Female Friday I How Can Mom's Support Featuring Adrienne I 10 Min Read

We have an extremely special #FemaleFriday for you this week. We caught up with Adrienne to learn more about her story as a female athlete, and now that she has children how she supports them in their athletic journey. Adrienne discusses some really powerful thoughts of how best can mothers ensure that their daughters have the same opportunities and treatment as men. 

You might be wondering who is Adrienne? 

Well, Adrienne was an athlete growing up in small town in Ontario in the mid 80s where she begged her parents to let her play hockey but girls didn’t play hockey in their town. Thus, she picked a different sport and our interview below explains how her experience in sports has impacted her life. Furthermore, now that she is a mother of two daughters we learned more about her perspective as a mother and how she continues to fight for women to be treated and represented equally. 


Not Her Hobby: Adrienne, you mentioned that sport both built you up and brought you down a bit. Could you share a bit more about your experience? What sport did you play? Were there equal opportunity for women? 

Adrienne: I was a horseback rider. I fell in love with horses at an early age and was on a horse from the time I could walk. I went to horse camp a few times and I started formal lessons around the age of 9. I have a younger brother who is 4 years younger then me who was also horse crazy. Riding at the youth level is heavily dominated by girls, probably 10 girls for every one boy. You would think we would have more opportunities. But back in the early 90s the pro level of the sport was heavily dominated by men even though it is a fully coed competition sport. 

Riding is a community of the most privileged of privileged people. I did not come from money but I was good. Really good. So my natural talent propelled me in the sport, the sport where money can buy you wins. My brother was also really good. He got noticed a lot because he was the boy in the sport. I was one of the many many girls. 

By the age of 16 my parents said I had to stop riding as I also played high school basketball and developed knee issues, medical care for orthopedic issues in our small town were very limited.  Thus, I was told i had to stop riding because of my knee issues. I sold my horse, but I stayed in the sport by grooming for my brother at horse shows and doing the odd exercises ride for others. I stopped playing basketball too, it was never my passion but it was fun except for I wasn’t one of the jock crowd and the girls on the team would barely speak to me. So I gave it up. 

Right around the time I stopped riding full time my riding coach was charged with statutory rape of one of my best friends. Another unnamed girl was also part of the civil suit and everyone thought it was me. But It wasn’t, it was another one of my friends who had come and picked up her horse one day and was never heard from or seen again, just shortly before he was charged. The same coach who raped my friends told my parents just before they made me quit to stop backing me and put all the time and money in to backing my brother because girls were a dime a dozen and he had a better chance of making it then I did. I only found this out in the last few years when my mother finally admitted it to me, when I questioned why they had made me quit instead of trying to get me medical help for my knee issues. 

However, it all makes sense now. My coach used to come on to me all the time. I always just brushed it off and would crack jokes and move on and never let myself be alone with him. In my mind it was his revenge, to tell my parents to back my brother and not me. His wife who was also a coach at the barn I rode out of also believed that the unnamed girl in the suit was me too, as she would call my home and threaten me and tell me I wasn’t welcome at the barn. She would call and just breath in to the phone for minutes at a time and then scream at me. I haven’t ridden since I was 19, my brother is enjoying an amazing career as a pro horse back rider. Living the dream I always had.


Not Her Hobby: Now that you have passed the torch onto your daughter, have you felt that she has more opportunity than you? If not, how could her experience be improved?

Adrienne: My oldest daughter plays lacrosse, she is a goalie. She definitely has had more opportunities then I did but we had to fight for them more then we should have had to. Often we had to fight against male coaches who seemed to enjoy having power over tweens and teenage girls. A lot of dads who had played and coached to make sure their daughters had a spot on the team. 

When she wanted to play boys field lacrosse we supported her in that, I can’t say the parents of the boys were all supportive though. One night shortly after try outs for a u16 team a mom another player on the team came up and stated chatting with me, after a little while she said “isn’t it a shame that girl goalie took the spot a way from a deserving boy” to which I responded “oh you mean my daughter, who obviously got put on the team just because she is a girl, I guess she didn’t have to actually be better to get the spot?” The other mom turned ten shades of red and ran away. 

We as a family understand the value of sport. When our oldest was 16 we put everything we had in to her and her sport so she could follow her dream of playing NCAA lacrosse. I am proud to say through her hard work, a million miles put on our car, more early morning wake ups then I care to count, drives and flights to tournaments all over the USA, her dedication on and off the field paid off and she was offered a full scholarship to play lacrosse and be the starting goalie as a freshman. We are immensely proud of her.


Not Her Hobby: You brought up a powerful question/conversation of what can we do as mothers to help female athletes have equal opportunity. What do you believe some of the keys to being a good advocate are? Do you have any tips for our readers?

