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I was a soccer player myself. I began in my 20s and wish I discovered the game a lot earlier. I really absolutely loved it I played in London and I played in Canberra and then I came to the Darebin Falcons when I was in my 30s. I'd had two kids and a few of the other players in the team and I had daughters ourselves and we looked around the local area and there really wasn't a lot of opportunity for young girls to join clubs. So we thought we might start something.
We began with 10 kids then by the end of the first year, it grew to 30. By the end of the second year we had 60 and it just absolutely exploded from there. Now we're well above 500 in our registered players. We have social teams, we have futsul teams we have senior women's teams and we play in a lot of tournaments and other kinds of activities. When we first began, was all about getting girls on the field and getting them to play but as we went on we started to realise that there were gaps in other areas. There were no female referees, there were very few female coaches, not many girls and women involved in administration.
We decided that these were areas that we also needed to contribute to. So we began our young referees program and we've got a coaching program where we've got 15 junior girls that run our mini Tilles program which is for the 4 to 9 year olds, and then we're constantly providing leadership opportunities. We also have a lot of additiona skills sessions that we run with A-league players and coaches, we have a goalkeeper training program because we know that it's not just about girls now wanting to have the opportunity to play, they want the opportunity to excel as well. So, yeah, it's just really shown what an opportunity there was there for women and girls to play sport if the right environment was created for them. This is really important to me because I want my daughters to grow up with the same opportunities that their male peers have, to be involved in sport. I really want to see gender equality in the sporting field.
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