If you follow Women’s Rugby League on social media, you may or may not have seen the NRL’s #HerStory competition.
The competition, run through NSW Rugby League, encourages girls and women to make a video explaining their story of playing rugby league and to upload it to social media with the hashtag #HerStory. The best submission wins a Fitbit and an opportunity to be a ball girl at this year’s inaugural Women’s State of Origin.
The opportunity of being a ball girl in Women’s State of Origin is a great way to involve local girls and the community with the growing women’s league, but the positive’s of this campaign are much deeper than that.
While there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of videos entering the competition, the stories of stars such as Kezie Apps, Maddie Studdon and Tarsha Gale can help to encourage women in league. Kezie travelled hours to play, Maddie was a ball girl, and Tarsha captained the Jillaroos in a time that was very different to now. These stories prove that all girls can get involved in rugby league.
With the current Women’s competition and coverage, young girls can now know about female rugby league and players and look up to them. This wasn’t possible only a few years ago, and our current players all have different stories on how they came to be the players that they are.
It’s important we appreciate these stories so we can see how far we’ve come.
https://nothingbutleague.com/2018/04/28/the-league-lady-national-championship-set-to-showcase-womens-rugby-legue/