‘It’s so much beyond football’

The spring months can make for some long days for Saphira Twoheart.

Once the snow melts, the 18-year-old goes from school during the day in Sagkeeng First Nation to football practice in the evening in Winnipeg. It’s a 90-minute commute each way from her community in Fort Alexander that usually doesn’t get her home until close to midnight three days per week, but Twoheart believes that trip has paid big dividends since starting with the Falcons Football Club three years ago.

“It’s made me more talkative and more comfortable in my own skin.”

She isn’t shy about voicing what the Falcons have meant to her.

“When I first started football, I was a very shy and timid type of person, but over the years of playing football, it’s made me more talkative and more comfortable in my own skin, to the point where I could coach other teammates with the skills that I have,” Twoheart said Tuesday.

“I personally think it’s worth it, because with being Indigenous and us being in a group that we are, it kind of connects us more as women, because we’re all connected in that way, and I feel like it brings us closer together.”

Twoheart’s sentiments resonate with teammates, coaches and, recently, the National Football League.

The Falcons Football Club was recently named one of three recipients of NFL Canada’s Forward Pass initiative, which awards $25,000 to select Canadian programs to increase accessibility to the sport.

The Falcons, which started a girls tackle football program four years ago that mostly comprises players that range in age from 14-18 from Sagkeeng First Nation, were selected along with the North Toronto Sentinels (Vaughan, Ont.) and Montreal’s Sun Youth Hornets Football.

Ainsley McPhail, a coach with the Falcons Football Club’s boys teams, spearheaded the application process. She applied on the team’s behalf in 2024 but was not awarded the grant.

McPhail tried again last year, compiling a montage of interviews with Falcons players about what football and being a part of a team mean to them, and was deemed to be one of the most compelling of more than 500 applications from across the country.

“It just means so much. It’s so much beyond football,” said McPhail, who called the Falcons a “complete anomaly.”

“The fact that they have to drive in multiple times a week to even make it happen — asking teenagers or kids to come in multiple times a week, and they live up the street, is hard,” she added. “So just the sheer level of access, period, is a huge bit of it, but then also that they’re women and they need different types of equipment, and other things.”

The $25,000 grant will go toward new equipment for the team, along with improved transportation. Players currently get their footwear through a yearly cleat drive organized by Sagkeeng Anicinabe High School, while various volunteers drive the girls to and from Winnipeg for two practices and a game in the Manitoba Girls Football Association each week during the season.

Head coach Kathy Calancia maintained that Twoheart isn’t a one-off when it comes to football pulling players out of their shells. She watches it happen every year and says the importance of it can not be overstated.

“When we first started this girls’ program, we weren’t sure it was going to work,” Calancia said. “We weren’t sure if the program was going to last, we weren’t sure if the girls would keep interest in it, and they have, and they’re excelling at this program.

“To find out that somebody else out there is believing in this program as much as we are… it’s huge.”

“What this program does to these girls is just amazing. And then to find out that somebody else out there is believing in this program as much as we are and they’re acknowledging the program and everything else, it’s huge.”

The hope is also that a few upgrades will foster more participation within and beyond Sagkeeng First Nation. The Falcons typically get 30 players out for initial practices, but usually see those numbers dwindle as the season goes on.

Twoheart grew up in a football-loving family, but was raised in a community that lacked an opportunity for girls to play. While she admits that she was surprised to hear the Falcons were the recipients of the Forward Pass grant, she believes it could have a profound ripple effect.

“I felt proud, in a way, because I’m able to say that I was a part of the team, and I still am, but I believe that because we got it, it kind of encourages other natives and other people to step out their shell and do things that they want to do just because they should do it,” she said.

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