When one Canadian high school football head coach decided to revamp his recruitment efforts, he decided to cast a wider net—a much wider net—by focusing on encouraging females in the school to consider joining the game.

Michel Roy, head coach of Hormisdas-Gamelin Secondary School (Ottawa), saw limitations in his approach of only focusing on inviting males to consider coming out for the team.

After all, he was overlooking roughly 50 percent of the student population.

“We’ve always been innovators in the way we work, so this year I wanted to go get the best athletes. We have 1,400 students at our school and half are boys. So instead of picking from 700 boys, we have 1,400 kids to pick (from),” Roy told the Ottawa Citizen.

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Roy pointed out that female players can often possess good speed and dexterity and, compared to their male counterparts, can be technically stronger and more mature.

The process of welcoming in girls was an adjustment from multiple angles. But the team has come together and realizes that the new female players can be key contributors, as well as ordinary teammates, just like the male players.

“They don’t get special treatment because they’re girls. We want to treat them equally,” Roy said. “Are they going to be coached a little differently? You have to, like most of the players on our team, most positions on our team. We are not doing any favours.

“We just want to make sure that we give them the right support they need, and they are guiding us through the whole process.”