Welcome back to Level The Field: Missing Perspectives’ dedicated women’s sports newsletter!

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HELLO HELLO! Last week we asked our dedicated readers whether this should become a weekly newsletter. The resounding answer? HELL YES! Well, OK then, leave it with us, and we’ll get back to you ASAP. We’ve just gotta figure out how we run this moving forward (but we LOVE the enthusiasm!). Keep it coming, please.

ICYMI a LOT has happened in the incredible world of women’s sport, as always. Our particular focus this week has to be on gymnastics GOAT Simone Biles made history again during her return to international gymnastic competitions after taking a break to focus on her mental health, a lesson for us all. She’s the FIRST woman ever to land what’s called a Yurchenko double pike vault. It’s considered to be the most challenging vault in women’s gymnastics. By the way, a cheeky special shoutout to our gymnast readers who politely corrected our coverage of Simone’s achievement - noting it’s not a jump, but a vault (SORRY).

In other gymnastics news, yes there’s more, the Australian Women’s Artistic Gymnastics team qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympics. How great is that? Cheers to celebrating female athletic excellence!

On a non-gymnastics note ….is the mind-bogglingly-brilliant Chloe Dalton on your radar? If not, then that needs to change STAT. Chloe Dalton is one of Australia’s few triple sport elite athletes (AFL, rugby and basketball if you’re curious) and also runs an amazing news account called The Female Athlete Project, which you also need to follow ASAP. She was one of our favourites for coverage of the Women’s World Cup a couple of months ago.

We spoke to Chloe about the lack of respect, opportunity, representation and pay that continues to stall the progress of women's teams around the world and her strides to correct the lack of media coverage of women’s sport by sharing more stories of epic female athletes. Keep scrolling for the epic read!!!

Now, as you all know, we’ve been speaking with A LOT of female athletes who responded to our callout on Instagram. All compete in wildly different sports, but have mentioned a common problem: inequitable sponsorship. One female athlete literally had to sell her house to compete in a World Championship. Another couldn’t afford the entry fee for her league. One athlete described the journey to competing in an international tournament as “harder than the actual tournament itself.” We’ll be doing a deep-dive on this very soon so watch this space.

It’s time the dial started shifting.

The Missing Perspectives Squad xx

The Interview: Rebecca Evans, powerchair football player

We interviewed total trailblazer Rebecca Evans - recently named the Australian Powerchair Football Club Championships’ MVP. She’s now competing in the FIPFA Powerchair Football World Cup, held in Sydney - don’t miss it!

Can you tell us how you ended up playing powerchair football? How did you come across the sport and initially start playing for Perth Glory?

I first started playing powerchair football in 2018 after starting my sporting career playing powerchair hockey in 2016 instead. It was through these athletes that I discovered powerchair football. As soon as I had my first kickaround and training session, I knew the sport was just perfect for me. It was something I could compete in independently and with everyone using the same Strikeforce power wheelchair, was a sport where my disability posed no limits.

After about a year, the opportunity came up to compete at the Australian Powerchair Football Club Championships. I took it and joined the Perth Glory team for my first taste of a Club Championships competition in 2019. I was already in love with the sport at the stage, but being amongst a bunch of athletes who also shared my passion for powerchair football just made it bigger.

In only your second year of playing, you were named vice-captain of the Australian U21 team that competed in the Asia-Pacific Oceanic Cup. What was that experience like?

It was absolutely incredible, especially competing against other open teams in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan at the Asia-Pacific-Oceania (APO) Cup. Ever since I started competing, it’s been a dream of mine to represent Australia. My selection in the U21 team actually also came as a surprise to me. I didn’t know we had an U21 team!

Competing at an international level for the first time was an amazing experience, to not only be able to play with other Australians but to also test myself on the international stage (particularly against Japan, who were a new team to me at that stage). It’s the first highlight of my powerchair football career! It also definitely spurred me to fight harder to gain a spot in the Australian Poweroos team at the next World Cup. Once you’ve had a taste of international competition, it’s hard to not want to strive for that again!

