to the ‘women’s sports to watch’ binge list for next year - anyone with me!?

My point here - the sports with the least have always had to make water into wine. Imagine what they could do if they had 100 Leanne Snyders in their corner? Imagine what they could do if they were graced with the same level of funding, attention and resources as our AFL players? Would the world be ready for that?

Women’s sports bars are on the rise - and we’re here for it

After Jenny Nguyen opened The Sports Bra in Portland and made $1 million in eight months, campaigns are popping up for women's sports bars to open around the world.

Last week, we posted on our Missing Perspectives Instagram about Jenny Nguyen launching The Sports Bra in Portland. It went very viral very quickly.

In case you missed it: Jenny poured her life savings into opening The Sports Bra - a bar dedicated to playing women's sport on the screens. Wondering if it's a successful business model? The Sports Bra brought in nearly $1 million in revenue in its first eight months (we're not surprised - especially after seeing the impact of the Women's World Cup). When she first opened the bar, Jenny was worried the idea was too niche and that it wouldn't work out. She was very wrong.

“It turns out, it’s pretty universal — that feeling of being a women’s sports fan and going into a public place, like a sports bar, and having a difficult time finding a place to show a [women’s] game, especially when there are other men’s sports playing,” Nguyen told CNBC Make It. PREACH.

What we have learnt is that several other trailblazing women, particularly in the United States, have had the same idea as Jenny - to create safe and inclusive spaces for fans to enjoy women's sports. We're seeing women's sports bars - and campaigns to open others - pop up across North America and the world.

Rough and Tumble Pub opened in Seattle after watching the success of The Sports Bra. "We play women’s sports on big screens with full sound, served up with good food and good friends. We’ve got a seat for every fan who wants to tune in and turn it up–no matter if that’s on the court or the pitch, college or pro, icon or underdog," their website states proudly. The venue has 18 screens and holds 165 people. Trip to Seattle, anyone?

Icarus in Salem, Oregon, is another restaurant and bar dedicated to women's sport. The owners of the bar have said they have found it difficult to find a steady stream of women's sports on TV, so they have to make a "patchwork schedule" using cable and streaming services. Talk about dedication.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, A Bar of Their Own (best name ever?) will be opening in Minnesota shortly and will be dedicated exclusively to women's sports.

"In the spring of 2023, we went with a group of our friends to a nearby sports bar to watch the University of Minnesota Gophers Softball team play in the national tournament," the founder Jillian Hiscock wrote. "After not seeing the game on any of the 20+ televisions, we asked the bartender if they could get it on one of the many screens, which were currently playing everything from football game reruns to a cornhole tournament. We stopped to ask ourselves, what if it was different? What if fans of women’s sports had a place to come together and cheer loudly for their favourite team on the biggest screen in the bar…with the sound on?"

The comments on our Instagram post about The Sports Bra also alerted us to a campaign in London to launch Vs.Bar: London's first-ever dedicated women's sports bar. "This type of space would serve as a unique and valuable catalyst to grow London’s fan community for women’s sports because it subverts the exclusionary fandom commonly practised in ‘traditional’ sports bars," explains the founder Sana. Here's their Instagram, so get amongst it and give them the support they deserve, and we hope to see them open ASAP.

It's so inspiring to watch these hospitality leaders and sports fans build inclusive environments and challenge the invisibility of women's sports in traditional hospitality venues. A 2021 University of Southern California study found that about 5% of all TV sports coverage in the US focused on female athletes and women's sport. So hopefully we can see the dial shift.

Now, can anyone open a sports bar in Australia? Maybe we need a Level The Field Bar?
 

The Giveaway: Double passes to Equal the Contest - airing this Sunday in Melbourne!

When a 42 year old non-binary filmmaker joins a new local women’s footy club in Regional Victoria, a simple desire to play becomes a complex journey of inclusion and belonging. An unexpected turn means the team has to fight to play. Their campaign challenges age old sporting traditions and joins the wider movement for gender equity.

This incredible film has been picked up (rightly so) by Melbourne Queer Film Festival and is airing at the Capitol at 2pm on Sunday. Are you based in Melbourne? Email us at [email protected] for a chance at winning a double pass - keen to get all your tickets sorted for this amazing - and important - film.

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