Park female athletes welcomed Dr. Courtney Boucher from the Tucker Center to give a special Jan. 11. This event proved to be an informational and inspiring presentation about women in sports. According to Boucher she wanted to emphasize the understanding and history of female athletes. 

“Understanding the history of where girls and female athletes have come from is really helpful to have an appreciation for,” Boucher said. ”This is a really cool opportunity for girls of other sports to get to talk and chat with one another and see how their seasons are going and maybe what their teams are doing differently than others.”

Girls head soccer coach Anne Beaton, who was in attendance at the meeting, said it was powerful to see how various female athletes showed up to listen.

“The first thing is to recognize how many people are in the room and that they’re not alone and that there’s more to come and more we can do,” Beaton said.

When Boucher got the call from girls head lacrosse coach Kate Pearson, she said she immediately jumped in to the idea because she wanted to help the community.

“This opportunity happened because (Pearson) reached out and said she wanted to bring a bunch of the girls’ teams together and have someone talk and she was really the one who spearheaded the entire thing,” Boucher said.

Pearson said she took away a lot from this discussion due to the importance of acknowledging the reason why having women in sports is possible. 

“For the future, I’ll definitely be understanding what (the girls’) motivations are so that we can keep players coming back and having them enjoy what they’re doing. So doing activities like understanding what their ‘Why’ is and how we can implement that into our season and offseason will be really helpful for our team,” Pearson said.