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Inclusiveness starts with the coach

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This article was published 20/10/2023 (712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gabrielle Wishart has been coaching volleyball for seven years and is making a difference in Manitoba’s sport landscape through holistic coaching and using her role to advocate for better representation in sport.

A Métis woman from Portage la Prairie, the 2023 Peter Williamson Memorial Award winner, which is awarded to coaches who primarily work with high-performance athletes that compete at the national or international level, was a volleyball head coach for Team Manitoba at the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) in Halifax this summer.

Incorporating smudging, making medicine bags, and braiding sweetgrass into their practices and game day routines created a safe space for her athletes to connect with culture.

“I can specifically speak to some of my First Nations athletes. I know and they talked about how it made them feel more comfortable when they were playing and it made them feel more calm when they were warming up,” said Gabrielle. “I know some of them, they were struggling with being away from home, and it kind of made them feel less homesick, more connected with their culture. It was also really cool to just share those things.”

These benefits transferred over to team performances on the court, too.

“I think it made them feel more cohesive as a unit and more trusting of each other.”

Gabrielle also said, “there’s been an idea for a really long time that NAIG wasn’t high-performance, and that it was just an opportunity for athletes, specifically Indigenous athletes, just to go to the games.”

“But I think we need to consider that these NAIG athletes are high-performance athletes. These are athletes who go on to Team Canada,” she said, noting one of the NAIG canoe kayakers is on the Olympic hopeful team in Poland, and volleyball players who are on the junior national team and playing at the university and college level.

Gabrielle, who works at Manitoba Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Council (MASRC), sits on the Volleyball Manitoba Board of Directors, and is a member of the Anti-Racism in Sport Youth Committee, believes safe sport education, training, and resources are “very important, but I think people have to be ready to take action.”

“I think we can educate people as much as we want and we can talk about it as much as we want, but unless people are willing and ready to learn, accept that there has been injustices, and that there is racism in sport and these are experiences that athletes and coaches have, then there won’t be any change.”

Learn more about safe sport at sportmanitoba.ca/safesport.