Creating safe sports environments

We do not do enough in youth sports to create a safe environment for all youth to participate safely and fully. Access to sports is a huge part of personal development for youth, including core teamwork and interpersonal skills, discipline and responsibility and passion.

Barriers should be removed for children and youth to be able to participate — especially girls and racialized youth. Despite being one of the strongest ways to connect as a community, sports hold a lot of privilege in who can access them and who will remain able to participate.

All youth deserve to feel a sense of belonging, have access to spaces for physical activity and to experience recreation free from harassment or discrimination from players, coaches or spectators.

However, anti-racism and inclusion in sports is not treated as an expectation, but an exception to the norm. There are families and community groups in Winnipeg that face racist remarks during games, who are not represented fairly by sports organizations, who are more likely to be perceived as “aggressive” or “dangerous” players, thus being scored unfairly, and who are much more likely to drop out of sports than their white counterparts. According to Statistics Canada, more Black participants experience or witness unfair treatment than any other group. In addition, girls are more likely to drop out of sports than boys. Many coaches volunteer their time to their teams but are not always equipped with the ability to notice microaggressions during play, and many do not have the knowledge needed to protect racialized youth athletes from discrimination.

I believe there needs to be more discussion about collective accountability from adults making up these spaces about how we show up for players, and what we are truly contributing to their development.

Additionally, community sports organizations need to be accountable for providing mandatory anti-racist training for coaches and referees, and set clear expectations for spectators during sports events. Competition and community involvement should never come at the cost of a youth’s dignity or identity, and prejudiced microaggressions in youth sport are normalized to a harmful degree that affects racialized children and youth’s ability to participate equally.