The GIST: COVID-19 continues to have an impact on the sports world, and this weekend, it took out one of its first major international events: the IIHF Women’s World Championship.

No way! Why?: The tournament, which features the top national women’s hockey teams from around the world, was set to take place from March 31st to April 10th in Halifax and Truro, Nova Scotia. Though Canada hasn’t seen a huge spread of the virus like in other countries, the event organizers decided not to risk it and cancelled the tournament with less than a month to go before puck drop.

• This isn’t the first time this tournament has been cancelled: the Beijing-hosted 2003 event was cancelled due to the SARS outbreak. The IIHF has said that, pending IIHF Congress approval, the 2021 tournament will be held in Halifax and Truro.

Brutal! How are the North American professional leagues dealing?: The NHL will continue to play games with fans in attendance for the foreseeable future and have a contingency plan (which could affect playoffs) to roll out if needed. They’ve asked players to limit contact with fans and are considering closing locker rooms to the media, which, TBH, players are probably happy about anyway.

• Meanwhile, the NBA will decide by end of day tomorrow what their plan will be in the event of a pandemic (though we already know LeBron’s plans). And while the NFL is currently in the off-season, the NFL Draft, set for April 23rd to 25th in Las Vegas, will go on, in spite of predicting a significant decrease in the expected 750,000-person crowd.

Yikes. Anything else?: A few more cancellations (you can find a running list here), including the alpine skiing World Cup finals in Northern Italy, where American skiing queen Mikaela Shiffrin was supposed to make a return after missing a month, and the Arctic Winter Games, which were scheduled to start on March 15th and feature over 2,000 international athletes.

• The Summer Olympics are still a go (for now, anyway) but the torch lighting ceremony, which will bring the Olympic flame from Athens, Greece, to Tokyo, Japan, has been downsized. We’re really hoping, for so many reasons, that the Games remain unaffected. There are still four months to go, so wash your hands and cross your fingers!

Most importantly, 2019 and 2020 have provided us with MAJOR moments when it comes to fighting for gender equity in sports.

• Something special is happening today. NBCSN in the US and Sportsnet in Canada are each airing an NHL game with an all-female broadcast team. This is a huge step in the right direction, especially if it isn’t just an IWD thing. We hope it leads to more women producing and broadcasting hockey (and all sports) always.
• This email would be incomplete without giving a standing ovation to the US women’s national soccer team (USWNT). For years, they’ve been on the forefront of pushing gender equity in soccer. And most recently, they’ve been making incredible strides in a highly-publicized legal battle against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) for fair pay.
  • On top of that, players like Megan Rapinoe have not only inspired some pretty awesome Halloween costumes, but have also inspired women around the world to take a stand for equality.
• In January, the WNBA and its players’ union made history herstory, when they set the terms of a groundbreaking new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that significantly benefited the players.
  • Among other things, the CBA included an increase in salary, added bonuses for top players, guaranteed fully paid maternity leave, better travel conditions and mental health resources. It was so refreshing to see a league partner with its players and bet on its women, setting a new standard for other leagues to follow.
• In November 2019, Australia’s Ashleigh Barty took home a cool $4.42M USD winner’s cheque — the largest winner’s cheque in tennis history — after winning the WTA Finals. Huge kudos to tennis for being on the forefront of gender-pay equity. Incredible.
• Getting back to soccer, the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup saw a record viewership of 1.12 billion (!!!) viewers. Who said people don’t watch women’s sports?

That’s #thegist of the incredible 14 months women in sports have had. We keep on breaking barriers, smashing ceilings, and doing our absolute best to level the playing field. And if the beginning of 2020 is any indication of the progress that will be made for the remainder of the year, we are in for an absolute treat.

From agents to coaches, 2019 and 2020 proved that women indisputably have a place on the bench and behind the scenes in sports.

• Let’s start with Baylor Lady Bears college head coach (and fashionista) Kim Mulkey. In February 2020, she became the fastest D1 basketball coach — as you know by now, male or female — to reach 600 wins. And get this, she did it in just 700 games.
• Now let’s switch gears and talk football. At the beginning of February 2020, the Washington who must not be named’s hired Jennifer King as an assistant coach, which made her the first full-time Black female coach in the NFL. ’Bout time, no?
• Sticking with the NFL, despite her San Francisco 49ers squad losing the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs, offensive assistant coach Katie Sowers became the first woman and openly gay coach in Super Bowl history.
• Baseball also got in on the fun. In January 2020, Alyssa Nakken was hired by the San Francisco Giants as the first female full-time coach in MLB history. Hey batter, batter, batter.
• ICYMI the NHL is expanding to Seattle in October and we’re already big fans of the franchise. In September 2019, they hired former Team USA captain, gold medalist and Hockey Hall of Famer Cami Granato as one of the team’s full-time scouts, making her the first female pro-scout in NHL history.

t’s been a stellar 14 months for women on the field and the fans supporting them. Our favorite moments?

• We can’t have an IWD email and not talk about college basketball player Sabrina Ionescu (pronounced YOH-NESS-COO). Just last month, this Oregon Duck senior solidified herself as the best collegiate basketball athlete of all time when she became the first NCAA player — yes male or female — to reach 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds. What, like it’s hard?
• And then there’s Christine Sinclair. At the end of January 2020, this humble and tenacious leader of the Canadian women’s national soccer team (CANWNT) became the all-time leading goal scorer — again, male or female — in international soccer history. Forget “Bend it like Beckham,” let’s “Bend it like Sinclair.”
• Women’s hockey also got in on the fun. For the final game of the Rivalry Series between Team USA and Team Canada, a record 13,320 fans filled the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, the most for a U.S. women’s hockey game played on home soil.
• How could we talk about women killing it and not talk about American gymnast Simone Biles? In October 2019, Biles became the most decorated gymnast — we repeat, male or female — at the World Championships winning an all-time record of 25 world medals, including 19 golds. Just imagine what her trophy case looks like.

NBA: Zion Williamson is still in #BeastMode. The New Orleans Pelicans’ No. 1 draft pick and Rookie of the Year contender put up 21 points against Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks last night. Despite losing in overtime, Zion has now gone thirteen straight games with 20+ points, the only teenager to ever do that. When we were teens we were that productive too…

NHL: Scary news alert. On Tuesday night, New York Islanders defenseman Johnny Boychuk took a skate to the face (luckily it avoided his eye) and it took 90 stitches (!!!) to sew him back up.

• While catastrophic facial injuries happen less often than you’d think in a sport where players strap blades to their feet and fly around the ice at 20 miles an hour, the risk is always there. Take Taylor Hall’s skate to the forehead. Might be time to revisit the cage argument?

Crosby: In much lighter hockey news, Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby finally crossed the 800 career assist mark in a 7–3 blowout win over the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday. He got there in 980 games, making him the sixth-fastest player in NHL history to do so, and it couldn’t have come at a better time — “Sid the Kid” helped snap the Pens’ longest losing streak in more than eight years at six games. Whoa!