Top Ten Most Influential Women in Sport

What qualifies a woman as influential in the sports world? Is it her athletic ability, verbal skills, looks or her ability to lead into new frontiers? Does influence require years of training, bold new ideas or both? Below you will find our opinion of the top ten most influential women in sports.

Women in Sports Media

Christine Brennan

Brennan is a best-selling author, renowned columnist and commentator. She was the first female sports reporter for the Miami Herald before another first as the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins. Her figure skating book, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated. Brennan also broke the story of the pairs figure skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Linda Cohn

Almost 20 years into a TV sports reporting career, Cohn excels at versatility. Whether it’s baseball, basketball, hockey, racing or golf, Cohn covers the sport with ease. In 1987, Cohn became the first full-time female sports anchor on a national radio network (ABC.) She is the author of Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boys’ Club. Cohn’s Twitter profile exhorts her followers to “Go after dreams.” It’s not uncommon for Cohn to make a fan’s dream with a retweet or mention.

Laura Gentile

Gentile is vice president of espnW. As a collegian, Gentile led Duke to their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament and was named to the ACC’s 50th Anniversary field hockey team.

Jemele Hill

Hill is an ESPN columnist and TV analyst with previous stints at the Detroit Free Press and the Orlando Sentinel. Her Twitter profile reads: “I average 36 tweets a day. This makes me awesome.” Well, then.

Georgie Thompson

Thompson is Sky Sports presenter and A League of Their Own panelist. She has better than 378K Twitter followers and is on the first page of leading Twitter directory, Twellow.

Influential Sports Executives

Jeanie Buss

Buss is the Executive Vice President of one of the world’s most popular franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2010, she authored “Laker Girl.”

Wendy Lewis

Women in Sports & Events awarded Lewis with one of its three Woman of the Year Awards in 2011. Lewis is Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of diversity and strategic alliances. She explained some of her job responsibilities to espnW: “It’s more than just having more representation of a particular race or women, but making sure that we are working more toward achieving sort of the ultimate balance. We are doing that by taking a real, very strategic and very micro look at each one of those establishments and the pipeline of folks that they actually have coming in…”

Circe Wallace

Wallace followed a pro snowboarding career by representing similar stars at the Wasserman athletic management group, where she is a senior vice president. Wallace was also the force behind action sports shows on MTV and BET.

Pioneers for Women in Sports

Billie Jean King

King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. She captured a record 20 titles at Wimbledon. Her Battle of the Sexes in 1973 against Bobby Riggs was a catalyst for the women’s movement. King is the Founder and Honorary Chair of the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Pat Summitt

Summitt’s career has spanned almost four decades. Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols have made 30 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. She was named Naismith Coach of the Century. Her teams have a 100 percent graduation rate for all Lady Vols who have completed their eligibility at Tennessee. She earned a spot among “America’s Best Leaders for 2007″ published by U.S. News & World Report.
Don’t miss following women these, either! Lisa Andersen, Aimee Mullins, Amanda Rykoff, Annika Sorenstam, Sarah Spain, Dara Torres, Venus Williams
Whether the ladies are seasoned professionals or relative newcomers in the sports business, the industry’s future looks bright, thanks to them and other leading ladies.

Sam Miller

Becoming a Kinesiologist (Part 11)

In this weeks interview with our featured member Colli Christante, we are “reflecting on the past”. I asked Colli about why she became a kinesiologist…

Becoming a kinesiologist was a natural part of my journey.  In 1979 I moved from Vancouver to Toronto to work in the TV industry, study communications & journalism at Ryerson University.

In 1990 I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and was extremely unwell. An oxygen tank ruled my life and my attending doctors told me to “move & live by the ocean breeze” (at that time there was very little pollution there:)

Before moving to live by the “ocean breeze” I had tried every therapy known to heal the illness but nothing worked. That was until one day my beautiful daughter ( who was 9 at the time ) came home from school with a book that changed my life. The little book was “How to Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay. This book made me realize I had to take responsibility for my own health, my life.

Upon returning to Toronto from Manasota Key, Florida in 1992 ( where I went to live in order to recover ), NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming ) came in to my life. I was blessed to have studied with some of the finest trainers of NLP. Dr. Chris Hall (President of the NLP Society), Robert Klauss and Eric Robbie.

When I returned to Toronto, my doctors were not only amazed… but mystified by my recovery because they did not think I would live.

