To view the progress made against the 2024 Women & Girls Plan please see the 2024 Women & Girls Plan Progress sheet.
As part of the Club’s desire to continually improve the women & girls game, and to support Spring’s commitment to the NRF Equity Charter, several forums and interviews were run in October 2023 to identify what the Club was doing well in the Women & Girls space, what the Club could do better / start doing and to generate ideas for activities to undertake to fill any gaps or resolve any pain points identified.
These forums resulted in the first ever Western Springs Women and Girls Action Plan being developed for 2024.
Since development of the plan, over 50 initiatives have been delivered in the Women & Girls space during 2024. Progress against this plan, as well as a list of completed initiatives, can be viewed from our 2024 Women & Girls Plan Progress sheet.
A graphical representation of key 2024 achievements can be found in the 2024 NRF Equity Charter Report for WSAFC and some notable successes for 2024 are also listed below:
- A vending machine has been installed to provide healthy / sports related snacks available 24x7
- A table tennis and bean bag space has been introduced in the clubrooms for our younger members to use
- Black shorts (replacing the white shorts) for female players have been introduced removing one of the barriers to playing
- Some successful events have been run throughout the year:
- In June & August, Issy Coombes, Sport Scientist for the NZ U20 Women's Team and Wellington Phoenix Academy, ran two very informative and well attended webinars discussing Female Athlete Health and Female Athlete Nutrition
- In mid-March, Bex Sowden, ex Football Fern, founder of Team Heroine and Correct the Internet ran a very informative evening providing advice around ‘Keeping Girls in Sport’ .. approximately 50 people attended!
- The annual Women & Girls Open Day was run in mid-March
- For the 2024 season all Academy & Development teams have had a female Head Coach
- A second Development team was introduced to provide a pathway for U16 players transitioning to Senior football who may not be quite ready for our Premier environment yet
- Girls only days are now offered in our holiday programme and have been very well attended
- We launched an U8/U9 Friday night 'Girls Hub' to provide these age groups with a girls only in-house playing option
- Free sanitary products have been available in the upstairs club room toilets for all of 2024
- A baby changing table has been installed in the Accessible Toilet in the clubrooms
- Bios and photos of most committee members are now available on the WSAFC website improving visibility of who our club leaders are