May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada and the York University Athletics & Recreation Department is honouring its Asian athletes by showcasing their inspiring contributions over the course of the month.
York women's rugby coach
Jess Neilson wants to eliminate the relevance of the term, "you can't be what you can't see." Growing up as a Thai Canadian, Neilson was inspired by fellow Asian Canadians to continue on in her favourite sport of rugby.
Now, she wants to inspire a new generation of BIPOC and Asian Canadians to write the next chapter of Canadian sport history. That begins here at York, when she hits the sideline as the Lions rugby coach after being hired to lead the team last fall. Here's the rest of her story.
Tell me about your hobbies outside of coaching.
Outside of York, I'm a research analyst for Global Public Affairs, which is a government relations and public affairs firm. It's a little wordy, but that's the gist of it. My undergrad is in political science and public administration. I'm a total politics nerd and love public affairs!
How did you get into high performance coaching?
It was a natural progression for me as someone who competed at a high performance level of sport, both in sevens and fifteens for Canada. My varsity career was at the University of Victoria and I had a couple injuries. So coaching was a way for me to stay involved in the game in the long term. As someone who has a deep passion for the sport and everything it brings to my life, it was a natural next step for me. For some people that step is officiating, for some people it's getting involved administratively – for me, the opportunity to work with developing athletes, transition to high performance and understand what it means to be a high performance athlete was just a natural progression.
Was there anything outside of just being involved in varsity athletics as a young adult that swayed you towards coaching?
When I was studying at UVic I actually took a course that focused on coaching. As an assignment for the course, I had to physically coach a team. I ended up coaching at Oak Bay High School in Victoria and we won the school's first provincial championship. That eventually progressed into a job with UVic, first as a team manager at the end of my undergrad and that progressed into a coaching role. Now, I'm here at York!
What do you consider your greatest achievement to be?
I think one of the things I'm the most proud of is working as a legislative intern and seeing the impact that political legislation can have on individuals in their daily lives. One of the placements I got to do was in the sport and multiculturalism branch. I've always used sport as a vehicle for implementing change and increasing diversity and inclusion in sport. That was an interesting intersection of both my lives on and off the field. That was something I'm proud of.
What drives you to increase diversity in sport?
I was talking to a podcast a while back about this. You can't be what you can't see, and as an athlete growing up there were very few Asian Canadian rugby players growing up that I could look up to. For me, there was one. Her name is Julia Sugawara. Reflecting back, it wasn't only because she was an amazing player, but also because she looked like me. Seeing an Asian Canadian represent her country on the world stage was everything to me. Increasing that scope and helping young, diverse Canadians understand that there's an opportunity there for them is a really big driver for me. Ultimately, I just want to give back to the game that has given so much to me in terms of networking opportunities and personal growth.
How about being an Asian Canadian coach?
It's something I take a lot of pride in. It's also important to surround yourself with a strong coaching staff and increasing diversity there. I wasn't coached by women until quite late in my career, and I didn't realize how much of an impact it had on me, let alone allowing people in the BIPOC community to become visible in our sport realm through coaching and leadership positions. There's a lot of responsibility that comes with a coaching role too, but it's something I've embraced.
Asian Heritage Month is an opportunity for all Canadians to learn more about the many achievements and contributions of Canadians of Asian descent. With that being said, what types of contributions do you believe should be at the forefront when we are discussing Asian heritage?
I believe that people should take an opportunity to learn about the history of Asian Canadians and their contributions to society along with the injustices that many have faced and continue to face today. Some things that come to mind is the history of the oldest Chinatown in Canada which is in my hometown of Victoria, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, Chinese contributions to building the Canadian Pacific Railway, Japanese Internment in WWII, and the Komagata Maru just to name a few things that I believe people should understand further. Some resources I would recommend people check out to learn include the book "Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents" by Mark Sakamoto and "How to Pronounce Knife" by Souvankham Thammavongsa.
In an effort to learn more about the broad scope of Asian culture, tell me a unique way you celebrate your culture at home.
You know, I wish there was... but that ultimately gets down to the complexities with being an Asian Canadian and someone who struggled with the realities of their heritage growing up. I shared a thing on Instagram a while back about dealing with microaggressions my whole life which spoke to those struggles. I was also born in Thailand but moved to Victoria when I was very young, and spoke Thai and English. But I refused to speak Thai when I moved to Victoria with my mom — which I regret. I knew I was different, and I already looked different, so grappling with those layers of identity and the challenges it brings was difficult. Living in Canada, we didn't really celebrate many of those Thai or Chinese holidays. Moving forward I would like to embrace it a bit more.
Who or what gives you inspiration?
There are so many people that came before me that looked like me and left an impact on my life. Sugawara comes to mind – I mentioned her earlier. There is a good story here; I was in London at Twickenham playing for Canada. Twickenham is the home of English rugby, there were 80,000 people in the stadium watching us play. The day after, they opened up the Twickenham shop for us. The lady working at the shop was Asian and she remembered seeing me on TV broadcast the night before. It's neat hearing stories like that, when you leave an impact with people after they watch you play.
