Pavilion is a game changer
A female-friendly sports pavilion officially opened at the Darnum Recreation Reserve last Saturday.
Funded by the State Government’s Local Sports Infrastructure Fund and Baw Baw Shire, the $900,000 pavilion - built by Warragul’s Farnham Built - includes two change rooms for players, netball and football umpire change rooms and amenities, an accessible toilet with a baby change space, additional storage space, and a kitchenette.
While works on the site were completed in late 2020, no official opening could be held due to pandemic restrictions.
The pavilion has now been used by the club for some time, and Ms Price said it was a welcome change for players - who once had to change clothes in their cars.
A member of the Nilma Darnum Football and Netball Club for more than 30 years, Ms Price has seen the challenges faced by players and has been a big part of the push for a new pavilion.
She said the club began trying to raise funds for a pavilion back in 2015. Their first attempt was a trivia night. While this raised only $2000, it highlighted the club’s determination for improved conditions for female players and umpires.
“We’ve now got much better facilities than what the footballers have got, but all things come to those who wait,” Ms Price said.
She said the players, umpires, and their families were vhappy with the new facilities.
“They just think it’s fantastic, it’s definitely a far cry from what we used to have,” she said.
Before the pavilion came to be, umpires often had to change clothes in an old building dubbed “the secretary’s box.”
“It was an old portable building, and we had to block the windows up and lock the doors so that they could get changed in there,” Ms Price said.
Member for Eastern Victoria, Harriet Shing, said these sorts of challenges were common in women’s sports across the region.
“We see it time and time again, that women are changing in shipping containers, dilapidated sheds, in their cars, at bus stops, and behind sheds and buildings. In the middle of winter that’s not on - but at any time that’s not on,” she said. “This is why the 1.1 billion dollars that we’ve put into community sports since we were elected in 2014 has contained an enormous proportion of funding for women and girls to make sure that changing and sporting facilities are up to scratch.”
Ms Shing said it was important that females are offered the same sporting opportunities and facilities that men and boys are.
“We want to make sure that women and girls of all ages have the opportunity to play sport and to access facilities that are on par with facilities that often have existed for a really long time for men and for boys,” she said.
Mayor Michael Leaney was amongst those inspecting the new rooms on the big day.
He said more needed to be done for women and girls using community sports facilities across the shire.
“It’s really great to have a bit of an inspection of the pavilion today and see it being well used, and it’s clearly much, much better than the facilities that you had previously...in some ways when I travel around the shire - seeing some of the facilities that Netball especially has had to put up with - I hang my head in shame,” he said.