On 12 April, TuksSport hosted their annual Women in Sport Breakfast Roundtable discussion session. The brunch session was hosted at the TuksCricket Clubhouse on UP’s LC De Villiers Sports campus. The breakfast roundtable discussion session hosted women athletes, coaches, and administrators who have made significant and notable contributions to the sporting industry. Their commitment has propelled them to challenge, disrupt, and reconfigure the perception of women in sport.
The discussion session was led by an invited panel of women in sports. The speakers who graced the audience on the day were Libbie Janse van Rensburg, Vanes-Mari du Toit, Nicola Macleod, and Jenny van Dyk. Van Rensburg is a TuksRugby player from the class of 2023, a member of the Springbok women’s national team, and she will be representing South Africa at the 2024 ParisOlympics. Du Toit is a former netball player who represented South Africa at the 2011 Netball World Championships in Singapore and Liverpool, and Macleod is the Deputy Director of TuksSport Coaching and Performance Management. Finally, Van Dyk is serving as the head coach of the Spar Proteas from 2024 to 2027 and has led the Netball Pretoria side, the Jaguars, to five consecutive titles.
Despite the overcast weather experienced at the start of the roundtable discussion session, the event commenced at 09:00 and ended at midday. It was a platform of women empowerment, where stories of triumph were shared, a testament to their unyielding power of unity, breaking barriers, and paving the way for a future where every young girl’s sporting dream is not a possibility but an inevitability. Furthermore, it was dedicated to celebrating women in sport who are doing remarkable work in their various sporting codes of expertise. Their sisterhood has reshaped the perception of women having a career in sport. Sitting down and meandering through the speaker’s life adversaries, the audience was accorded a rare experience of interacting with active women in sport. The celebrated women in sport have made significant contributions to their communities; as such, Tuks alumni Vanes-Mari Du du Toit hosts Netball clinic sessions for disadvantaged communities.
Staff and students that influence the rich diversity of the University of Pretoria attended in their modest numbers. In an attempt to bear witness to the phenomenal women in sport, PDBY approached Khanyisa Mhlanga, one of the attendees for a comment. Mhlanga said, “The conversation was amazing. It ranged from techniques of coaching [to] their personal lives and how sport has impacted them in many forms.”
