Why I'm so stoked on my new sponsor

“Dear X,

As I transition into being a Mom, I am thrilled to continue my journey as an athlete, speaker and player within our industry. During this time I am looking for alignment with a sponsor that believes in supporting women and families within watersports.”

This was the start of the email I wrote last year while eight months pregnant.

At that time, I was reaching out to brands because I was unsure whether my current kiteboarding and wingfoiling sponsor would continue to support me. It’s 2025. This shouldn’t even be a question, but the fact that it was reinforces the idea that women’s sports still have a long way to go/grow.

As women’s sports have continued to grow, we’re seeing more and more moms represented in the media. But that doesn’t make the history of women’s representation or the transition to motherhood as an athlete any less fraught.

For example, Allyson Felix, the six-time Olympic gold medal winner and an 11-time world champion, was faced a 70% reduction in pay from her title sponsor Nike, after the birth of her daughter.

Women have long been seen as less than men in sports, despite overcoming many hurdles. Dealing with a historically patriarchal culture means that women have had to prove their worth and prove their value. Men’s sports have had a massive headstart.

I wrote about this in my article for IKSURF magazine following a trip to Egypt to film with the first Egyptian female professional kiteboarder, Sarah Sadek, at the end of 2023.

A brief history of women’s sports in the US and beyond:

In the 1920’s first Lady Lou Hoover proposed that girls’ basketball be banned following her appointed committee’s investigation into girls playing sports in front of other people which concluded “that women competing in athletic clothing in front of mixed crowds of men and women was inherently sexual in nature, noneducational, and unhealthy,” according to Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First US Women's Olympic Basketball Team by Andrew Maraniss.

During that same time, the Football Association (FA), the organization in charge of the sport in England, banned women and girls from playing football on any grounds associated with the FA. According to the FA, “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females, and ought not to be encouraged” and football and other sports should be “exclusively confined to athletics of the stronger sex.”

In April 1941 the country of Brazil made it illegal for women to play most sports, anywhere. The ban lasted until 1981!

In the US, Women’s sports were ignored and most schools do not have sports programs for girls. Finally, Title IX was passed in 1972, preventing discrimination based on sex for any entity receiving government funding, this affected schools immensely which now had to provide equal funding for girl’s and boy’s sports.

Over the years, women have come face to face with first earning the right to play, then earning support, and finally earning money for what their male counterparts get paid to do, handsomely.

“Women’s presence in sport as serious participants dilutes the importance and exclusivity of sport as a training ground for learning about and accepting traditional male gender roles and privileges that their adoption confers on (white, heterosexual) men,”

Pat Griffin wrote in Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport.

“As a result, women’s sport performance is trivialized and marginalized as an inferior version of the ‘real thing.’”

“What women can learn in athletics contradicts societal messages that encourage girls and women to see themselves as powerless and subordinate,” Griffin continued. “Meeting the physical, mental, and emotional challenges in sport is exhilarating. In athletics, women develop a sense of physical competence.”

This argument, known as fragile masculinity, profers that it’s men, and men alone, that hold back women in sports. As Lindsy Gibbs wrote in her popular Substack Power Plays,

“There’s a reason why women’s sports have been kept on the margins, and it has very little to do with money; it’s all about power, and who we’re comfortable having it.”

It was with this in mind that I thought I better get my head out of the sand and find a brand that was in alignment with my values.

The Meeting

During my first coffee meeting with the CEO of Armstrong Foils, the fact of my *enormous* belly didn’t even come up. Or moreover, the fact that I would now be a mom and how that would shift my priorities didn’t even come up.

What I discovered instead was a brand that saw me as a complete athlete—one whose identity wasn't diminished by motherhood but enriched by it. They saw what I'd always believed: that becoming a mom wouldn't make me any less committed to the windsports or empowering women, but more so.

This fact alone has now made me one of the brand’s biggest supporters.

Why Representation Matters

This experience further crystallized exactly why I started running women's kiteboarding and wingfoiling retreats through Strut Kite & Wing

I wanted to create community and spaces where women would be surrounded by like-minded individuals, encouraged, rather than judged and have the opportunity to grow their skills in a safe and empowering environment. You can’t be what you can’t see and by providing a space for representation, we’re building women’s windsports. By showing more women winging and kiteboarding, we’re encouraging more women to get into the sport.

Too often, women feel they need to choose between their passions and their personal lives. We're told, explicitly or implicitly, that certain chapters of life—like motherhood—signal an ending rather than a transition.

At Strut Kite & Wing, we reject that narrative. Our retreats create spaces where women can see themselves represented in every stage of life and at every skill level. Where a pregnant athlete isn't an anomaly but a testament to the diversity of what strong 💪🏽looks like.

It is through exposure to people who look like us, doing things we’ve never seen before, that our worlds are expanded. 🌎 And that’s the importance of showing more women in kiteboarding and wingfoiling and in sports in genreal–it expands other people’s idea of what’s possible. We all know the adage “if you don’t see it, you can’t believe it”. Without showing women in sports, we’re creating a dirth of possibility for future generations–men and women alike.

With more representation comes more opportunity. It’s not a question of “when there are more women, we will provide gear/money/opportunity”, but “we will provide opportunities to support women now to demonstrate the possibility for upcoming generations of female athletes.”

That is precisely what Armstrong is doing and is entirely why I’m so very stoked on them (that and the fact that the gear is best in class).

What's Next: Join Us in Mexico!

This partnership with Armstrong comes at the perfect moment as we prepare to launch our 2026 Mexico retreats! They’ll also be joining us in Hood River and providing gear for our beginner wing weekends. Whether you're a complete beginner curious about first steps to getting foiling, or you're looking to level up your skills in an empowering environment, our retreats offer something special.

Here’s what one of our attendees had to say about our 2025 retreat:

“This is not your typical women's camp! I was inspired, encouraged, motivated and supported on all things wing foil, and also in life! Sensi and Nadja create such an inclusive, FUN, and open environment. This felt so genuine and different!

If you have the opportunity to join Sensi and Nadja on one of their camps, I highly recommend joining! I hope to be an annual guest, and have so much to learn from these two amazing, confident, intelligent and inspiring women!”

→ Check out our upcoming retreat dates

Thank you, Armstrong Foils, for believing in this mission and for seeing that motherhood doesn't clip our wings—it gives us new reasons to soar.