Warm Response to Groundbreaking Initiative

A unique initiative, rolled out last month at the BWF World Junior Championships 2025 in Guwahati, has seen BWF break new ground in addressing athlete wellbeing.

The presentations by Simply Sport Foundation, both in a formal classroom setting and at a booth, followed the signing of a partnership with BWF in February 2024. Simply Sport’s pioneering programme, Simply Periods, aims to educate athletes and coaches about menstruation and its impact on female athletes’ performance.

With the hundreds of young athletes and coaches assembled in Guwahati, it was the perfect opportunity for Simply Sport to engage the badminton community on an issue that is fundamental to the human experience and has a deep impact on performance, but which is rarely talked about in public.

At the booth, there was much animated discussion at the booth between players, coaches and other team members. Male players, initially reluctant to engage with ‘female issues’, soon overcame their inhibitions.

One female player from Brazil spoke about the importance of such awareness initiatives, recalling that she had been diagnosed with endometriosis; the diagnosis was thanks a coach who had pushed her to get a test. Had she not tested it could have had long-lasting impacts on her health.

Several players and coaches vouched for the importance of openly engaging with topics around puberty and menstrual health as they have a direct impact on performance.

As Uganda coach Joshua Mguluma said: “Surely, as a coach, it’s an important topic and I’m so happy that it was brought up this time around. We engage ourselves with the kids who are mostly in that stage of growth. You start with children who haven’t yet hit puberty and then they do, so how do you handle that? It’s a time when they’re innocent, they don’t know what to do, so that topic is really important, at least for us who have grown up and have been through it, we know how to handle it. How do you approach them, how do you guide them, how do you prepare them – that with this, you can still have a normal life and continue and your career can move on well.”

Leading the outreach was Aditi Mutatkar, Head of Athlete and Women Initiatives at Simply Sport Foundation. Mutatkar – a former women’s singles No.27 from India – made her presentations during the BWF Youth Athlete Development Camp held before the World Juniors; this was followed by further engagement by Renu Yadav at the Simply Sport information booth over the first week of competition. Simply Sport also distributed a well-designed, easy-to-read handbook, produced in collaboration with BWF, addressing basic facts and misconceptions around puberty and menstrual health.

Perhaps the biggest positive for Mutatkar was to see that male athletes and coaches were keen to engage and recognise the importance of understanding what their female counterparts go through.

“What has always been very interesting is to see that the things that we work on, like puberty and periods and all of these things, the whole problem is quite common,” said Mutatkar. “Also, the understanding is that we are in a common space, as an ecosystem when it comes to things around health, and especially female health.

“The other thing that was quite interesting to see was that male coaches want to help. I don’t think anybody comes with the mindset that ‘This is taboo, and I don’t want to touch it’. One of the messages that I got from here was that it’s the most normal thing, and we have to show empathy and communication. These three things sort of came out from the male counterparts.

“Another cool thing I saw was that some of the guys were actually answering a lot of questions around periods and how they happen and things like that. That was nice to see. I just feel that we are on the same boat, and a lot can be done, to sort of upgrade and be better off in terms of how to handle younger age groups of children and athletes, and especially girls.”