This Girl Can: Ellie's story
For the last month television adverts, social media posts and billboards across the land have advertised Sport England’s latest campaign This Girl Can. It’s a sassy celebration of women everywhere no matter how they exercise, how they look, or how sweaty they get.
The national charity, the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) is supporting This Girl Can to ensure more disabled women can get involved in the campaign.
In January, Sport England’s latest Active People Survey was published. It showed that 121,700 fewer disabled people and 125,000 fewer women are regularly taking part in sport. EFDS believes that the results reinforce the importance of understanding and responding to disabled people’s needs and preferences much more effectively.
Campaigns like This Girl Can will play an important role in increasing the numbers of all active women, especially those living with impairments and health conditions.
March is also National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, with the aim of raising awareness of the condition.
Ellie Simpson, from Derbyshire, is a F32 thrower who took up the sport three years ago at age 17. She is now a competitive thrower, as well as running the website and social media channel CP Teens UK.
“I was terrified,” says Ellie of the first time she tried throwing. “But it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
“It’s opened up my eyes.”
Ellie’s story
A student at Sheffield Hallam, Ellie Simpson says she’s really enjoying university life, even though the campus experience can be challenging for someone with cerebral palsy.
“I started at Hallam in September, so I’m still in my first year,” she tells EFDS.
“I still live at home in Chesterfield, because it’s so close to Sheffield. University life and CP do not always work together.
“It can be quite difficult at times. Everyone goes out at night, and while I can do that I have to do it with people who understand me and what help I need.
“I can’t handle money – I know what to do, I just can’t physically do it. And I can’t physically hold a drinks glass. But on the whole, Uni’s been pretty good.”
At 20 years old, Ellie’s broadly positive experience of university life is aided by her physical fitness, which is much improved in comparison to her teenage years.
She’s a thrower, now one of the best in the country, and trains three times a week at the EIS Sheffield, plus practising in her own time in the field that backs on to her north Derbyshire home.
If this had been Ellie aged 17, none of this sport and physical activity would have been on her radar.
“I hid away from sport all the time when I was younger. The idea of PE at school just put the fear of God into me, but now I’d be right out there at the front.
“I hid because I went to a school of non-disabled people, and I just didn’t want to put myself in the limelight.”
So what changed?
“Three years ago I went to a ParalympicsGB sportsfest event – there was tour of them travelling around the country.
“I walked into one and hadn’t any idea about sport whatsoever. But they asked me if I wanted to try throwing, and I thought ‘why not?’. I tried it and just fell in love with it.”
That kick-started a love for the sport which has blossomed. Ellie now finds herself a top-level competitor, winning a silver medal at the National Athletics Disability Championships last June and gold at the National CP Championships in September.
“When I first started, it felt so good to be doing something. It was just the feeling of being able to do it,” she says.
“Before throwing, the idea of being competitive scared me, really. I didn’t put myself out there, trying to be better than somebody else. But now, I love it!”
Ellie Simpson on regional news
There is more to sport and physical exercise than competing, of course. At the end of her time at school, Ellie found herself feeling increasingly lonely. Sport has helped her overcome that.
“I left school and started feeling very isolated. All my friends went onto university and I had a gap year, and didn’t know what to do in terms of a degree.
“So I took a year out and I thought it would be fine and I would have lots to do, but it kind of all ground to a halt.
“I literally don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for sport. It’s opened up my eyes.
“It has given me plenty of connections, a life – I go out at the weekend with people I know through athletics. It’s not just sport, it’s also a social thing.”
That combination of improved personal fitness, increased self-confidence and a new-found social life are positive experiences EFDS sees mirrored across the board when disabled people first take up sport and physical activity.
The This Girl Can campaign, launched by Sport England at the start of the year, aims to encourage all sports of women to find a form of fitness that works for them.
And Ellie, whose own personal journey has been such a resounding success over such a short period of time, wholeheartedly backs its messages.
“I think This Girl Can is really good. It challenges people’s perceptions of what girls can do.
“Women are always told that we can’t do things, but actually it’s a psychological barrier, rather than not being able to do something.
“And the focus on body shapes is great, because it encourages women of all shapes and sizes to get out and do something.”
What would she say, one of the country’s top disabled sportswomen, to other women pondering whether or not to get active?
“Don’t be scared to try something new. I was terrified, but it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
“If you don’t try it, you’ll never know. If it doesn’t work out it doesn’t matter. But give it a go, because you don’t know what it might lead to.”
