THUNDER BAY – Unlike boys, girls tend to drop out of sport at alarming rates as they near their teen years.
A pair of Canadian Olympians would like to reverse the trend.
Boxer Mandy Bujold and freestyle skier Deidra Dioone, a bronze-medalist at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, took part in Friday’s Jumpstart Women and Girls sports initiative, which brought together 300 school-aged girls to take part in a variety of different events ranging from hip-hop dance to curling to soccer.
Sports has been an integral part of Dionne’s life, and the chance to come to Thunder Bay to help inspire the next generation young female athletes was too good to pass up.
“This is such an important age group where if a girl’s going to play through this age group, they’re going to play the rest of their life,” Dionne said.
“If they don’t learn to play early, they’re not going to pick up sport in their later years. It’s to bring these girls together and watch them interact with movement and sport in a different way – and it doesn’t have to be high performance. It’s about finding something for the rest of your life that gives you that outlet.”
Eleven-year-old Angelic Zussino loves to dance and said it was a great idea to bring together so many young women to encourage them to play sports, which she said are equally for girls as they are for boys.
“Sometimes in this world boys are encouraged to do more sports than girls,” the youngster said. “It’s important that girls get a chance to do it.
“When I heard it was just the girls, I said that’s good, because the boys tend to act like superstars and they take the ball from you. They act like they’re the best and put you to the side. But with girls you finally be yourself and finally take the lead and work as a team.”
Angel Groombridge, also 11, is a baseball fan and said she liked the all-girl atmosphere too.
“All boys usually thing that it’s more of a boy thing to be sporty, but girls can too,” she said.
Organizer Glenn McLean, with Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart Charities and a regional manager for Northern Ontario, said the goal is to get girls active and keep them active.
“And we want them to be our future leaders,” he said. “If we can keep girls in sport and be our future leaders then we’re in really good shape moving forward.
“It builds self-confidence, leadership skills, teamwork skills and all of those will help them thrive later on in the lives.”
Volunteers from St. Ignatius High School and the local Boys and Girls Club took part in a youth leadership workshop held on Thursday, and used those skills volunteering at Friday’s event.
Jumpstart has provided $574,599 to Thunder Bay families to help 6,000 children take part in sport and recreation since 2005. To apply for funding, phone 1-844-937-7529 or visit www.jumpstart.canadiantire.ca.
