Charlotte Stacey is a football journalist, graphic designer, and Owner & Founder of the digital sports platform On Her Side. As well as covering numerous matches, she has worked in partnership with multiple major brands to produce quality women's football merchandise.
Always great to talk to you Charlotte. As a first point, I want to discuss your relationship with sport as a young woman. Did you enjoy it?
Growing up I enjoyed sports, I was a keen swimmer and played tennis most weeks. I also enjoyed anything with a ball – football, netball and so on.
I was fortunate enough to be able to try lots of sports all through my childhood including golf, badminton, racketball, and even roller skating, as well as athletics and gymnastics - however, a gymnast, I was not!
As I got older and began secondary school sports, I started to take a backseat and the sport I loved the most, football, almost completely stopped aside from a kickabout at home. It wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t have wanted to continue, I even asked the PE staff about starting a girls football team, but there just wasn’t much support for girls back then if they didn’t want to pursue typically “female” sports in schools.
I continued with swimming and tennis into my teens and still like to swim if I get the chance now.
So I’m guessing that means you have some very early memories of being involved in sport, then?
One of my earliest memories is my swimming lessons. I had swimming lessons for as long as I can remember, every Monday after school at the local pool and I remember them fondly.
It sounds so silly, but the lessons where you had to jump in with your pyjamas on, do the lifesaving skills or swim, a certain distance I can remember so clearly, also the little certificates you’d get afterwards!
On the topic of getting recognition and being acknowledged, do you think opportunities for females are improving - both in sport and in journalism?
I do think the landscape is changing and it feels as if there is definitely more space for women in both sports and journalism, however, I wouldn’t say we’re completely there yet.
Opportunities can still feel harder to come by however there is a positive change. I think it’s so important that the coverage of women’s sports is much more accessible than it used to be. It’s changes like this that are opening up more opportunities for women in sport.
And as a final closing point, let’s look towards the future. If you could give some advice to young women interested in either sport, journalism, or perhaps both, what would it be?
For the first part, I’d say stick to your guns, if you enjoy a sport then keep playing, keep doing it and try to find a community of some sort where you can find like-minded people to enjoy it with. It’s so nice to see now that sport is so much more open to women and that girls can participate as boys do.
For the second part, I’d echo the same. If you’re striving to get into sports journalism then you’ve got to believe in yourself and keep plugging away. It’s an idea to start a blog or to volunteer to write for platforms to help build up a body of work behind you.
Write as much as you can, apply for as much as you can and put yourself out there. No story is too small!
You can follow Charlotte on X, check out her body of work here and also learn more about OnHerSide.
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