April 8, 2021 · 0 Comments
By Brian Lockhart
Former Orangeville resident and Orangeville District Secondary School grad, Meghan Hebert, has been honoured for her work as a high-performance coach for the B.C. Provincial Snowboard Cross team.
Meghan received the Bobbie Steen Legacy Foundation Award which is given to an emerging female leader in British Columbia whose dedication to the women and girls of B.C. parallels that of the woman the award is named after. The award comes with a $2000 grant.
Meghan received the award on Thursday, March 25, during Sports BC’s Athlete of the Year awards.
Managed by ProMotion Plus – a B.C based non-profit that strives to promote opportunities in sport and physical activity for woman and girls across the province – the prestigious award aims to provide financial support to activities dedicated to advancing gender equity.
The award money, Meghan said, will help fund the creation of a women’s snowboard summit – an idea Meghan said she was working to implement before COVID-19 occurred.
Meghan first got into snowboarding as an instructor in Ontario before moving to Whistler Blackcomb.
After arriving in B.C., she entered the world of competitive snowboarding as an athlete, eventually earning herself a place on the B.C. Snowboard Team. She was an athlete on the team that won the South American Snowboard Cup.
From there, she turned to coaching part-time and worked closely with different female-only programs in Whistler.
She eventually became a full-time assistant coach and provincial coach developer with the B.C. Snowboard Team’s coaching staff.
Meghan is hoping to increase the number of female coaches in sport.
“When I’m coaching in Europe, I’m maybe one of five women, out of 25 coaches,” she explained. “In Canada, if there’s the same amount of coaches I may be one of two.”
Meghan has broken down some barriers to get to where she is today and hopes to pass on what she’s learned to other women whose goal is to coach at any level.