How Tess Howard's university dissertation led to a kit revolution in global hockey
As a professional athlete, especially one aiming for a debut Olympic Games, spare time is limited, so choosing to put your energy into a cause that's making waves across your sport is quite the accolade for the Brit.
Hockey
'If you feel you'll play better wearing your pyjamas, wear your pyjamas,' was the first thing GB hockey player Tess Howard told a group of girls ahead of the start of a series of coaching sessions for under-12s at a UK club.
The Commonwealth Games gold medallist was responding to the tongue-in-cheek suggestion from one of the players after the first thing Howard told the group was they could wear whatever they felt most comfortable to play in.
The banter may be light-hearted but the message from Howard was serious: kit confidence impacts enjoyment, and therefore participation, for young girls in sport.
The reason she knows this is the Durham University alumni wrote a dissertation in 2023 exploring how kit for women and girls affected confidence and therefore performance. Alarmingly, more than 70% of the 404 UK-based respondents said they had seen girls drop out of sport because of sports kit and body image concerns.
So, when Howard's charges started to come to the sessions exuding more confidence and therefore focusing on playing, she was thrilled.
"They came in all different outfits," said the attacking midfielder who is set to play at the Women's FIH Olympic Qualifiers in Valencia from 13 to 20 January, the final stage of direct qualification for the women's field hockey event at Paris 2024.
"For the first week, people were still wearing the normal kit but as they saw other people break the mould and wear jazzy shorts or leggings, and more and more started to feel more comfortable being able to make those decisions for themselves.
"What I saw were girls feeling autonomous over their bodies and how they looked, and it enabled them to feel more confident on the pitch."
The university research also provided the impetus for Howard and her England and GB teammates to lead the changes in kit options at national and, subsequently, global level.
Honest conversations around women's sports kits
Howard could understand the experience of being uncomfortable. The kit that was the only option prior to August 2022 domestically, and June 2023 internationally, was a skort – a skirt with shorts attached underneath – despite players such as Howard always training in shorts. Both shorts and skorts were allowed by world governing body, the FIH, prior to the change, but not a combination of both in one team.
"I dive several times a game in hockey and I'm worried whether my skort's going to fly up," Howard posted on Instagram prior to the change. "It has tiny little shorts underneath but that's not enough for me."
Having played hockey from the age of 12 and been an international player for the past six years, sadly missing out on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games due to a serious knee injury, Howard is acutely aware that what a player wears inspires confidence in performance – whether that's in the school playground or on the world stage.
"I've played in international matches, but I've not wanted to step on the pitch because I feel awkward and I feel ashamed of my body because the decompression tank top is pulling in different ways, the skirt is making my thighs look a certain way," said Howard ahead of winning the Changemaker Award at the Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards in November.
"And I think we have to be really honest in these conversations as performance is about how you feel. At the end of the day, if you're being asked to go out and play in something you don't feel comfortable in your confidence is going to majorly decrease."
The catalyst for Howard and her England and GB teammates to be the face of the change came about after England claimed Commonwealth Games gold for the first time in their history in front of a home crowd, against great rivals Australia, in 2022.
The GB women's hockey team have had quite the successful past two Olympic Games, winning a first-ever gold for the nation at Rio 2016, and bronze last time out at Tokyo 2020.
The platforms these results afforded encouraged the team to speak up.
Gold medal provides impetus for change
"After winning the Commonwealth Games last summer," said Howard, who has 76 caps for England and GB combined, "there was so much attention around hockey and I was getting interviewed a lot about the gold medal, that's when I knew I had to use my platform to make a positive change.
England Hockey had made the changes that enabled field players "to have free choice to wear shorts, skirts or skorts on an individual basis" in September 2022, "but we were super passionate as a team to try and do this internationally because you could still not wear shorts or skorts in the same team."
GB captain Hollie Pearne-Webb and Nick Pink, the chief executive of England and Great Britain Hockey, then wrote to the International Federation of Hockey (FIH) in early 2023, asking for a review of kit rules globally.
In May, they had a response.
"It came back with a unanimous decision from the board, agreeing to it," said Howard. "And for the very first time, our team ran out in a combination of shorts and skorts at the (2023) Europeans making history forever."
Sadly, England were unable to claim the win in the tournament, which would have seen them obtain a direct spot for Paris 2024, beaten in the semi-final by eventual winners and record-breaking 12-time EuroHockey title holders and reigning Olympic champions, the Netherlands.
Which is why we see GB in Spain for the FIH Hockey Olympic qualifiers, one of four tournaments in three locations in which 16 men's teams and 16 women's teams will duke it out in a last chance to qualify directly for Paris 2024, between 13 and 21 January.
The top three nations at each tournament will secure qualification for the XXXIII Olympiad.
They will join the seven nations already qualified for Paris, with hosts France being joined by continental champions Australia (men and women), Netherlands (men and women), India (men) and People's Republic of China (women) in the French capital.
Howard is hoping to feature at her debut Games should the team qualify, and continue the Olympic medal-winning trajectory GB women have been on at the past two Games.
But, in the meantime, hearing from young kids about the impact of feeling comfortable in their kit while playing the sport she loves, is priceless in itself for the hockey campaigner.
"I get Instagrams all the time from girls who say 'I wore my shorts for the first time and I was so excited," said Howard. "Those little messages mean so much to me."