The Worldwide Hockey Federation (FIH) at this time introduced the launch of ‘Girls Who Thrive’, a brand new sequence celebrating the historic and ongoing influence of girls within the sport of hockey. It options partaking video profiles and tales spotlighting influential ladies from hockey’s previous and current. The sequence is a part of the Girls in Hockey Empowerment Challenge that FIH launched at its Congress final 12 months. Episodes can be found on FIH’s streaming platform Watch.Hockey (direct hyperlinks: Luciana Aymar; Rani Rampal)
FIH President Tayyab Ikram emphasised the group’s dedication, stating: “Hockey is a gender equal sport and one in every of our key commitments is to go even additional, encouraging ladies to proceed enjoying and setting the scene for others to hitch, accelerating alternatives for girls to develop inside our sport”.
Within the highlight: Icons Luciana Aymar and Rani Rampal
The sequence kicks off with two of hockey’s most iconic figures. Argentina’s Luciana Aymar – a four-time Olympic medallist and four-time World Cup medallist, and the one participant in historical past to be elected FIH Participant of the Yr eight occasions! – displays on her illustrious profession. India’s Rani Rampal – former captain of the nationwide ladies’s group and a veteran of over 200 worldwide matches – additionally shares her inspirational story. Each athletes seem within the inaugural movies to replicate on their journeys and provide recommendation to the subsequent technology. As Aymar notes: “I really feel honoured that my private story can encourage different women to maintain on enjoying or to hitch hockey. Teenage years should not simple, the place insecurity and doubts can play a significant function. I’m right here to remind women that anybody can play hockey. We’re all equal and value to play this sport”.
Rampal, likewise, underscores the facility of self-belief: “As a former participant and now a coach I really feel I’ve a duty to cross a few of what hockey has given me: the fervour, the arrogance, the power to beat challenges. If I may do it, then each lady can. Till you imagine in your self, no one will imagine in you”.
The ‘Girls Who Thrive’ sequence will proceed to roll out further episodes all year long, every highlighting outstanding ladies – gamers, coaches, umpires and directors – whose management and dedication have helped form hockey globally.
Honoring a century of girls’s hockey
The sequence locations these trendy tales within the context of a wealthy historical past of girls within the sport. In reality, ladies’s hockey first emerged at British universities and faculties within the late 1800s. The game grew quickly – a separate Worldwide Federation of Girls’s Hockey Associations was fashioned in 1927 – and girls’s hockey made its Olympic debut in 1980. This lengthy legacy underscores how ladies’s contributions have at all times been integral to hockey’s improvement and spirit.
FIH Girls’s Empowerment Challenge and Physique Assured Sport Program
The sequence additionally highlights FIH’s ongoing efforts to advance gender fairness in hockey. In late 2024, FIH launched its Girls in Hockey Empowerment Challenge – a transformative platform to uplift and interact feminine gamers, coaches, officers and leaders within the sport. The venture’s objectives embody figuring out and addressing systemic inequalities, accelerating alternatives for women and girls to advance and lead, and celebrating profitable ladies as function fashions.
A key pillar of the Empowerment Challenge is the Physique Assured Sport programme, supported by a grant from the Laureus Sport for Good Basis. This primary-of-its-kind teaching toolkit – co-created by Nike and Dove – offers coaches with supplies to assist improve physique confidence, constructive physique picture and vanity amongst younger athletes. Analysis exhibits that almost half of women aged 11–17 drop out of sport on account of physique picture insecurities. Physique Assured Sport goals to alter this by serving to women and younger folks of all gender identities really feel snug and assured in their very own our bodies whereas collaborating in hockey. FIH will champion the programme by way of its international community of coaches and member associations to maximise its attain.
Marijke Fleuren, Chair of FIH’s Gender Equality, Variety and Inclusion Committee, stated: “Highlighting the challenges, successes, and classes of our function fashions is important to encourage the subsequent technology of women and girls in hockey. The Girls Who Thrive sequence, which shares the journeys of a few of our sport’s most influential ladies, will function a robust software to generate confidence, motivation, and an enduring connection to hockey”.
Laureus Sport for Good’s Sara Downie commented: “We’re proud to proceed our partnership with FIH in our shared mission to develop alternatives for ladies to play sports activities globally. We’re particularly dedicated to elevating the visibility of the Physique Assured Sport programme—a robust software that helps not solely athletes but in addition coaches in fostering constructive physique picture and confidence in sport”.
By the ‘Girls Who Thrive’ sequence and its empowerment tasks, FIH is reinforcing that each particular person – no matter gender – is welcome in hockey and may excel within the sport. The Federation invitations the hockey group and the general public to observe the sequence and be part of the dialog on social media utilizing #MadeForHockey. All associated data is offered on the FIH web site (see madefor.hockey).
Supply: FIH.hockey
