Centretown resident Kirsten Bodashefsky is gearing up for battle on Thanksgiving weekend when the Australian Rules Football national championship is held in Ottawa, where she’ll also be vying for a trip next year with Team Canada to the sport’s birthplace Down Under.
A bit of Australian sporting-culture will hit the Rideau Carleton Raceway in south Ottawa when women’s teams from across Canada take part in the Australian Rules Football Canadian National Championship on Oct. 12-13.
The tournament, hosted by the Ottawa Swans, will see all nine women’s football clubs from leagues in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia competing for the national title. AFL–Canada president Bruce Parker hopes the event will help expose the foreign sport to Canadian audiences.
Bodashefsky, 27, says she’s excited to see fellow players from across Canada coming to town, adding that the event should build awareness for Australian Football and for women’s sport in general.
The tournament will be the last chance for players to prove that they belong on a 25-player Canadian team that will be travelling to Melbourne next August to compete at the AFL International Cup.
Bodashefsky, who represented Canada in an earlier match against the United States, says she has worked hard over the season to secure her spot on the national team.
“Just to be able to say ‘Team Canada’ on my back, that’s an honour. So just to make the team, I think that itself, it gives me shivers and excites me,” she said.
With a sports management degree from Durham College, Bodashefsky came to Ottawa for the 2013 season.
The Swans women’s team approached Bodashefsky when she was watching her boyfriend play on the mens team. She wasn't entirely familiar with Australian Football but the team convinced her to join.
Today, the upbeat Bodashefsky says the sport has become somewhat of an addiction with its speed and physicality.
Not quite soccer – nor rugby, but a combination of both, Australian Football is a unique sport that originated in early 20th-century Melbourne as an offseason activity to keep cricket players fit during the winter.
Players along the pitch advance a rugby-shaped ball towards four opposing goal posts, scoring by kicking the ball in-between either the centre posts worth six-points or two side-posts which are worth one. Except for a mouth guard, players wear no protective gear while opposing players try to knock them down.
AFL Canada has been working since 1989 to expand Australian Football in Canada. The organization is working towards having games broadcast on small television networks, says to Parker.
“Four years ago I would say I'm going to the Swans game to play Australian Rules Football and I would spend 25 minutes trying to explain the game,” says Swans’ women’s captain Lisa Dalla Rosa. She says Canadians are becoming familiar with the sport.
In 2012, the Ottawa Swans expanded to include a women’s team, the fifth in the province.