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BETTINA CALLARY INTERVIEW

We’re thrilled to be collaborating on our latest projects with Dr. Bettina Callary, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Sport Coaching and Adult Learning at Cape Breton University. In this interview, she chats with our comms lead Denise Withers to take us behind the scenes in her coaching and inclusion work.


DENISE: What’s your connection to sport and coaching? How did you get into this work?

BETTINA: I’m an alpine ski coach, and I grew up alpine skiing and playing sports all through my life. So my academic interest really comes from my applied side. When I started university, I had no plans to pursue a PhD. At the time, I was coaching high-performance skiing and benefiting from excellent educational opportunities. However, I began to encounter the challenges often faced by women in coaching, including hitting a glass ceiling. Looking around, I often saw very few, if any, women in similar roles. I also lacked support from those making hiring decisions and found myself burning out—working excessively hard for little or no pay, without a clear pathway forward or adequate support.

Most importantly, the environment was not mentally healthy for me. These challenges motivated me to explore coaching, coach development, and the psychology of coaching through research. This drive eventually led me to pursue a PhD.

Throughout my academic journey, I’ve continued coaching. While my focus has shifted more toward community coaching, I still love it. There's a lot of really good that comes from sport and coaches can be involved in creating really great experiences. But there's probably just as much bad that can be done if it's not done well. So it really needs to be done well for everybody's benefit. And that's what drives me to do this research.

DENISE: Tell us about the connection between your work and what we’re doing at the FHL.

BETTINA: I’ve been working on a project connected to Cape Breton University and their development of a Home for Girls, Women’s, and Para Hockey. It’s incredibly exciting because, as far as we know, it’s the first dedicated arena of its kind in the world. This all began because the Cape Breton Blizzard Association—the Female Hockey Association—has struggled to secure ice time since it started in 2017. Similarly, the Sledgehammers, the para hockey program, have faced ongoing accessibility challenges at local arenas.

The partnership between CBU, the Blizzard, and the Sledgehammers really reimagines hockey culture, focusing on inclusivity and flourishing in ways you don’t often see in mainstream hockey. What’s so fascinating is that it all started with the simple issue of not having enough space. They needed a space, so CBU is creating one.

But that came from early work at the FHL to look at how to make ice use more transparent and equitable, which has evolved into the Open Ice project. And so the two really dovetail nicely together.

DENISE: You run the Community Active Sport Training and Learning (CoASTaL) Lab as part of your research. Why choose a lab approach?

BETTINA: Whether it’s small-scale testing or larger, more comprehensive projects—like the kind the FHL is involved in—labs excel at systematically addressing complex issues.

Research, at its core, is about curiosity—it’s about asking questions and systematically answering them in a way that’s rigorous, trustworthy, and credible. When research is valid and reliable, you know the solutions you’re coming up with are going to work. Labs are uniquely equipped to do this kind of work. They have the resources, the personnel, and the expertise to investigate issues thoroughly and effectively. That’s why they’re so important.

Lab researchers take the time to explore issues deeply, not just from what’s happening on the ground but also through insights from literature and historical perspectives. Many of the challenges we face aren’t entirely new, and when we look back at theories and best practices, we can creatively repurpose those ideas to fit our current situations.

DENISE: What kind of impact do you think our biggest lab project, Open Ice, can have on increasing inclusion and equity to grow hockey for good?

BETTINA: I think it’s a really interesting approach because it doesn’t just look at the effect of the issue but also digs into the cause. Then it goes even further—taking three steps back to figure out how to prevent that cause from happening in the first place.

For example, it’s often the new programs that struggle to find ice time. Arenas tend to rebook the same programs year after year into the same slots, which creates a problem with equity. The groups newer to hockey—like women, racialized and ethnic communities, and para teams—are the ones left scrambling to find space.

