“BENDIGO is such a thriving town, it's had a history of sport, but its sport tends to be around high-performance football, netball, cycling and cricket. What if you're not into those sports?”
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Dr Bridie O’Donnell did not discover her sporting strengths until she was in her 20s, when she was at medical school.
“I was not a sporty kid and I wasn’t good at team sports as a young woman in high school,” the champion cyclist and rower said.
“What I think happens for so many women is if they're not the best footy or netball player or cricket player, they get lost.
“They don't consider themselves to be athletes and therefore they don’t keep competing, or even just participating.”
But Dr O’Donnell didn’t let a perceived lack of athleticism stop her from trying new things.
“I just had a different version of talent,” she said.
She was persistent, conscientious and determined.
“I worked incredibly hard and I got the most out of myself,” Dr O’Donnell said.
She competed in Olympic-distance triathlon, took a year off and raced professionally.
“I did Iron Man triathlon [and] raced Hawaii Iron Man. I was a rower for seven years and I won national championships but never got selected for Olympics or Worlds,” Dr O’Donnell said.
“It wasn’t until I was 33 that I won a national championship and then became a professional bike rider and raced in Europe and America.”
“My story is probably that I felt like I was not talented, but I also wasn't taken seriously because I was an older athlete and I started a lot of these sports in my 20s.”
Her experiences helped highlight opportunities for organisations and sports associations in Loddon Mallee to engage women and girls in sport.
Thirty-one people participated in a three-hour forum at the Bendigo Tennis Centre on Friday.
Dr O’Donnell was involved in her capacity as the head of Victoria’s first Office for Women in Sport and Recreation.
“I've only been in the role for three months. It's my first experience working in government,” she said.
“It's been really challenging in many, many ways, but what I am surrounded by is this enormous sporting sector with flaws and with hitches along the way, but enormous capacity for improvement, incredible opportunities for so many people who work and volunteer in sport and recreation.
“Like a lot of other regions, the Loddon Mallee region – Bendigo in particular, has a lot of incredibly passionate, motivated, enthusiastic and skilled volunteers and people who work in sport and recreation.”
She said it had become evident during the forum, and others in the series of six events, that participants were able to provide each other with solutions.
“When we talk about issues relating to say, participation, some sports are struggling because they're trying to retain girls and women; other sports are struggling because they've got too many girls and women, so what ends up happening is people share ideas,” Dr O’Donnell said.
Other key themes to emerge from the discussions included leadership and facilities.
“The facilities issues tend to be similar throughout regional Victoria,” Dr O’Donnell said.
Outdated facilities and maintenance were common challenges facing sporting clubs and associations.
“But others are around scheduling,” Dr O’Donnell said.
“With the growth of teams, the capacity of those grounds is really being put under the pump and they're trying to determine the best way to support these new teams.”
Now is the time for girls and women in sport, according to Dr O’Donnell.
“Never before have we seen the showcasing of our best female athletes both in the mainstream media and on social media,” she said.
“We've got Ellyse Perry, Samantha Kerr, Erin Phillips, athletes of that calibre - the best in the world at what they do. And that means girls see those things and they think, that’s what I want to do.
“But I also want to focus on women in leadership roles across sport and recreation, so that means we want more women to be coaches, umpires, referees - to hold the keys of the sheds, so to speak.
“We want more women to be presidents of these clubs in regional Victoria and we want more women to be CEOs of sporting clubs and be on boards.”
Achieving equity for women and girls in sport was an ‘enormous task’, but Dr O’Donnell believed it was achievable.
“We can see there are so many people willing to come along and to help and that's a beautiful thing because you've got to work with the willing and find champions in all of the clubs and sporting organisations that can help you run the programs you want to have, to engage with the girls and women in your club, to ask them what they want,” she said.
The forum highlighted a need for a diverse range of sports for participants of varying ages, skill levels, genders, cultural backgrounds, and commitment levels.
“We want to at least know women and girls in this region can feel like there are opportunities,” Dr O’Donnell said.
She encouraged organisations and sporting associations to keep asking women and girls in their club about how they wanted to be involved.
“Change doesn't have to be frightening. It's actually just about modernising and being innovative and [considering] how to support the women and girls in your community so they have the same opportunities as the men and the boys,” Dr O’Donnell said.