In 1993, I moved to Vancouver and continued researching into “mind body communication”. I continued furthering my studies with Dr. Chris Hall, Todd Epstein and Robert Dilts (NLP University in Santa Cruz California). It was then I also discovered the New Method Kinesiology Clinic that was owned by Steve Ariss. Steve is master kinesiologist and teacher (unfortunately the clinic no longer exists and Steve no longer teaches) but through his teachings, I feel in love with Kinesiology. It was amazing to learn from such an incredible man, healer and true master. It was wonderful to have those teachings passed on to me. I still am in love with Kinesiology Now I aspire to pass them on to others.

In 15 years of having kinesiology as one of my main tools, I  have never done a session with a client that does not make me feel that “WOW”! I am so grateful for these amazing healing tools. My clients all say the same “WOW” and are extremely grateful for the transformation in their lives. Kinesiology was a very important tool -allowing me to take even greater responsibilty for my health and life. Through Kinesiology I now assist, encourage and inspire others to take responsibilty for their health and life.

In reflecting on your past Colli, what have you learned from it… and how have you brought that understanding into your kinesiology work?

The most powerful learning from my past is that one cannot go back, one has to go forward; there is nothing to go back to. This is the formula for accepting one’s good and releasing the past. This is why kinesiology is so powerful because it assists you in releasing the past.

Through out the years I have studied many different, wonderful, powerful and amazing modalities of healing. Being a kinesiologist is an art and science. Kinesiology is investigation of the mind and body. It is working with energy – the client’s and the kinesiologists.

One of the most important lessons I have experienced as a practitioner of kinesiology is that if I do not get out of my own way (meaning I allow my ego to take over) this will get in the way and I cannot harness the power of this amazing gift.

With each individual client the healing and transformation comes from within. It is an inside job that reflects outward.  Look around. Do you like how you are feeling what you are hearing and seeing? If not, then you logical levels are not aligned.

For me … this is about aligning the logical levels so that we are congruent with our authentic source. My core purpose is to bring balance between the ego (ambition) and soul (mission).This is the only way one can become a champion in their sport, performance and life.

Live Your Way - Do You?

Live Your Way

On June 23 rd I had the honor of doing two radio interviews about Creating Champions. Dr. Dave and I had an interesting conversation. If you want to know how to live your your way and be a Champion in Sport, Performance and Your LIFE please take the time to listen to this.

Happy Canada Day Canada.

The Future of Sport

The Future of Sport

         I begin by taking my audience on a journey to the ancient world where athletic contests were offerings to the gods – and in some cases, notably the Mayas, it was the athletes themselves who were the offerings!  Sport was more than entertainment, an afternoon at the ball game, it was an individual and group religious experience.  Sport had divine purpose whether as a rite to win celestial favor, to placate an angry deity, or to honor departed heroes.

          Michael Novak, author of The Joy of Sports, insists this purpose still exists today:  “...sports flow outward from a deep natural impulse that is radically religious:  an impulse of freedom, respect for ritual limits, a zest for symbolic meaning, and a longing for perfection.”

          Furthermore, Novak and others argue this function of sport is eternal whether we acknowledge this or not.  Writes Andrew Cooper, “Sports satisfy our deep hunger to connect with a realm of mythic meaning...to see the transpersonal forces that work within and upon human nature enacted in dramatic form, and to experience the social cohesion that these forms make possible.  Whether or not we so name them, these are religious functions.”

          Sport’s spiritual function works on both the level of the athlete and the audience; in fact, each is often dependent on the other.  A winning performance by an athlete can stir a crowd into exhilaration, and they, in turn, can compel an athlete to new heights.  A few years ago B.C. Lions ad campaign “Cheering works” alludes to the popular notion of “home team advantage” whereby athletes are inspired by positive audience reaction and collective enthusiasm.  Perhaps it’s not an accident, then, that the word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek, meaning “to be inspired or possessed by a god.”

          This religious aspect of sport, however, has once again been sublimated by a secular culture:  “Our society so thoroughly secularizes sport that we can barely recognize, let alone express, what it makes us feel,” laments Cooper.  Recognition of the sacred has been reduced to popular idioms such as “team worship,” “sports icon” and, yes, “The Zone.” Welcome 2010 OLYMPIC ATHLETES ...let the GAMES begin