Regional Sport Victoria (RSV) together with Football Victoria (FV) and Victoria University (VU), has been supporting 60 football clubs statewide to deliver initiatives to prevent violence through sport.

The ‘Preventing Violence through Sport (PVTS) project – Change Makers’ program is supported by the Victorian Government, with innovative collaboration helping sporting clubs create safe environments that boost gender equity.

Kyneton District Soccer Club is one club benefitting from Change Makers. Founded in 1989 as a merger of two existing clubs, KDSC has a strong history at all levels, winning championships from U11’s through to senior men’s. The club prides itself on having an inclusive family nature, welcoming all those wanting to join, particularly with the recent growth in participation on all-girls teams from U9’s through to senior women.

The Rangers are eager to expand their women’s football offerings and ensure the club is a safe and enjoyable space for everyone.

President/Coach Ron Cole has been with the club for over 45 years, first hitting the field as a 16-year-old player before going onto numerous committee and coaching roles. Having coached every age group along the way, both boys and girls, Cole was eager to step into the senior women’s coaching space.

“The female participation side of it is ever-growing. Back around 2013, we had a heap of girls come to us wanting to play football,” Cole said. “We had a whole lot of new girls about 14 years old who had never played before.”

At that stage, the only place they could put them was in the NFV open women’s competition in Metro Melbourne, while other junior sides played regional and Bendigo League.

Although Kyneton always had a few girls playing in mixed teams, there was never enough to warrant a full female team. With renewed interest, the club embraced the opportunity to create a new women’s program, and the Rangers have been working to build on their initial success and further enhance this space through Change Makers.

“We need to do this so we can keep the momentum going in our club, and hopefully make it a better place and more attractive for girls and women to come,” Cole said.

With a growing demand for female participation opportunities, the club has been working off the field to facilitate positive changes, starting with committee representation. Over half of the committee is now female, which the club made a priority to ensure they can keep growing female competitions.

“We’re currently at about 45% female participation within the club and that’s something we want to keep going.”

Improvements to lights and grounds have helped make the club a more welcoming and safe space for girls to come in and train. Although the club has identified key improvements over the years, the Change Makers program helped them dig deeper and reinforce their commitment to positive change moving forward.

Female coaching is one such challenge shared amongst football clubs, which they could discuss in detail at Change Makers sessions.

“At this stage, we’ve got U14 and U16 girls both being coached by females. But that’s a little bit different once you get up into the senior women’s, who tend to be more accepting of a male coach, where the young girls are probably better suited with a female coach and feel less intimidated,” Cole explained.

“That was one of the areas that we’ve looked at trying to improve as is getting more female coaches. Our U12 girls were coached by a female and we had two U10 girls sides coached together with one female and one male.”

For Kyneton, it’s about making sure young girls have a male and female presence to look up to and learn from during training and game days. As they work to increase female coaches, they also acknowledge that finding and retaining volunteers can be tough.

“I think everybody struggles, whether it’s metro or regional, with getting volunteers, especially coaches because there’s a lot of time taken up coaching sides,” Cole added.

“Trying to get coaches for any team is always difficult, but getting female coaches is probably a little bit harder than men or boys. Dads will always put their hand up regardless, but a lot of the mums are a little bit hesitant to try and encourage the side playing soccer because once again, historically, it’s been a male-dominated sport.”

Although coaching soccer may be a new experience for some mothers, the club is trying to put measures in place to help out so they can get more involved and feel supported. In the last year, they introduced a technical director to help support and improve all coaches.

“One of the areas where we’ve fallen down in the past is we haven’t given our coaches enough support,” Cole admitted. “So we now have a technical director in place and he’s actually getting a few of the coaches on board to set up a coaching group, with a couple of coaches to lead the male and female sides to try and make improvements to our coaches, but also to our players.”

With coaching improvements in progress, Kyneton District Soccer Club is proud to be one of the clubs pushing for more female competitions at both the junior and senior levels. The Bendigo League has grown to eight sides in U10, U12, U14, and U16 with girls-only competitions in every age group.

“It’s taken a few years to get it to that stage, but I think that’s because the push was there,” Cole added. “We’ve been one of the drivers behind it to try and get more girls competitions going so that these younger girls coming through have somewhere to go. That pathway is one of the main things that end up helping the senior women’s competition in the end because they can progress through and continue on.”

The Kyneton sporting community is benefitting from the Matildas effect and fresh interest in female participation. They went from 70 MiniRoos last year to 164 sign-ups this year, and also ran a GO Soccer Mums program with 30 mothers and 15 girls.

Despite exciting growth on the field, the club has been juggling administrative and facility challenges. They didn’t have a home ground in 2023, with works being completed at the start of the year.

Instead, the Rangers trained and played at three different facilities, creating a logistical nightmare but also proving that when the club community comes together, they can overcome challenges, an important lesson as they continue making improvements in the women and girls space.

The support of Football Victoria also makes a big difference.

“Their resources are limited because there are so many clubs and so many people asking, but we’ve got a good working relationship and if we need anything, they get somebody to help us out,” Cole explained.

The ongoing support and guidance offered through the Change Makers program have helped the club navigate time constraints, limited volunteer resources, and more.

“Change Makers has been very, very well worth it. We’ve listened to other clubs and their struggles with volunteers,” Cole said.

“One of the things that some of the clubs don’t realize is that if you work together with your men and women and girls and boys, it’s amazing what you can achieve. We make sure everybody’s happy with their training and kickoff times and their whole experience, as it’s an all-club approach to make sure we are on the right track with female participation. “

More information on Change Makers can be found HERE.

Click HERE to learn more about Kyneton District Soccer Club.