She’s Good – If not now, when?
If not now, when?
Date of event: July 21, 2022
Location: Bluefield High School, 924 Colville Rd, North Wiltshire
Number of Attendees: 24 Athletes in Attendance
On Thursday, July 21, Sport PEI held the annual “She’s Good” event at Bluefield High school in the community of North Wiltshire. “She’s Good” events have a goal of inspiring and supporting girls (aged 10-16) lifelong love of sport and physical activity. Female sports leaders and professionals spend the day talking to the girls about healthy lifestyles, and goal setting mixed in with a lot of fun. On Thursday, two former athletes’ sports careers came full circle, as Katie Baker and Sarah MacEachern returned to their former high school to be role models for the next generation of female athletes on the island. Megan Ferguson of mind matters mental consulting program made an appearance at the end of the day.
Sarah MacEachern was the first presenter of the day. She is from Canoe Cove, PEI, and was a Defenceman for the Under-18 Women’s National ice hockey team. She was an Assistant Captain for the team during their gold medal run in the IIHF World Women’s Under-18 Championships this past June. Sarah shared with the young female athletes about her story and the journey she took to becoming a gold medalist and an elite level athlete. During her presentation she touched on a few ideas like loving to train for your sport, being resilient as an athlete, and the difference between being a good friend and a good teammate. Following Sarah’s presentation, the girls split time between being on a disc golf course and in the gym learning how to play field hockey. Once the hour was up, the ladies were back in the gym listening to another great leader, Katie Baker.
Katie is from Argyle Shore, Prince Edward Island. She was a member of the Women’s National field hockey team from 2006-2012. She was also the Captain of the National team for 2 years and was described by her teammates as inspirational. Katie spoke with the girls about herself and her path with sports. She touched on having to move across the country to pursue field hockey and the challenges she had to overcome along the way. She was not the most talented skill-wise, but she refused to be outworked. Katie’s story was a great lead up for her presentation on leadership and personal values. During Katie’s presentation she had the girls complete an exercise about values where she gave each participant 3 cards with a personal value on each card, then she gave everyone monopoly money. They were given the task to trade values they have or money for a value they wanted. The goal was to show them that the values they hold will work towards what type of leader they will be.
After Katie’s presentation, the girls had the opportunity to experience orienteering on the school grounds. The orienteering event was turned into a competition for the group where they were given 10 locations on a detailed map of Bluefield High school grounds, split up into groups of 2 and sent out at 1-minute time intervals. The group seemed to enjoy this event as all of them were sprinting to each location. When all the girls found the locations and returned to the gym, they were given some time to catch their breath before the final session of the day with Megan Ferguson wrapped up the event.
Megan Ferguson is 1 of 10 CSPA (Canadian Sport Psychology Association) Mental Performance Consultants in Atlantic Canada, and is currently employed as an instructor at Holland College, and by the Ottawa Redblacks Football Club of the Canadian Football League (CFL), as well as contributing to the CFL ‘Women in Football’ initiative. Her presentation for the athletes focused on goal setting, where she taught the girls about the differences between making a specific goal compared to a general goal, and how to follow through.
To end her presentation, she had the girls perform two activities that applied what they had learned in her slideshow to a physical setting. One activity had the girls in groups of three, each group had to see how many passes they could make in a minute within their group without dropping a pass. They did this 4 times, the first time was to set a group-best record. The following 3 times they were told to beat the original score. The last activity of the day saw the girls get partnered up in groups of two and given a number from 1-20. They were given the task of passing a ball between the two partners while waiting to say their number. This activity was timed and if anyone dropped a pass they had to reset the number count back to 1. This was completed the first time in 13 seconds, then they were told to beat their first time and this caused some issues as they were now rushing and dropping passes. This activity was enjoyable for the girls as they were all laughing and screaming in hopes of improving their time.
Thursday’s “She’s Good” event was a massive success with registration near capacity. The group enjoyed all of the activities, from team building, to sports that were new to all of them. The athletes got to interact with three outstanding role models and leaders, all with Island roots, who gave great presentations on important topics for young athletes, forming an experience this group will never forget.