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arrow pointing leftBack 03 May 22 - by Alex James

Rally Together | Tania Bailey's Story

High Performance Coach Tania Bailey shares her experiences as a female player and coach for Rally Together.

Tania Bailey is an England Squash High Performance Coach who enjoyed a stellar playing career. As a junior player, Tania won the World Junior Championship in 1997 and captained the England team to World and European junior team titles. She reached a career-high ranking of World No.4 in 2003 and clinched her first British National Championships in Manchester in 2006, defeating the No.1 seed and previous champion Linda Elriani.

Despite her incredible achievements, Tania's faced many challenges as a female player and coach over the years. For our Rally Together campaign, Tania shares her experiences with us:

The biggest challenge is being a full time mum at the same time as a high performance coach. I have to constantly plan and think ahead every time I have any squad days, squash team trips. or lessons planned. It’s a military operation and has to be thoroughly thought over before I can think about putting anything in my diary.

I have done long trips away for coaching when both my children were small babies and also missed their first birthdays along with other significant events of their lives while coaching, which is a sacrifice that many mums would find difficult to do and would miss out on these opportunities. Luckily I have fantastic support from my husband and parents otherwise I would not be able to do my job at all.

I also rarely get to work with other women, most of the time I am surrounded by male coaches and also a lot of the time working with male players. I do notice that it can take longer to gain respect from players (juniors and seniors) being female and in some instances it will take longer until they really start to listen and believe I have something to offer. I almost feel I have to prove myself more than my male counterparts.

I also experienced nastiness and even bullying from male players while I was growing up who didn’t like the fact that a young girl was doing well and was capable of beating them.

Have you taken the Rally Together pledge? Take a look at the pledge here and help create an inclusive, empowering environment for women and girls like Tania.