Abstract
While more women are occupying sport leadership positions, there remain systemic gender inequities that impede women in thriving as coaches. The Canada Games is the largest national multi‐sport event that focuses on developing the next generation of Canadian leaders, embodying a significant achievement for women to achieve and leverage their coaching careers. As part of a larger project exploring 11 women’s journeys to coaching at the Summer 2022 Canada Games, two women continued to tell their coaching journeys through digital storytelling. Through two interviews, one-on-one meetings, and a virtual public screening, the women’s experiences of crafting their digital story were captured. Dynamic stories of feeling alone, powerful, hesitant, and confident were illustrated in personal and meaningful videos. In this presentation, we share how the women were supported in their digital storytelling from conceptualization, designing, refinement, and dissemination. Insights are shared for utilizing digital storytelling to work with participants in telling their unheard stories, especially when working with individuals who are historically excluded and marginalized. Through centring the participants’ experiences and voice, the digital storytelling method may help to may redistribute power between researchers and participants and amplify voices of equity-owed individuals who are often unheard, such as women in sport. Strengths and challenges of this method are shared, including navigating the ethics of digital storytelling methods. Practical recommendations are provided for using the digital storytelling method alongside interviews within qualitative research.
