Press Room

Trans, intersex, and gender-expansive athletes are all welcome.

Women’s sports need media coverage, investment, and resources. Not gender policing, says guest columnist Erica Vanstone.

BRING IT IN hosts Henry Abbott and David Thorpe spoke with Erica Vanstone, aka “Double H,” the Executive Director Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, about the WFTDA's return to play plan.

Discussing Erica Vanstone's essay, " Trans Women Are Women, In Sport and Everything Else."

Essay by WFTDA Executive Director, Erica Vanstone

We already know girls run the world. So why aren’t they running our country’s COVID protocol? Full Frontal rolled out its toughest correspondent, Amy Hoggart, to figure out how a women’s roller derby league has come up with a better COVID-19 plan than our president. Featuring Tracey “Dreadlocked and Loaded” Hughes, April “Jumpy McGee” Fournier, and Nikki McCorriston AKA Trauma.

The sport is definitely not socially distant. But players figured out how to make it work.

What does it actually take to play sports during a pandemic? Why we all should take a page out of roller derby’s reopening playbook.

Jessica interviewed Erica Vanstone, the Executive Director of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). They talk about the association's response to COVID, the work they're doing towards dismantling racism, and the overlap of the WFTDA's LA league, Angel City, with the name of the newly-announced NWSL team in LA, Angel City FC.

Jane McManus, director of Marist's Center for Sports Communication and New York Daily News sports columnist, talks about where things in the world of sports are holding in the era of COVID-19 and BLM protests, the responsibility they hold to prevent a virus spike and cultural backlash, and which leagues are getting it right.

While professional basketball, baseball, and college football have been botching attempts to re-open despite health experts’ advice, women’s roller derby has been putting together a master plan that is so efficient, so scientifically informed, so precise that it’s sexy. Enough for Emory University epidemiologist Zachary Binney, who has been a prominent critic of how other sports are reopening, to confess its spectator policies are so good it “almost made me cry.”

Erica Vanstone, executive director the WFTDA, spoke to As It Happens guest host Nil Köksal about the WFTDA's return to play plan.