The Rally Report from Canadian Women in Sport, which came out in 2022, highlights this kind of issue. One stat showed that 50% of girls are no longer involved in sport by adolescence. It’s not because they’re not interested—90% of girls believe sport is beneficial for their health. The problem, according to half of the parents surveyed, is low-quality programming.

When girls can’t access good programs, or when programs can’t get off the ground or grow because they can’t secure resources like ice time, it directly impacts their participation. Changing the system so teams actually have enough time to practice and focus on development supports the kind of quality programming that keeps girls engaged in sport.

This is why it’s so important to examine who’s using the ice and whether access is equitable. From there, you can create policies that promote fairness. There’s so much potential in this approach. It’s about taking those three steps back so you can move ten steps forward.

DENISE: What’s the hidden challenge in coach training and education?

BETTINA: To put it really plainly, coaching can have very little impact—or it can have a huge impact. It really depends on the coach, but also on the system the coach is working within. When we talk about coaching, the range is massive. You’ve got your community coach, like a mom or dad coaching an hour a week, all the way to Olympic-level coaches. Everyone falls under the umbrella of "coach," but the context they’re working in is so important.

For example, what’s the goal of the program? Is it just about the X’s and O’s of the sport—skills, drills, and competition? Or is it about something more, like personal growth and development? That difference in purpose changes the expectations placed on the coach. Then there’s the question of education—what kind of training are coaches receiving, and how are they being supported to get that education? These factors are all critical when we consider the potential impact a coach can have.

There are definitely broader benefits of sport that coaches can help foster: personal growth, life skills, overall well-being, and encouraging healthy, active lifestyles. But that’s not necessarily a given and it's not necessarily something that they're even supported to do.

DENISE: How did you choose a focus area for your research?

BETTINA: I’m really interested in understanding and better serving underserved groups in sport. For example, take coaches working with Masters athletes. Now, adults as a group aren’t marginalized in society, but in the context of sport—and especially in coaching education—they often are. So much of the focus is on getting youth involved in sport that we tend to neglect adults. There’s this assumption that adults will just take care of themselves, but we know that adults face a range of physical and mental health challenges that sport can help address.

So, how do we cater to the motives of adults? How do we coach them effectively and ensure they’re having great experiences in sport so they stay engaged in physical activity? I think that’s a really worthwhile area to explore.

Beyond that, there are other groups that are more traditionally underserved. For example, understanding Indigenous populations and their participation in sport. What are the cultural, physical, spiritual, and mental aspects of their involvement that we need to be aware of and support? Or take women coaches—we’ve already touched on that—how do we help women stay in coaching and thrive in the profession?

Then there are athletes with disabilities, whether physical, developmental, or intellectual. Far too often, they’re treated as an afterthought. How do we ensure that all individuals, regardless of ability, can benefit from sport? And more specifically, how are coaches contributing to that? How are they being educated to understand and address the needs of these populations?

That’s really the heart of my research—figuring out how we can make sport more inclusive and helping coaches develop the knowledge, understanding, and skills to support that inclusivity.

DENISE: It’s easy for us to see the influence of coaches at the individual level. What impact can they have in creating system and societal change?

Sport is a microcosm of society. What happens in sport reflects what’s happening outside of it, and vice versa. When coaches focus on building more inclusive sport communities and challenging the stereotypes within sport, we start to see broader changes. Across different groups, we see greater empathy, more understanding, and stronger teamwork and cooperation.

These efforts can reduce isolation for individuals and, ultimately, have a significant impact on communities as a whole. The shifts that happen within sport can ripple out to influence societal perceptions and expectations, helping to build stronger, more connected communities.

On an individual level, coaches also make an impact by developing programs that promote healthy, active living. These programs can positively affect participants' physical and mental health. By focusing on underserved groups in sport, coaches can encourage healthy lifestyles, build resilience, and foster the positive outcomes of recreation—things like stress reduction, fun, and a better quality of life. These are critical not just for marginalized individuals in sport but for people outside of sport as well.


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