Be Her Reason to Stay in Sport
What the 2025 WiSEAN Conference showed me about the future of sport, intersectionality and why strength training isn’t optional.
In June I travelled to Leeds Beckett University as a delegate of the 2025 Women in Sport & Exercise Academic Network (WiSEAN) Conference. The theme this year was “WiSER Together – Valuing Diversity and Collaborating for Change”.
I was genuinely excited about this trip for many reasons, I’ve very fond memories of the vibrant city of Leeds, there’s a warmth and uniqueness to this part of West Yorkshire, a welcoming culture with no airs and graces; what you see is what you get. Leeds was the place that first welcomed me with open arms, embracing me into its heart and soul, making the transition into adulthood a lot easier after leaving college and landing my dream job. Not only did I move into the lively, student filled outskirts of Headingly but also into a very cold attic room of a lively student filled house - but that’s another story!
Returning to Leeds University felt a bit like coming full circle, I’d forgotten until I was driving up the familiar M1 that I’d also once presented my dissertation research at the British Psychological Society’s Cognitive Conference some 20 years ago. I remember feeling like a proper grown-up back then, even though I was already a mature student with two children, isn’t it funny how certain moments can make us grown up and legitimised.
Oh, and another level of enthusiasm was that the conference theme of inclusivity in sport and exercise was right up my street!
I will admit there was apprehension on my part as I pulled into the universities car park on day 1, I think we all experience a level of imposter syndrome whenever we go into unfamiliar situations, from races to conferences, and despite the conference welcoming delegates from all sectors of sport, I was still nervous, I’m a running coach, not an academic and small talk isn’t my forte.
The Carnegie School of Sport has state-of-the-art sports facilities, I took a deep breath as I approached the impressive building; a spectacular, bold orange “piece de resistance” literally perched on top of the main building’s bland brickwork, an observational periscope looking out towards The Chevin and Ilkley Moor…. no, I later discovered it houses a magnificent 80m indoor track.
The atrium of the building widened to vast floor to ceiling glass with expansive views of the outdoor track, and I felt the tangible energy of hope and opportunity that, for me, is always synonymous with walking into educational institutions.
I soaked it all in as I attached my name badge; my nerves disappearing as I remembered the ease of conversation, slipping seamlessly into my northern lilt of flat ‘A” s and short vowels. I relaxed.
The opening of the Conference was held in the, adeptly named, Lucy Bronze lecture theatre, and the message from straight talking Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire was clear and to the point - “women deserve their place in sport”.
All the keynote speeches were delivered with passion, integrity and a wholehearted belief that the significant progress in Women’s Sport will continue to move forward. However, despite these advancements there is still so much to do. I think many of us would be shocked to know that even in 2025, when the Lionesses are in the finals of the Euros tonight as defending champions, that 70% of decisions in women’s sports rely on data from able-bodied men in high-income Global North countries. In disability sport, this rises to an overwhelming 99.98%, highlighting the very real need for more representation in research and how it’s then applied.
As I sat listening to the first keynote speaker delivering “The Case for Intersectionality” she asked us, the audience, “is it enough that research is accessible only by advantaged groups and everybody else just has to work it out for themselves?” The enormity of this question lay thick in the air, I quickly scribbled the words down in my notebook, each word a stark reminder and realisation that this is exactly what I do, navigate the research, do my best to interpret and make sense of it all in the hope that my efforts are enough to make a difference.
I didn’t have too much time to dwell on intersectionality, the day was rammed with amazing talks, too many to choose from, and just as an example Bodies and Belonging, Injury prevention for Women and Girls, Women in Coaching, Leadership & Careers, Balancing Gender Equality, Menopause & Equestrian Sport, Blood & Pain, Learning and Staying Safe, One Million Bounces Later: Advancing Breast Health Research in Sport!
And since the conference focused on sport, it was natural that activities were offered after each day, and unsurprisingly, on the first day, I stuck to my comfort zone and joined the run club. I found myself asking what it is about running that makes everyone feel so nervous, so often our introductions include a negative, apologetic statement of how slow we are, are we all still so fearful of being left behind? There was no need to worry, the expert run leaders made sure we had a great session with warm up games that broke the ice AND made me cringe in equal measures; suffice to say Toilet Tag is definitely staying in Leeds.
I couldn’t wait to start Day 2, a gentle cohesive nudge found me in the dance studio at an ungodly hour, putting on boxing gloves and being given a whistle stop tutorial on how to box. Funnily enough none of us started the session saying we were too slow, old, or not good enough to box…
Again, the day was filled with passion and insight, the keynote talk on Artistic Allyship in the Strategic Entitlement of Marginalised Gender Skateboarders was inspiring, I wrote briefly last week about how moved I was by those young skateboarders, but one of my main takeaways was from Project ACL, a collaboration between FIFPRO, the PFA, Nike, and Leeds Beckett University which aims to fast-track research into ACL injuries in women’s football.
I was shocked to learn that women are 3–6 times more likely to suffer ACL injuries than men, and whilst there are many contributing factors, what stood out the most was the stark difference in training exposure between young male and female athletes, meaning girls don’t get to start their strength and conditioning programmes until much later in their development than boys.
I talk a lot in my coaching about an individual’s “training age”- if we are late to taking up sport, our chronological age may be, for example, in our 40s, but our “training age” could be significantly younger. Therefore, if the data is suggesting that generally female athletes have lower training ages because they are less exposed to the same structured, progressive training as their male counterparts, then surely, it’s not about being weaker or just bad luck when sustaining injuries, it’s in part due to not addressing the sex differences in muscle development.
I’ve been banging this drum for several years – add strength and conditioning into your running programme! You can’t just keep powering through, continually adding load upon load of miles onto an aging body, spoiler alert, it will break!
Sometimes you can go to a place, a group, a conference, and just feel comfortable, where age, gender, background and differences are accepted, enabling all the intricacies of who you are to be laid bare without fear. I felt this conference achieved this and more besides, demonstrating a willingness to establish clear standards and simply, uphold them. Although I was sceptical about WiSEAN’s Rules of Engagement, I’ve often found such guidelines end up as mere box-ticking exercise, the collaboration of these standards did not falter throughout the 2 days of the conference.
Maybe it was because I was back up north, or it could’ve been because I was with like-minded people but I think it’s more likely, that at last there is a place where all the individual voices that are quietly chipping away to create a new narrative are at last, finding a space to join forces to be heard.
And finally, how do we know that change is happening? For me this week there were two moments, the first was watching the Lioness’s on Tuesday - I was on the edge of my seat, inspired by the team, I said to my husband, “this is what football is all about” and I hadn’t felt this invested in the England football team since the 90’s when, for those of you who remember, football felt more unpredictable, and forgive me for saying this, but more genuine; didn’t we all cry with Gazza and hold our breath with Gareth.
And the second was listening to a group of pre-teen girls play football in the street outside our house as we gardened last weekend. The noise was magical, the dialogue between them was full of energy, play by play commentary and shouted instructions….
That was in! That was out! Pass it to me!! Why didn’t you pass it to me!!!
It was joyful to listen to, my husband smiled and said they sound just like he did when he used to play football in the street with his mates. And those young girls had no idea why I felt so emotional, it would’ve been weird if I’d have told them how I felt, they’d have looked at me like I was crazy, what are you talking about, why wouldn’t we be playing football?