Siren 14: Kate Shierlaw, favourite sporting moment & list retrospective
A Women in Sport Collective
Last week we announced our exciting partnership with Swinburne to track the mainstream media coverage of women’s sport across the month of April. The results last week were, well, not great. And things don’t look any better this week.
We also brought you three incredible original pieces last week. Gemma spoke with Michelle Cooling from the Sydney Swans, Kirby discussed coaching and all things rugby with former Wallaroo and Melbourne Rebels head coach, Alana Thomas and we shared a beautiful piece from Kasey after her mum set up a chat with Olympic basketball legend, Rachael Sporn.
We did all this with very limited resources.
Women have been playing sport for a very long time in this country, from the amateur to the professional. There’s decades upon decades of history (just ask Kirby, she’ll tell you!) not to mention thousands of women playing hundreds of sports across the country right now—all of them with a story to tell. There are state and national competitions, many of which have been running for years. There’s administrators and coaches that have had amazing influence on their sports. There’s been how many Olympics and Paralympics, with how many women athletes doing amazing things?
The interesting and fascinating and funny and engaging stories are there. What’s missing is the desire to find them, to write about them, to share them. Luckily for you, we have desire to burn around here!
We’ve got lots of good stuff for you this week and plenty more in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
The Siren Rewatch continues over on Twitter with plenty of debate and laughs. Don’t miss this week’s schedule below and join us for another delightful trip down memory lane.
But also!
In a couple of weeks time, we’ll be running the first [virtual] Siren Trivia Night! This will be open exclusively to our Siren Supporters. If that’s you, keep an eye out for an email very soon with all the details. If you're not already a Siren Supporter, but you want in on our exclusive online events, you can support Siren for $5/month right here.
And lastly, Siren has launched a dedicated Facebook page where we hope to share lots of great stories with you as well as have some fun. So if you’re on the platform, head over and give us a like.
In this issue
Alison shares with us her favourite sporting moment (after encouragement from the Siren content team seeing her light up when telling the story). Kasey recommends her top five creative women in sport writers and again targets the dismal numbers around women in sport coverage in mainstream media. And we (in a surprise to absolutely no-one) have two AFLW pieces from Gemma; an interview with St Kilda co-captain Kate Shierlaw and a look back at the eight inaugural AFLW lists.
My Favourite Sporting Moment
By Alison Smirnoff
Sometimes I can’t believe that I was actually there given that it’s such a significant cultural and historic moment in Australian sport. I was at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and I witnessed Cathy Freeman’s 400m gold medal. Even when I write this, I still pinch myself.
Women in Sports Writing to the Front – Creative Edition
By Kasey Symons
These five authors Kasey has chosen to feature don’t all focus on women’s sports, but she is keen to highlight the writing work women do around women’s roles and experiences of all sports.
Feature Interview: Kate Shierlaw on the St Kilda captaincy, Peta Searle and a team of role players
By Gemma Bastiani
Kate Shierlaw, Rhiannon Watt & Nat Exon celebrate a goal. Image: Megan Brewer
One of the most impressive of the Saints’ senior players is Kate Shierlaw, so Gemma jumped at the opportunity to speak to her about her footy journey and the club’s first year in the AFLW.
By the Numbers: Vol 2
By Kasey Symons
Last week we announced our partnership with Swinburne University of Technology’s Sport Innovation Research Group where we would spend a whole month collecting daily data of mainstream media coverage of women’s sport. Here’s an update on the week that’s passed.
AFLW List Retrospective: 2017 to 2020
By Gemma Bastiani
Gemma went back, analysed 2017 lists, who is still there, who has moved on and how many players from these lists are still floating around on other club lists in 2020. Get ready for some nostalgia, and surprises.
While sport is temporarily suspended, we’ll be releasing a rewatch schedule every week. This is where you can join the women in sport community on twitter and still have that live game experience, with live tweets coming from different women in sport on the Siren twitter account.
All you have to do is head to the provided link at the time scheduled and join in on the chat with hashtag #sirenrewatch.
This weekend’s schedule
Friday April 24 @ 7PM AEST
Inaugural AFLW Grand Final: Brisbane v Adelaide, live tweets from Siren co-founder Gemma Bastiani.
Saturday April 25 @ 6:30PM AEST
1999 Netball World Championship final, live tweets from netball expert Megan Maurice
Congratulations to Jas Garner for winning the AFL Players Association MVP!
The amazing Professor Jean Williams was on Burn It All Down this week to discuss UK football history and erasure of women from Netflix's #TheEnglishGame. Be sure to listen. The WNBA Draft happened virtually last week and we loved this by Lindsay Gibbs that looked back at previous draft classes and this tweet she shared of Ruthy Hebard’s parade to celebrate her being selected by the Chicago Sky. So awesome.
We’ve discovered She’s4Sports, a great initiative who have teamed up with Canadian Women & Sport on a new digital sports series, She Leads By Sport. The interview series from She’s4Sports, highlights the journey of inspirational women leaders from different corners of the sports world.
The wonderful writers in Sam Lewis and Erin Delahunty contributed their favourite women in sport moments which were a delightful addition to the sports walks down memory lane we’re getting at the moment.
Susie Petruccelli writes on how we need to not let the progress of women’s sport decline during this pandemic. Lucie Bertoldo also writes on this from an Australian perspective.
Kim McCauley writes on missing the opening weekend of the NWSL and hoping to be back with her fellow fans again soon.
Olympic Paddler Aly Bull has written for Athlete’s Voice on how she’s handling the postponement of Tokyo 2020.
New research is out from Suzanne Schrijnder, Noortje van Amsterdam, Fiona McLachlan that focuses on gender roles and navigation in a Dutch CrossFit gym - Judith Butler and CrossFit! Shoot us an email if you’re interested and would like access to the research.
Last week we shared our numbers from covering the coverage. Our friend Dr Ryan Storr shared with us a resource that showed how things are, disappointingly, not too different in Scotland too. We’re very keen to follow this important research work.
Women Sport Australia have announced the Women in Sport Photo Action Awards (#WISPAA) are back for 2020 and entries are open now.
Congratulations to the 2020 WNBA Number 1 draft pick, Sabrina Ionescu who was drafted to the New York Liberty. We love this vision of her 12-year old self talking about her basketball dreams. They’re about to all come true and we can’t wait to watch.
Runner up
Congratulations also to Liz Cambage for making the cover of Elle magazine. BRB - buying mags.
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