Vote for us at Women’s Sports Alliance awards!

The Women’s Sports Alliance has published its 2022 Awards shortlists, and jogscotland and scottishathletics are the running for Brand of the Year – we need your votes!

To be on the shortlist of six up against some huge brands is tremendous, and we’d love to receive your support:

Click through to vote for us as Brand of the Year

The nomination recognises, among other things, the jogscotland #MenopauseFriendly campaign, and the move at scottishathletics to equalise cross country competition for men and women, with the National XC seeing both categories now running equal distance, and six runners counting for team results in both senior races.

It comes after jogscotland’s win at the Scottish Women in Sport Awards, where the #MenopauseFriendly campaign picked up the Inspiration in Sport Award.

Below: At the Scottish Women in Sport Awards – pic by Jeff Holmes

Also in the running for WSA awards are athletes Eilish McColgan for Athlete of the Year and Samantha Kinghorn for Para Athlete of the Year.

Vote for Eilish as Athlete of the Year

Vote for Samantha as Para Athlete of the Year

The Women’s Sports Alliance is a story-telling platform which aims to champion women’s sport, inspire the next generation of talent and initiate positive change.

Jordan Guard, founder of the WSA, told us: “The short-lists were compiled after attendees at our Athlete Advancement Series assessed all the nominations. Now we are asking people to vote in each category before we confirm the finalists. The winner will be announced on December 20.”

Here are a few bullet points from the submission . . .

• In 2022, the scottishathletics Board had a gender split of six women and five men. In 2010, the split was eight men and one woman. Commission Convenor roles, the highest positions effectively for volunteers, are two women and two men.
• For the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, the athletics team (within the overall Team Scotland for all sports) featured 33 athletes for track, field and Para marathon. Of these, 19 were women and 14 were men.
• It proved a superb Games for Scotland with eight medals claimed for the first time for 40 years – and Laura Muir (gold and bronze) and Eilish McColgan (gold and silver) memorably led the way. The Women’s 4x400m team also won Scotland’s first medal in the Commonwealth track relays since 1990.
• jogscotland, the recreational running arm of scottishathletics, launched at the end of November our ‘Menopause Friendly’ campaign with key guidance and sign-positing for groups, with support and inclusion in the project growing throughout 2022.
• After equalising the distance for all male/female races at cross country some time ago, 2022 saw equal counter numbers in the Senior Men’s and Senior Women’s race – six athletes in each – at our National XC for the second time (after an initial pilot).
• Young People’s Forum set up by scottishathletics at start of 2022 with 15 new members appointed – with a split of nine female members and six male. The three-strong leadership group are all women.
• Across our Annual Awards nominees in categories for Athlete, Coach, Volunteer and Official there are a total of 36 individuals nominated. Of these, 19 are women and 17 are men.
• Women in Leadership: Staff and Board members regularly taking part in Women in Leadership courses. Two female staff currently on the European Athletics Gender Leadership Seminars.

Below: jogscotland Penicuik take part in a special activity for International Menopause Day 2022