Huskies headline panel on International Woman’s Day

Huskie Athletics Chief Athletics Officer Shannon Chinn, Huskies women’s basketball head coach Lisa Thomaidis, Averie Allard of Huskies women’s volleyball and Bailee Bourassa of Huskies women’s hockey headlined a panel at the Women in Leadership Gala held on campus on Tuesday afternoon.

The event was organized by the University of Saskatchewan Students Union (USSU) and was held in conjunction with International Women’s Day.

The quartet of Huskies figures discussed topics surrounding women’s sport and their own experiences, including visibility, representation, role models of their own, and what can be done to continue advancing women’s sport.

About the panellists:

Shannon Chinn: Chinn joined Huskie Athletics in June of 2021 as the Chief Athletics Officer. A Regina product, who was a student-athlete in her own right with the University of Ottawa Gee Gees, Chinn joined the Huskies after professional stops across the country, including at Look Sport, TSN, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the Ottawa Senators and Carleton University.

Lisa Thomaidis: A pioneer in Canadian basketball, Thomaidis has been the head coach of Huskies women’s basketball since 1998. Thomaidis has led Saskatchewan to 12 of the last 13 U SPORTS Final 8’s, helping the Huskies win their first-ever national championship in 2015, a feat repeated in 2020. Thomaidis also served as the head coach of the Canadian Women’s National Basketball Team from 2013 to 2021 and coached Team Canada at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games.

Bailee Bourassa: The captain of the Huskies women’s hockey team, Bourassa is one of the best goal scorers in the nation. But her work goes far beyond the rink — the Weyburn, Sask. product is currently in the midst of completing her Masters in Nursing, a program that seen her juggle school, work and hockey, while she worked at Saskatoon’s Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital. The fifth-year forward, who is currently in her final year of eligibility, helped lead the Huskies to their fourth-ever national championship this season — an event that will get underway later this month.

Averie Allard: A star on the Huskies women’s volleyball team, the Winnipeg product is one of the best setters in the nation. Allard led the Canada West in assists this season with 590 and she currently holds the Huskies single-season record in assists after her stellar 2019-20 campaign. A Métis woman, Allard has been a difference maker on and off the court, using her platform while playing by writing MMIW — the acronym for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women — on her leg for every game to raise awareness for the ongoing crisis happening across North America.

Here are some excerpts from the afternoon:

Chinn on her fellow panellists and her role as Chief Athletics Officer:

“There’s obviously lots of barriers that women face in sports. However, I think what breaks down that barrier is having phenomenal women like this as part of our athletic program. What I hope to do is help them — by supporting them in what they do, by giving them opportunities and showing them that the sky’s the limit.”

Thomaidis on one of the biggest barriers facing women’s sports:

“We don’t see women on television playing sport, competing and pursuing their athletic endeavours and being able to make that their career — to make a living from it. There’s so much subliminal — or not so subliminal — messaging out there around, you know what the gender norms are for us as women, what we can and cannot do, what we can pursue as a career and athletics is just one of them.”

“We just don’t get to see women pursuing excellence in the athletic realm and knowing that that’s a viable option for them to pursue as a career. What it starts with is acknowledgement around where there arelimited barriers that we have to overcome and then providing imagery and representation for women and young girls to see what it looks like to be a strong female leader — whether it be in sport or other realms. To just give them the opportunity to know that there is opportunity out there and different streams to pursue.”

Bourassa on promoting women’s sport:

“I think that having leaders in the community is a huge advantage because it gets our word out there and it gets our faces out there. Little girls look up to that no matter what profession you’re in — whether it be sport or work. It’s getting that visibility of women. Women are strong forces to be reckoned with and if we can be role models for the younger generations, I think that the visibility piece is huge for us.”

Allard on her come up in sport and what can be done differently to help promote female sport to youth:

“I know growing up, I never imagined being able to be a pro athlete just because I truly believed that there were no professional female athletes. I think that’s a really big problem in our society where we preach — and as a future educator — you can do whatever you want to do when you grow and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something.”

“Like Bailee said, going out into our communities, especially here in Saskatoon where everything that we do as Huskie athletes reaches every corner of the city, it’s so important to show younger girls that you really can do whatever it is you want to do. Just because right now we don’t see ourselves on TV and you don’t see the person you want to be on TV, doesn’t mean that by the time they’re our age, hopefully that isn’t a barrier anymore, and more little girls come here to be pro athletes.”

Bourassa on her upbringing in sport and what it was like playing minor hockey in Weyburn:

“Growing up playing hockey in a small town, there weren’t a lot of girls hockey teams where I was from where I could play competitively. I had to grow up playing with the boys and often that meant a lot of segregation for me. Coaches didn’t really know how to deal with a female athlete because they were always dealing with boys. I just think that everything that I went through as a young athlete has made me into the person I am today and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Allard on what she would tell her younger self:

“I think the one thing I would like to tell my younger self is that it is possible and with all the challenges that come with growing up as a woman — whether it be body image, mental health and stuff like that — I had so many teachers throughout elementary and high school telling me that I wasn’t focused enough in school and I needed to focus less on volleyball and all the other sports that I played, because I was never gonna make a living that way. And at times, I really let that get to me. There were days where I definitely felt like the best option was to just give up and to succumb to that idea that I was never going to be able to be the athlete I wanted to be. So, I think if I can go back and just install a little more confidence in myself, not let anyone bother me and just do it for myself.”

Thomaidis on her upbringing sport:

“Female mentorship, leadership and role modelling was so important in my upbringing. I think it wasn’t until later on that I really realized I was always coached by women and that just wasn’t the norm at that time and probably isn’t even now. But back in the day, you know, most people were coached by men. So to see female leadership, to understand that, as a woman coaching as a viable career, was what she was hugely impactful on me. Having tremendous female role models, a great university coach, I think really inspired me to become a coach.”

Allard on an idol of hers:

“We have an assistant coach — Shelley Dodds — and I truly don’t think that I would be playing if it wasn’t for her. I wish she was here. She is an impeccable mother and wife and she fights pretty much everyday to bring her kids to practice so you can be involved with our team and that her boys can look up to us. That for me is just incredible. There are a lot of pro volleyball players in Europe whose contracts get cut because they got married and their coaches assume that they’re going to want to have children. To see Shelley be able to still be a part of the volleyball world and have her kids still show that she’s valuable — just because she’s a mother that doesn’t demean her value and that means the world to me. She’s definitely my girl.”

Chinn on what she’d tell her younger self about sport:

“I think I would tell myself there’s space. There’s going to be space for women in the jobs that you want — there’s going to be space to get there. When I was little and growing up, playing sports, I sort of had that dream and I would tell everyone I would play in the NBA or NHL, but when I got into my career, I think at that point, I would have liked to tell myself that it’s going to open up and there’s going to be opportunities. For a long time, it was really hard to be a woman in professional sports and ever be able to achieve a vice-president title, to be the president or CEO, to work on the operation side — especially in male sports — you’re always pushed out of the locker room, you’re pushed out of the operation side. So we’re seeing lots of change in that right now and it’s really inspiring to see the women that are making grounds there. So I think that’s what I would say is  keep trying, and there’s going to be space and that’s starting to show up now.”

Allard on her Huskies women’s volleyball team:

“Being able to look around the locker room even on my team and just know that you have the support of so many other women in the community, like some of us aren’t even from the city and we went to know each other if we didn’t all come play here. But I think that’s the great thing about being on a sports team — especially on a women’s sports team. I find it to be such a different culture than men’s sport. Our team specifically, we’re so intertwined and I don’t think we’d be where we are without each other.”