What is your favourite part about playing powerchair football? What do you love most about it?

I love powerchair football because once I’m strapped into my Strikeforce, how I play is completely up to me. The fact that I have a high-level physical disability or am ventilator dependent, makes no difference in how competitive I am in the sport. The greatest example of this is when non-disabled people jump in a Strikeforce and I completely run circles around them!

On the other hand, I also love powerchair football for its community - we are all just one big family. My closest friends are those I’ve made through football, and it’s provided me with opportunities I never imagined. The fact that I’m now in part-time paid employment and living independently in a state on the other side of the country to my family - I attribute to powerchair football. To be surrounded by other people with similar disabilities who have already travelled the path ahead of me, acting as mentors essentially, has given me a whole new level of confidence in life.

Can you tell us about your upcoming World Cup, and how we can all watch and support?

The upcoming World Cup is being held in Sydney, Australia which is just going to make it extra special, playing at home! Being the same year as the recent FIFA Women’s World Cup, I hope we can build on that momentum and those who got behind the Matilda’s can now get behind the Poweroos!

How can we get more female players into powerchair football? Is it a traditionally male-dominated sport? What advice do you have for those wanting to try it out?

Yes, it’s typically male-dominated. In Victoria, I am the only female currently competing, and in the Australian team. In fact, I’m the first female to represent the Poweroos at a World Cup.I think there’ll be six of us across the whole World Cup including myself, out of 75 athletes. So there is still a long way to go until there’s equal representation at all levels of the sport!

Generally, I’d encourage anyone who is a wheelchair user to research their local powerchair football club and go down and have a go. Like me, it might be the best thing you ever do and become your greatest passion in life! But if not, that’s OK and you can still tell others about it!

I think though to get more women in the sport, it’s about seeing greater representation at all levels. For new female athletes it can be intimidating being the first, but if they go down to their local club and see someone already playing, or are aware of other women playing the sport elsewhere - I think that goes a long way to encouraging our participation, to just have role models to look up to.

I really hope that my participation in the World Cup will be that role model for people to look up to. Recruiting new female athletes into powerchair football is one of my major motivators for sharing my story in forums like this, as well as connecting with others through social media! If anyone would like to connect or find out more, reach out to me through my Bec Evans Instagram or Facebook pages!

We got to chat with Chloe Dalton, and basically, she’s as epic as you think

Here’s a stat you might not believe: a recent study found that women make up 40% of participants in sports, yet receive only 4% of the sports media coverage. This is something that athlete Chloe Dalton is tackling head-on through both her professional sporting career, and also her incredible newsroom The Female Athlete Project (which you need to go and follow STAT).

Chloe is one of the few triple-threat athletes here in Australia - and has had a glittering sporting career. Wondering what we mean by triple threat? After playing basketball in the Women’s National Basketball League with the Sydney Uni Flames, Chloe transitioned to Rugby, where she debuted for the Australian Rugby 7s team in 2014. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Chloe won Gold with the Australian 7s team and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for Service to Sport (casually, as you do). Chloe then crossed codes again to Aussie rules, making her debut in 2019 for Carlton in the AFLW - and currently plays for the GWS Giants. She took time out of her very busy schedule for a chat with us

The first question - had she always wanted to be an athlete? “When I was 7 years old, I watched Cathy Freeman compete in the Sydney Olympics and was blown away by her putting that custom look on and her performance. And I wanted my own gold medal.”

Then she started playing basketball, “but spent a lot of time on the bench…and realised I’d be far off from joining the Opals.” What she did next is something we LOVE - she literally googled “List of Olympic Sports.” From there, she found rugby, started playing, only to compete at the Rio Olympics and win that gold medal (seriously, how does it sound that easy?). “But then I got to the point where I wasn’t really enjoying it,” she says, ended up in AFLW - and the rest is history.

