National Girls and Women in Sports Day isn’t a victory lap. It’s more like a long run where you finally notice the blister that’s been forming for miles. There’s progress, yes. There’s also friction. And pretending it’s all solved because we hit a few milestones does women in sport exactly zero favors.
Let’s start with what actually has happened.
The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games were the most gender-balanced in history. That matters. It didn’t happen because the system suddenly grew a conscience. It happened because women, advocates, and organizations kept pushing. Hard. Loud. Consistently. Media coverage of women’s sports has increased since 2019 after sitting stagnant for decades. Attendance records for women’s sporting events have been broken. Fans are watching. Sponsors are circling. The appetite is real.
And yet.
Women still hold a shockingly small percentage of leadership roles across sport. Coaching pipelines remain thin. Executive positions remain largely male and overwhelmingly white. Media coverage, while improved, is nowhere near equitable. Visibility is up, power is not keeping pace.
This is where the conversation usually gets uncomfortable, so let’s not dodge it.
For BIPOC women, and especially Indigenous women, sport has never been neutral ground. Access to movement is shaped by where you live, what resources exist, whether your community is safe, and whether sport spaces see you as an asset or an afterthought. In the U.S., American Indian and Alaska Native adults report some of the highest rates of physical inactivity outside of work. That statistic gets misunderstood constantly. It’s not about motivation. It’s about access. It’s about infrastructure. It’s about systems that were never designed with Indigenous communities in mind.
If you don’t have safe places to run.
If programs are underfunded or nonexistent.
If coaches don’t understand your lived experience.
Then “just get more girls into sport” becomes an empty slogan.
Because participation doesn’t start at elite levels. It starts with whether a girl feels welcome moving her body at all.
And leadership doesn’t magically appear later. It’s built when girls see people like them coaching, directing, deciding, and leading. When Indigenous women are missing from those spaces, it’s not because they lack ability. It’s because the doors were never built for them in the first place.
That’s why the work happening right now matters.
Running-specific organizations like ReNew Earth Running, Native Women Running, the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, Black Girls RUN!, Latinos Run, and Trail Sisters aren’t just creating community. They’re actively challenging who gets to define running culture. They’re saying representation isn’t a bonus feature. It’s foundational.
Beyond running, organizations focused on women and BIPOC leadership in sport are pushing systems where they matter most: funding structures, leadership pipelines, policy decisions, and media accountability. This work isn’t flashy. It doesn’t always trend. But it changes who gets to stay in the room long enough to make decisions.
And here’s the spicy truth people don’t like to say out loud.
Sport loves to celebrate women when it’s inspirational and convenient. It gets quieter when the conversation turns to power, money, leadership, and discomfort. National Girls and Women in Sports Day matters because it forces us to look beyond the highlight reel and ask better questions. Who is missing? Who is leading? Who is being asked to adapt instead of being supported?
Coaching sits right in the middle of this conversation.
Coaches shape culture. They decide whose bodies are “built for this.” They influence whether athletes feel safe, capable, and worthy of taking up space. Coaching is never neutral. It either reinforces the same narrow narratives or helps dismantle them.
As an Indigenous running and strength coach, I don’t believe in flattening athletes into templates. I don’t believe in ignoring aging, menopause, nervous system load, cultural context, or real life because it’s inconvenient for a training plan. I believe in building athletes for longevity. I believe in questioning systems that burn women out and then blame them for it.
If you’ve ever felt like sport asked you to shrink yourself to belong, you’re not imagining it. If you want coaching that understands the whole picture instead of pretending your body exists in a vacuum, that work exists.
National Girls and Women in Sports Day isn’t about declaring victory. It’s about staying honest. It’s about recognizing progress while refusing to settle. It’s about making space for the voices that still don’t get the mic nearly often enough.
And if you’re ready to train, lead, and move in ways that actually honor who you are, I’d love to work with you. Let’s build something sustainable. Let’s build something real. Let’s keep pushing the sport forward without losing ourselves in the process.