The SMU women's basketball, soccer and volleyball teams got a chance to work with the next generation of female athletes as they celebrated National Girls & Women in Sports Day on Sunday afternoon.
The stands were filled with young fans for the women's basketball game with a post-game clinic, led by players and coaches, after. It was a chance to pay it forward, like the generations before have done for them.
"I always go first to gratitude for the women that paved the way," women's soccer coach Nicole Nelson said. "It's my 25th year in Division I, and I've thought this often, the women who paved the way upon whose backs we stand. Now, I always think about how far we've come in such a short amount of time, and our responsibility, one to teach our athletes to understand where we've come from so they can continue growing it for the future."
The opportunities are growing for female athletes, but access is still a roadblock. So it is up to the current athletes to help guide the way. They can show what is possible now and start laying the groundwork for the breakthroughs that will come down the road.
"It's amazing because it's a lot of young girls that don't know if they can do something that has been done, that hasn't been done, or even know if they feel valued in doing a sport," women's basketball coach Toyelle Wilson said. "And so it's really important for these little girls to see our players, all the women's sports (teams and athletes) to come together and really show that you can do anything and anything is possible."
Professional women's sports leagues continue to emerge and grow. There was a time when the end of a college career meant the end of a career period. That is no longer the case and has revitalized the college landscape.
"There used to be a day where in my coaching career, I'm young in my career, but not so long ago, where I would watch seniors truly dread graduation," volleyball coach Sam Erger said. "Like, dread it and they would go through real emotional toil, because you've put all this time, your whole life, into something. Now to see excitement where they can get paid and get recognized and really move forward. … That's only going to reverberate downstream to the younger girls with even more and more opportunities."
The WNBA got things started as the first professional women's sports league in America that had sustained success. It took almost two decades before a professional women's soccer league was able to sustain itself, and now there are two with a new one just north in Canada starting. Meanwhile, volleyball is enjoying a recent boom of interest and support as new leagues have come into existence over the last few years.
That gives the next generation of female athletes professional role models, something they didn't have before.
"What they think they're capable of is, it's just a totally different vision," Nelson said. "Michael Jordan was really one of the sports heroes that I looked at, because I'm a similar age to the 99ers, so there really weren't visions of women playing professionally when I was growing up. … Women's basketball paved the way. They showed us what it looked like. Those are the pioneers that come to mind for me."
The afternoon started with an Inspiring Women's Panel hosted by SMU athletics Director of Cultural Intelligence Brenda Scott. Radio personality Jazzi Black discussed how she wanted to be on camera doing the news before finding her place as a journalist on the radio. ELO Group LLC founder Teirney Guinyard didn't know there were consultants that helped companies give back to their communities, once she did she created her own firm doing just that. Then there's Hannah Wing Pontikes who created her own position with the Texas Rangers that combined her interests and abilities in social media, marketing and on-camera talent.
Sometimes life takes you on a different path, opens doors you didn't even know existed or makes you create your own doors. But making sure those opportunities are available is what days like Sunday are all about.
"I just want them to be able to do what they want to do," Erger said. "If you want to be a mom, do it. If you want to be a pro athlete, I want you to be able to do that too. I don't want you to be forced into anything that you don't want to do. I want you to have those opportunities and those choices."
Not only do the coaches want the next generation of women to have the opportunities, but they want them to be able to take advantage of those opportunities. That's where participating in athletics is crucial to giving the attributes necessary to be successful in life.
"One is the belief, believing that they can even do it," Wilson said. "The second thing I would definitely say is, probably, the confidence. A lot of times you see a certain person look a certain way on social media, especially nowadays with the young kids and social media, and the power to be able to have that confidence, to be able to do anything and you don't have to look a certain way. And so all those things are important."