Adrienne: This is something I am really passionate about female youth sport. So we as mothers need to see the value in sports for our daughters in the same way dads see it for their sons. We need to make sure the dads know the value of sport for girls because we can’t change this alone. We have all seen the stats on what happens when girls have sport in their lives. We know the positive impact it can have on educational outcomes, teen pregnancy rates, drug use and so many more things yet time and time again I have heard or seen parents give up on their daughters in sport because “they have gone as far as they can go in their sport” so they stop funding it. 

They stop offering to drive them to their games, competitions and practices. Because why “waste” money on girl who doesn’t have the option to make this her career? Boys always have the option to make their sport their career in many parents eyes. There is always that chance they will make the NHL, MLB, CFL/NFL, NBA, NLL, USL whatever the male pro league is for their sport.  It’s probably not even a conscious thought, but it’s there. I see it at the fields and the rinks, I see it. 

The key to being a good advocate for our daughters I believe is saying yes you can. You want to try out for the “boys” midget AAA team I will take you, yes. You want to hit the gym and need a ride yes I will.  Never say no to our daughters dreams. This one is a hard one because it can involve confrontation, but call people out, women and men for misogynistic behaviors, every time. 

For example, in one of the recent olympics when my daughter was in middle school, they played the men’s hockey gold medal game in the gym and the whole school watched. There was no viewing of the women’s gold medal game! So I called the school and spoke to the principal and let him know I was not ok with that, and flat out asked him, if did he not feel the women’s game was worthy of the kids time like the men’s was? 

Or when my daughter’s lacrosse team at a private sports school went undefeated for the whole season didn’t even warrant a Facebook post, but the men’s hockey team winning the private school championships warranted a full school assembly and celebration. I called the school and let them know just how wrong that was, if we celebrate  men’s wins we celebrate women’s wins. Don’t let that dad next to you bad mouth the women ref, mock the girl coming out her closet she had to get changed in, hell don’t let your girls have to get ready in closets or bathrooms, call out the league and make sure they are treated equally. Call out bad sports behavior, i refuse to call it sportsmanship, every time. Not some of the time, but all the time.

We need to teach our daughters strong is good, being the best is good, do what it takes to win, that they deserve to win you can still be feminine and tough the two are not mutually exclusive.  Let’s stop teaching our girls to sit back and let boys take the wins, the spots on the team, or the scholarships. We need to teach them they have the same rights as boys to play or participate in any sport they want. 

Its important that we change our language as mothers to players, athletes, coach, ref don’t yell let’s go boys if their is a girl on the team yell the teams name let’s go, don’t say things like that was a nice save/goal/stop/hit for a girl. We should simply call it a good save/goal/stop/ hit as if it’s good it doesn’t matter the gender of the player who did it. We need to take our daughters to watch whatever the highest level of their sport is, pay to get in and not only support the women playing but show our daughters that they are worthy of being paid by paying to see others play.


Not Her Hobby: As a mother a 20 and 3 year old what do you hope is different about the 3 year olds experience compared to your older daughter and yours in the world of sports? How do we get there?

Adrienne: I can only hope that by the time my three year old is ready to play she has more role models to look up to. We are lucky she has our older daughter and all her hockey and lacrosse playing friends to look up to but not every girl has that. I feel the work being done by the PWHPA and the women’s USA soccer team just to name a couple is so important. It is our time to rise up and be paid to play. 

It is time for equal air time, it is the time for equal opportunities for women to coach at a high level. It is no longer OK to sit back and watch male coaches control our daughters future in sport. It is not ok that in the GTHL a lot of the AAA coaches are paid coaches and experts, and girls who are just as good have some dad who is volunteering his time to coach our daughters which I respect but just because you played hockey as a kid doesn’t make you qualified to coach high level female hockey. 

It is not ok that it is so hard for female hockey leagues to get good refs or staff because girls hockey is still seen as less than. I want there to be a world where there is an opportunity for my daughter to play in JRs on Boxing Day. I want to see Lacrosse be made an official Olympic sport. I want to be able to turn the TV on any night of the week and see a women’s hockey game or a men’s hockey game. I really hope that that my 3 year old won’t really remember a time when women’s sport being viewed by the masses on a regular bases wasn’t the norm.

The last part of your question how do we get there is a great one and one I wish I knew the answer to. I think the best answer I can give right now is education, as a mother educate yourself on just how far your daughter can go. If she gets there and you both feel she has farther to go, then you need to put on the gloves and fight for your daughter.  Gather like minded moms and dads and fight for our daughters, sisters, cousins and aunts to be able to play the sport they love. #momsgotyourback


We are incredibly grateful for Adrienne's insight, advice and sharing her experiences with us. If you are looking to connect with Adrienne or want to discuss more from a mothers perspective how to support our daughters, and sisters message us!