We’re chatting a few months on from the record-breaking Women’s World Cup, which was arguably a game-changer for women’s sport both here in Australia, and globally. Chloe agrees that it “was absolutely huge - I had tears in my eyes about the power of the moment.” She thinks the biggest impact was the Matildas’ ability to break down the barriers with football: “We saw such a range of ages and genders and different personalities attend all the games and follow the World Cup. Even my cousin, who doesn’t follow sport (except my own sports!) got behind it. We really saw people's perceptions of women playing football change.” 

Naturally, the success of the Women’s World Cup also saw a surge in The Female Athlete Project’s audience. Chloe says that during and after the Women’s World Cup, the “mainstream media really saw that there’s an appetite for women’s sports news and information.” She talks about how this year has also seen strides to achieve pay equality in sport - with a new collective bargaining agreement in AFLW, a “step towards full-time professionalism.” We’ve also seen women’s sports teams demand pay equality, including the Wallaroos - a team that Chloe was immensely proud of for speaking out.

One thing Chloe is passionate about is acknowledging and celebrating the trailblazers in women’s sports. She was recently one of four rising stars who were gifted handcrafted golden boots of legacy players - as part of a new Johnnie Walker campaign Keep Walking Boldly. Elements include laces from Lynn Smith - a foundation player in Victoria’s first female footy league in 1981. “It’s such a powerful campaign to be a part of - I got to meet Lynn who donated her boots. It was in 1979 when she put an ad in the newspaper to invite other women to play footy.” To Chloe, the campaign is a chance to say “thank you to Lynn for having the courage to do that, and put herself out there.”

We can’t help but think that one day Chloe might be handing her own pair of golden boots to the next generation.

The Exclusive: Ashytn Hiron on the surge in interest in women’s sport

It’s no secret that Taylor Swift can capture the attention of almost every person with musical interest on the planet…even big-wigs like Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce want to be around of her. The newfound romance has Swifties worldwide tuning into NFL broadcasts.

But aside from the Taylor Swift Effect™️ it’s talented sportswomen, who are getting more coverage and viewership. According to Neilsen ratings - interest in women’s sports is rapidly growing. Take this year’s NCAA Basketball championship thriller between Louisiana State University and The University of Iowa. It was etched into history as the most viewed event EVER on ESPN+ reaching a record 9.9 million viewers. It’s a culture shift from just a few years ago when the hype around March Madness was solely focused on male college athletes.

We’ll forever know that Australians faithfully dialled into the Matildas during the 2023 FIFA World Cup - the hometown heroes captivating the nation's largest TV audience to date. For the very reason we’re bringing you this newsletter, it was the event that kickstarted the nation's interest in other great female athletes.

And from that, it seems a new audience of AFLW fans were born too, ones that prefer to watch in person than on the telly. The first round of the AFLW season was the busiest it’s ever been. New faces filled seats, but surprisingly less people watched from home. Earlier this year The Age confronted clubs with the reality that TV viewership for the sport was down 70 percent on the season.

With growth comes ebbs and flows, highs and lows. Overall, there’s more interest in what women have to offer on the court, field, pool and pitch. Foxtel’s viewership of women’s sport in Australia is up 18% this year compared to 2022 and 36% of Australians are watching an hour or more of it a week. That’s a helluva lot more than before.

We’ve got to take the tiny victories and build them into BIG wins.

The Giveaway: Minister of Defence, Mackenzie Arnold Tee (aka the best thing we’ve seen)

Let’s be honest: has anyone gotten over Mackenzie Arnold’s performance at the Women’s World Cup? The fabulous people over at Parliament House of Cards have made the BEST collection of Matildas merch that we have seen to date: celebrating all our favourite players.

Want to grab yourself a tee? Email us with the name of the city where the Powerchair World Cup is being held this month (hint: in this newsletter): [email protected].

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