Beacon-based project helps girls worldwide
Finding a good sports bra isn’t easy if you’re a female wrestler in the Alaskan village of Savoonga on Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.
But it’s recently become easier because of Sarah Dwyer-Shick, a Beacon resident who founded the nonprofit Sports Bra Project to supply girls with otherwise limited access to the garments because of logistics, culture or economics.
The bras sent to the Savoonga wrestlers, who live 34 miles from Russia, are among 20,000 the project has distributed to 16 U.S. states and 35 countries since 2015.
“People often donate new and used baseballs, basketballs, soccer balls and cleats,” says Dwyer-Shick, a former high school and college athlete who is director of coaching and recreation for the East Fishkill Soccer Club. “But sports bras need to be new and it’s often one of those pieces of sports equipment that is forgotten.”
That’s because women’s sports at all levels are mostly run and coached by men, says Dwyer-Shick. “Breasts are not something you talk about with your male coach. We want those in leadership to understand that you give the boys compression shorts and jockstraps, and you give the girls a bra. It’s the same thing.”
The organization collects bras from drives organized by organizations such as the Marist College women’s basketball team or the Seattle women’s pro soccer club, or by individuals such as the Manhattan teenager who collected more than 200 for her bat mitzvah project.
Dwyer-Shick founded the Sports Bra Project after traveling with Kickin’ Back, a Hudson Valley charity, to distribute sports equipment in Namibia, in southern Africa. On a whim, she brought 40 sports bras that she had purchased at Marshalls and TJ Maxx. While intended for girls in rural areas, she also gave them to members of the national soccer team. “There are a lot of countries where they’re just adding women’s soccer programs and they’re underfunded,” she says. The Sports Bra Project has since provided bras to five national soccer teams.
Dwyer-Shick distributes the bras from a one-room office in a building on Henry Street in Beacon. Aside from one part-time administrator, all involved, including the founder, are volunteers.
“We want to normalize the needs and experiences of female athletes,” she says. “Talking about the sports bra as a piece of equipment does that.”
A sports bra can be life-changing for a teenage girl, notes Tela O’Donnell Bacher, a high school wrestling coach who lives in Homer, Alaska, and distributes bras for the project. The only child of a single mother, she showed interest in sports in the sixth grade. An aunt recognized the need and gave her a Nike bra for Christmas.
“It was teal with black piping,” Bacher says. “I thought, ‘Oh, my god, this is the coolest thing.’ ” The bra gave her the confidence to become a wrestler, and she went on to earn a spot on the first U.S. women’s Olympic wrestling team, which competed in the 2004 games in Athens, Greece.
Bacher, who also works with the nonprofit Wrestle Like a Girl, attends Alaska wrestling competitions. When she sees a girl competing in a regular bra, she offers the coach a sports bra. Most male coaches don’t speak to their athletes about sports bras, she said. “It’s a difficult conversation to have,” she says. But many coaches later contact her and ask for more bras.
In the past five years, Bacher has distributed about 600 sports bras in Alaska for the project and another 200 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where she traveled for a girls’ wrestling event.
“We get to be sports-bra fairy godmothers to all these girls and give them all these opportunities to feel comfortable in their skin while they do their sport,” she says.
To learn more about the Sports Bra Project, or to donate, visit thesportsbraproject.org.
