A look into the Remai Modern’s Panel of four inspiring women athletes earlier this month.

On the second floor of the Remai Modern sits French artist Céline Condorelli’s piece Limits to Play. The exhibit is a multicoloured display of six different sports fields overlapping each other – badminton, basketball, football, pétanque, volleyball, and a running track.

Intended to explore the exclusion faced by marginalized groups in sports, particularly focussing on the traditional exclusion of women in male-dominated sporting culture, each court is marked on its border with the respective date women were allowed to participate in official competition in each sport: 1920, 1921, 1926, 1952, 1956, and 1977.

On February 6, a day after National Women and Girls in Sports Day, the Remai hosted its Women and Inclusion in Sport Panel, set against the backdrop of this exhibit. The panel featured four inspiring Saskatoon-based women athletes—  Emmarae Dale, Reed Thorstad, Kendra Weenie, and Ashley Baerg, and discussion featured the achievements of these trailblazing women while also shedding light on many of the challenges women and minorities continue to face in sports.

Reed Thorstad, a Saskatoon native, grew up trying a variety of sports but eventually found her passion in the worlds of flag and tackle football, despite initially feeling out of her comfort zone in the male-dominated world of football.

A long-time member of the Saskatoon Valkyries tackle football team, who were recently named the “2024 Team of the Year” at the Kinsmen Celebrity Sports Dinner, Thorstad has appeared in eight seasons and won five Women’s Western Canadian Football League (WWCFL) championships with the Valkyries. The team boasts an impressive record of 30 consecutive wins.

Thorstad believes that sport builds resilience, belonging, confidence, and community. She seeks to spread these values through her work coaching and organizing flag and tackle football programs for girls in Saskatoon.

Alongside her Valkyries and Team Canada teammate, and fellow panellist Emmarae Dale, Thorstad coaches the USask women’s flag football team and founded Female Athletes Tackling Excellence, a high school girl’s tackle league, providing young girls with opportunities to find a place in football.

Emmarae Dale, the youngest of six siblings, was a multisport athlete who grew up in a competitive environment. At the University of Saskatchewan, she was a thrower on the Huskies Track and Field team, winning three  Canada West team golds, before beginning her tackle football career with the Saskatoon Valkyries.

In 2020, Dale’s performance with the Valkyries caught the attention of the Saskatoon Hilltops of the Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL), with whom she spent one season, making history as the first woman to ever play in the CJFL.

Dale highlighted the effort her Hilltops teammates put in to make her feel included as the only woman on the team and highlighted football’s potential to facilitate inclusivity as a sport which has roles catering to a wide range of body types.

The importance of including all body types was reinforced by panellist Ashley Baerg, a native of Dalmany, Saskatchewan. Born with spina bifida, Baerg has been a wheelchair user her entire life. Despite this, sport was a major pillar of Baerg’s childhood, thanks to her resilience and the support of her community.

Baerg’s basketball journey began in grade 7 when she tried out for and made, to her surprise, her school’s junior basketball team. Playing against able-bodied girls as a wheelchair user, this experience was a testament to the importance of community in sport, as coaches from various small towns around the league coordinated to make rule adjustments so that Baerg could be accommodated.

While she was initially resistant to trying wheelchair basketball, she was forced to try it if she wanted to continue playing basketball once she aged out of her school’s junior team. She fell in love and would go on to play the sport at a high level, being named an alternate for Team Canada at the 2012 Paralympics.

This love was soon eclipsed by another. In 2012 Baerg discovered water skiing, and she would eventually pick the sport over basketball. Baerg would go on to become the women’s world record holder for the longest adaptive seated water ski jump at 17.9 metres.

A common theme in Thorstad, Dale and Baerg’s segments was a supportive community rallying behind them as they broke barriers, and each acknowledged their privilege in receiving so much support. Unfortunately, this experience is not universal for women athletes. Discrimination is commonplace, and this is particularly exacerbated for women athletes of colour.

Weenie grew up on Sweetgrass First Nation, where she had little opportunity to participate in sports until her teenage years. She was able to play sports for the first time as a teenager at her local high school, where she fell in love with volleyball. During her time playing in tournaments around reserves in Saskatchewan, she was scouted to play at a college in Alberta.

Weenie would play for two separate institutions during her collegiate career. On both teams, she would face discrimination and exclusion from her teammates because of her race.  This experience would prove to be devastating to Weenie and would affect her for years to come. Playing volleyball had given her purpose and confidence, and this sanctuary had been stolen by her teammates.

While Weenie is still impacted to this day, she channels this experience into positivity by using it to help others. As an author and speaker, she shares her story in hopes of facilitating healing in others.

She continues to deepen her connection with the sport as well as encourage Indigenous youth to reap the benefits of participation both through her role as co-founder of Neechie Gear sports camps and by cheering on her own daughter in sport.

Women’s sports are currently experiencing a renaissance. Women athletes have more money, leverage, and star power than ever before. New high-calibre professional leagues are popping up left and right and media exposure is at an all-time high.

The industry has grown exponentially in recent years and will continue this upward trajectory for years to come as investment and awareness increase. This growth cannot be taken for granted – it did not come easily or naturally. It is the product of persistent women athletes, coaches, and fans who fought, and continue to fight, to break down barriers in sport on a local, national, and global level.