Engaging Girls and Women in Sport Mini Series
Brought to you by SIRC and Canadian Women & Sport
Part 4: Connecting mind and movement: How to create sport environments that support mental health
In any given year, 1 in 5 people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness. Through research and lived experience, the webinar will explore the challenges contributing to women and girls’ mental health in a sport context. Our panel will bring athlete, coach and clinician perspectives to share best practices for creating sport environments that support mental health and foster holistic wellness.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
1:00-2:00pm EST
Speaker Biographies
Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in School-Based Mental Health and Violence Prevention at the University of Ottawa where she is cross-appointed as a full professor in Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education and the School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences. Dr. Vaillancourt is also a core member of the Brain and Mind Institute, Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics, Faculty of Law, uOttawa. She is the president-elect of the International Society for Research on Aggression and a fellow and Chair of the COVID-19 Task Force for the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Vaillancourt is the recipient of the uOttawa Award for Excellence in Research, the uOttawa Award for Excellence in Media Relations, the YMCA Peace Medal, the McMaster Student Union Teaching Award for Science, and the McMaster University Student Union Teaching Merit Award for Science. She has published over 200 peer reviewed studies primarily on the links between bullying and mental health, with a particular focus on social neuroscience.
Dr. Vaillancourt holds a Canada Soccer National B Licence and is a Coach Developer with Canada Soccer. She is also a provincial coach and scout with Ontario Soccer and a member of their Technical Advisory Committee.
Dr. Shaunna Taylor, PhD, CCC, MPC
Dr. Shaunna Taylor is the Past Chair of the Canadian Sport Psychology Association and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia in the High Performance Coaching and Technical Leadership program. She is dedicated to holistic athlete and coach development through her work as the Executive Director of PacificSport Okanagan in British Columbia, and she sits on the viaSport BC’s Girls and Women Advisory Group and the Safe Sport Advisory Group. Dr. Taylor also sat as a member of the International Paralympic Committee’s (IPC) Women in Sport Committee and worked as a coaching consultant at the Coaching Association of Canada for five years. She has been consulting with coaches and athletes from grassroots to the Olympic/Paralympic level for 20 years, involved in athlete and integrated team support for over 8 Major Games cycles.
Dr. Taylor has a special interest in creating a sport system that promotes holistic athlete development, honours duty of care, and enables athletes to reach their full potential in and beyond sport: she believes a “person first – athlete second” approach is the shift the sport sector needs to embrace. She works as a practitioner with the Canadian Centre for Mental Health in Sport, and maintains a part-time private practice as a service provider to nationally-carded athletes through the Canadian Sport Institutes across Canada. She earned her doctoral degree in Health Sciences (Sport Psychology) from the University of Ottawa, and is a certified clinical counsellor (CCC) registered with the National Eating Disorders Information Centre’s practitioner network (NEDIC).
Julie-Anne Staehli is Canadian track and field athletes who competed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics representing Team Canada in the 5000m discipline. She is a member of the Team New Balance Boston as a professional runner. Beyond the track, Julie-Anne has completed a BAH and MSc in Health Studies and Kinesiology at Queen’s University, as well as a BEd in Intermediate-Senior Health & Physical Education at Western University. She is currently pursuing a career in Safe Sport Education and Student-Athlete Wellness.
Professional cyclist Haley Smith has been competing on the World Stage for Team Canada since 2011. A Tokyo 2020 Olympian, Commonwealth Games and World Cup Bronze Medallist, and former National Champion, Haley also holds a degree in Kinesiology from Queen’s University. Haley’s performance goals, which include returning to the Olympics in Paris 2024, are fuelled by a desire to improve both her own and her sport’s capacity to care for athlete mental health. A pre-sport history with mental illness underlies these desires, and has sparked Haley to return to Queen’s to pursue a Master’s in Sport Psychology.