Changing the face of Australian sport

Chantella Perera once balanced professional sport, Masters studies in professional accounting and commerce at Deakin University, and full-time work. Now, she’s changing the game for women and girls in sport so they don’t face the same juggle. 

Thousands of Aussie kids play sport in their backyard. Few go on to make a career out of it, and even fewer reach the top in two different sporting codes. We caught up with Chantella (MPA/MCom ‘14), a former National Basketball League (WNBL) and Australian Football League (AFLW) athlete, for Deakin’s latest Stories of Wonder podcast.

‘I want young aspiring athletes to know that it doesn’t matter what they look like or who they are. Whatever they want to do should be possible, and it is possible,’ Chantella says. 

A first-generation Australian whose parents migrated from Sri Lanka, Chantella moved to California to play basketball in the US college system at the age of 17. By her late 20s, she’d played 150 games and won four championships in the WNBL. 

The hurdles female athletes leap 

‘In my late 20s, the reality of being a female athlete and trying to balance work, study and playing professional sport – but not getting paid enough – took a toll,’ Chantella says. 

After retiring from professional basketball, she landed a parental leave cover role at creative agency KOJO. The contract turned into a 12-year permanent role. 

But she had shared all her highs and lows with a team of women for so long that, in comparison, climbing the corporate ladder was lonely work. Though she’d never played footy, a ‘come and try’ poster lured Chantella to try out for the Box Hill Hawks, a Victorian Football League (VFLW) club. 

‘They were looking for athletes. Obviously, given women hadn’t been allowed to play Australian Rules, the talent pool was not as deep,’ she says. 

Kicking was a difficult skill for Chantella. But what came easy was the discipline needed for a professional athlete. Within a couple of seasons, she was drafted by the West Coast Eagles, on the other side of the country in Perth. 

Being an elite athlete requires a tremendous amount of financial resources. And women athletes simply aren’t paid enough. 

‘At the end of the day, a male equivalent to me is in a far better position financially than I am,’ Chantella says. 

She wants to change the trajectory for women and girls in sport. 

‘Anybody playing elite sport should be able to just concentrate on their sport,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t really have to worry about the other things. And the reality is we’re such a long way off that.’ 

Sport can bring people together, and Chantella thinks Australia needs to do more to increase the diversity of its sporting communities. 

‘If you look at basketball and AFL, those two sports are not representative of our culture,’ she says. ‘They don’t represent the diversity that makes up our every day. It’s not a true representation of Australia, in my opinion.’ 

Poor diversity will slow a sport’s growth, Chantella says. It’s not only a key business strategy, but an important social responsibility for sport to promote inclusivity.

Athletes bring transferable skills to work 

Chantella retired from basketball to enter the workforce because she felt she was behind her peers. 

‘But in reality, I wasn’t,’ she says. ‘I just didn’t understand that those skills I learned by playing sport were really transferable. I think that’s something we really underestimate.’ 

Professional athletes may have dazzling lives, jetting to grand events around the world. But unlike most other careers, it can all go up in smoke in a day. Even athletes with the best, injury-free careers face a difficult transition from field to office. 

‘Globally, it’s just something we haven’t quite worked out as a society. How do we help athletes transition into their next chapter?’ Chantella says. 

As an athlete, you have discipline, motivation, resilience and courage, she points out. Athletes in team sports also develop skills in leadership, negotiation and decision-making. They’re all skills athletes can bring to the workplace. 

Education can also ease the transition. Chantella’s parents were ‘always very concerned and made sure that we were studying, like every good migrant family.’ 

Chantella was still playing basketball professionally when she enrolled in a Master of Professional Accounting at Deakin. 

‘My accounting degree was really helpful. You get a really good idea of what’s out there and what your options are when you are looking for a career or what that workplace looks like next,’ she says. 

Deakin’s trimester-based course structure and online delivery gave her the flexibility she needed as an athlete. 

‘Sometimes when I was in a really heavy season, I’d dial down my units. And then when things were a bit lighter, I could dial up my studying,’ she says. 

Transforming Australian sport 

Today, Chantella is Group General Manager at Sport and Entertainment Agency – KOJO. She helps coordinate sport events like the International Cricket Council’s T20 Women’s World Cup in 2020, where a record-breaking 90,000 people watched Australia play and win the World Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

‘I remember sitting on the side of the field and thinking, “I actually wasn’t sure I’d ever see this in my lifetime,”’ Chantella says.</span.

The swelling crowds are evidence of the progress we’ve made as a society in valuing women’s sport. But Chantella warns these star-studded moments need to be sustained by long-term investment.

‘What happens in men’s sport is that that’s just normal,’ she says. ‘We talk about the great performance, but we wouldn’t talk about the fact that there were 40,000 people there.’

To change the narrative, women’s sport needs support from brands, media and the government. Chantella champions women’s sport as President of Women Sport Australia, a not-for-profit organisation creating a more equitable future for women and girls in sport.

‘People ask me all the time, “I really like women’s sport, how do I help?”,’ she says. ‘You can help by turning the TV on. Go to a game. Buy a membership to the women’s team. You don’t actually need to do a lot.’

If everyone changes their behaviour a little, we can collectively make the long-term change we want to see.