IOC Younger Chief makes ladies’ goals come true with new ice hockey league
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Sang Eun Lee participated in lots of sports activities as a toddler in South Korea, however when she joined a mixed-gender ice hockey group, she was handled in another way from her male team-mates. Now an IOC Younger Chief, she has used her experiences to discovered the Dream League, giving ladies the prospect to get pleasure from ice hockey in a secure, nurturing setting and probably compete on the Winter Youth Olympic Video games Gangwon 2024.
From the second Sang Eun Lee was in a position to run, she was inspired to participate in a big selection of sports activities by her mother and father, who believed sport shouldn’t be a privilege, however a core a part of life. After a yr of skating quick monitor at her native rink, she graduated to longer distances, setting her on the trail to changing into South Korea’s nationwide velocity skating champion in South Korea.
“That was the primary second I realised that I can actually do nice issues,” she stated. “That I’ve the potential to be glorious in my life.”
Sadly for Sang Eun, her sporting journey was not all the time so easy. Whereas she loved velocity skating, the solitary nature of the game and her introverted nature meant she was fairly reserved and didn’t work together with lots of her friends. She subsequently determined to affix the native ice hockey group in Gwacheon to attempt to construct confidence and be a part of a extra social setting. Nevertheless, the realities of a lady becoming a member of a predominantly male-dominated sport meant that she was typically an afterthought to her coaches.
“I noticed many women being mistreated by their coaches, myself included. I had no dressing room and coaching was typically on the late hours of the night and ending after midnight,” she revealed. “I used to be already a extremely introverted child and I wasn’t in a position to recognise once I was being mistreated. Ice hockey was the game that basically received me fascinated with inequality and the way necessary it’s for girls to have the ability to advocate for themselves.”
Sang Eun Lee
Stepping again into sport
Following this expertise, Sang Eun determined to take a step again from sport to deal with her research, incomes a bachelor’s diploma in Worldwide Research from Ewha Girls’s College. Then, in 2017, she took her first steps again into the sporting world – in a brand new capability.
With the Olympic Winter Video games PyeongChang 2018 approaching, Sang Eun was keen to participate within the take a look at occasions in her residence nation. After volunteering within the media centre on the 2017 FIS Ski World Cup in PyeongChang, she took a job as a group host {and professional} assistant for the Swiss ice hockey group on the Video games the next yr.
“It was the primary time I skilled not being on the sector of play,” she stated. “I used to be ready to consider who truly makes the Video games occur, how entourages help athletes, and I discovered far more about secure sport. Once I was an athlete, it was exhausting to grasp what overtraining and doping are, however as a group host, I discovered about these.”
Sang Eun Lee
Daring to dream
Impressed by her experiences in PyeongChang, Sang Eun was decided to proceed supporting athletes and use sport as a software for optimistic change. Her greatest good friend, Geewon Yoo, had established the Dream Cup soccer event for youngsters via the IOC Younger Leaders programme, and he or she inspired Sang Eun to use for herself. And so, in 2021, Sang Eun was chosen as an IOC Younger Chief and, the next yr, because of the sources and help offered by the programme, she based The Dream League.
“The most important drawback with girls’s ice hockey is that there aren’t any video games in any respect for gamers on the nationwide degree, to allow them to’t enhance,” Sang Eun stated. “That is why I created the first-ever girls’s league in Korea, with six groups and round 150 gamers.”
Guided by the slogan “Let the puck drop for the ladies”, The Dream League provides ladies the prospect to coach and compete in ice hockey matches. Working with the Korea Ice Hockey Affiliation, The Dream League goals to scale back the hole between males’s and ladies’s ice hockey and be certain that kids from each province of Korea can take part. The mission is additional supported by the PyeongChang 2018 Legacy Basis, which permits The Dream League to make use of venues from the Olympic Winter Video games for coaching and matches freed from cost. As these similar venues will even be used throughout Gangwon 2024, The Dream League’s actions are an excellent alternative for the Gangwon 2024 Organising Committee to check the ice, together with some facets of operational readiness.
Fuelled by her personal experiences of ice hockey as a toddler, and the challenges that she confronted, the mission could be very private to Sang Eun. Certainly, not solely has she created The Dream League, however she has additionally based her personal group, the Dreamlinkers, made up solely of ladies, from the gamers to the coaches to the referees.
“Truthfully, I did not realise how a lot this programme would imply to the ladies,” she stated. “The interplay between the gamers and the coaches, with the ability to speak about what they expertise as girls in sport – it actually helped everybody to really feel snug for thefirst time in ice hockey.”
On the again of this mission and her work serving to athletes in PyeongChang, in 2022 Sang Eun was appointed to the IOC Athletes’ Entourage Fee, which advises the IOC on issues regarding supporting and defending clear athletes.
The Dream League, in the meantime, is ready to go from energy to energy in 2023, increasing to a two-division system and doubling the variety of groups to 12 and taking part gamers to round 300. Earlier this month, a Street to The Dream League camp was held for 3 days in Gangwon, the Gangneung Hockey Centre, for 50 ladies and younger girls aged from 11 to 24. The camp was one of many pre-YOG occasions for Gangwon 2024.
With one yr to go till the Winter YOG, and plenty of of The Dream League’s gamers already representing their age group nationwide groups, there’s each likelihood that we’ll see a few of these athletes representing South Korea on the Youth Olympic stage in 2024.
Sang Eun Lee
Worldwide Olympic Companion Panasonic’s continued help
The IOC Younger Leaders Programme has been supported by Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Companion Panasonic since 2017, and it will proceed via to 2024. Panasonic, because the programme’s founding companion, is dedicated to supporting the IOC Younger Leaders via completely different initiatives, for instance offering its artistic and technological experience, together with its community of influencers and ambassadors, to encourage the Younger Leaders and equip them with the talents and instruments they should improve their initiatives.
Discover out extra about Panasonic’s help for the programme.
