When Amélie Beauregard was asked what she wanted for her 18th birthday, she said she wanted to meet Maya Turner, the female starting kicker of the University of Manitoba Bisons men’s football team.
On Saturday, her wish came true. She and her father flew from Montreal to Calgary, to watch the Bisons play the University of Calgary Dinos. Beauregard met Turner on the field after the Bisons’ 22-17 victory.
“Hi, Oh my god, you are awesome,” she said before giving Turner a big hug.
“I do admire you. I was watching your video and I want to meet this girl and I want to do the same as you do…. It’s a men’s world but we can take our place in it.”
Turner has already done so.
She made history last year as the first woman to play and score in a regular-season university football game in the U Sport league. She made two field goals, including the game-winner in overtime. Simon Fraser University’s Kristie Elliott was the first Canadian female to play and score in a college game, but the SFU Red Leafs are members of NCAA Division II, the only Canadian university affiliated with the U.S.-based National Collegiate Athletic Association.
So far this season, the Bisons are 4-0. Turner has made six of seven field goals, the longest being 38 yards. She has also made 11 of 11 points after touchdowns.
Rookie kicker breaking ground
Halfway across the country, Beauregard has been watching, inspired, in what she laughingly describes as “The Maya Effect.”
Like Turner, she is also a soccer player who took up football. She is also breaking ground as a rookie kicker on the Sherbrooke CEGEP men’s football team, the first woman in the Les Volontaires Football masculin division 2 league and the youngest on her team.
She was excited to see Turner play on Saturday.
“Now I can talk with her and she can give me some advice,” Beauregard said. “I think like a lot of girls saw her and was like, ‘Holy shit, she can do it. I can do it too.'”
Turner blushed, preferring to let her work speak for itself.
“I’m so humbled that she looks up to me and wanted to come out and see me play. You know, I love to see other girls kicking footballs and playing on men’s teams. I definitely didn’t see a lot of that growing up at all. So I think that’s really cool,” she said.
There was initially some doubt about having a female kicker on the Bisons, but that has disappeared as she has proven she belongs, said head coach Brian Dobie.
“Maya is so even keeled, she’s got a perfect temperament for a kicker. She’s obviously highly skilled and, and has a really strong leg, but it’s her consistency, and it’s just because she grinds, she grinds, she grinds in the weight room all winter,” he said.
“She does all the right things and never stops training and it pays off when she produces on the field. She is so respected by our university, so respected by her teammates and the Bison football program.”
The team welcomed Beauregard into the locker room after the Calgary game too, chanting, “Speech, speech,” until she apologized for English as her second language, and told them how much she was panicking for them during the game.
“It was very impressing to see you win because it was very sketch and I was very, very pissing on myself,” she said, generating a big laugh and more cheers from the players.
WATCH | How one football player started The Maya Effect:
Maya Turner is a trailblazer in university men’s football, and she’s inspiring other young women to follow in her cleats.
Beauregard and her family flew back to Winnipeg with the team.
On Sunday, they had brunch with some of the coaching staff, watched the Bison women’s soccer game, and got a tour of the university campus and football complex — including Turner’s small locker room just off the main man’s area.
Beauregard said although her 18th birthday is not until December, she was “overwhelmed” by the amazing birthday gift, and the spark to her dreams.
“The future show me that I can I accomplish anything. I just need to put the effort in and put all the hard work and I can do this,” she said.
Dobie has announced his retirement after this season and 29 years on the job. He’s won awards for Canada West coach of the year, and the U Sports national football title in 2007, but he says few things will compare to this experience.
It is “so symbolic of, of what anybody can do regardless of race, gender, etc. Anybody leading the way and taking a risk and putting themselves out there, getting out of their comfort zone and attacking something. And that’s what Maya has done,” he said.
“The real beauty to sport and the real beauty to what we’re trying to do here … is put these young men and women and young student athletes in a position that they have a great experience and they get to chase their dreams and chase their opportunities and become the best people that they can be.”
As for Turner, she’s having the time of her life and is thrilled her accomplishment is inspiring other women who dream of kicking down barriers.
“I’m just really grateful to be able to have this opportunity to be on a team like this and just be able to play the sport I love,” she said.
“And have a coach like Coach Dobie who’s given me this opportunity and has believed in me, and have teammates who support me and just see me as any other player on the team.”
