Aboriginal sports scholarship winner turns to coaching to make bigger impact in her community

A woman from Aklavik, N.W.T., is the recipient of the Aboriginal Sports Circle NWT scholarship, announced on Monday.

Davina McLeod is in her fourth year of studies at Calgary's Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), but began to take classes online when COVID-19 hit.

And, being home meant she was able to take on another role — being a hockey coach for children in her community.

"The hamlet of Aklavik reached out to me and asked if I'd like to coach [hockey to] the kids," she said.

"It was really nice to just provide a stable environment for them to know that they're going to have a coach each time they come to practice."

According to the Aboriginal Sports Circle website, the $2,000 scholarship aims to help Indigenous students financially who are "pursuing a post-secondary education related to sport, recreation, culture or specifically surrounding Indigenous people."

Bigger impact

McLeod, who is 23 years old and both Gwich'in and Inuvialuit, said she's always been very community-driven but the last year has allowed her to make more of an impact.

"I see these kids and I imagine what I wished and hoped for when I was seven years old … to 12 years old. And I remember getting excited when we got a coach for like one practice that month," said McLeod.

McLeod didn't stop with hockey. She applied and received a grant that allowed her to get baseball gloves for the kids. She then put on two softball sessions for them.

The goal for the college athlete is for the youth in her home community to know that sports can start off as a hobby but "it can really be a catalyst for future things if they want."

Calling out racism

Recently, McLeod has been using her voice to amplify the need for change in hockey when it comes to the racism she and other athletes have faced.

"I was called a racial slur after the whistle in the AKC league in January 2020, and when the league didn't take action or suspend the girl who said that to me, I went to the media and I stated that this isn't OK," she said.

"It really got a lot of traction."

She said she feels that Indigenous people are finally "feeling safe enough to share their story," and that it's important.

"I really want to shed light on the amount of people who didn't make it to elite hockey because of these things. It's great to see Ethan Bear and it's great to see Brigette Lacquette succeed," said McLeod.

"There's a lot of people who decided to pack their bags and go home because of this environment that hockey has created for them."

McLeod continues her activism by speaking out and has been featured on TSN a few times, most recently on a feature that aired on the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

After her first TSN interview, the Indigenous Research Hockey Network, a organization that aims to make hockey a more inclusive sport across Canada by accumulating stories from Indigenous hockey players, reached out to McLeod to share her story.

McLeod said she hopes the scholarship money she has just received from Aboriginal Sports Circle will help her focus being a leader in her community, and hopefully be a role model like the ones she had before her.

"I'm not so much a player as I am a coach now, and I think it's definitely something that I'm very passionate about and very interested in — to keep opportunities coming to these kids."