‘No environment like football’: Mount Allison student turns passion into internship with CFL team

Julia Cameron is pictured at alumni field in Sackville, N.B. (Derek Haggett, CTV Atlantic)

She may only be 21 years old, but Mount Allison University student Julia Cameron has had a long journey with football.

It started when she was just 11 months old, when she watched games with her father, a former player at Mount Allison.

“Before I could even speak, he taught me the illegal procedure sign,” said Cameron. “The ref would say it and I would do the signal. I fell in love from there.”

Cameron played with the boys growing up in Truro, N.S. She was always the only girl on the team. In Grade 12, she played wide receiver for the Cobequid Educational Centre Cougars, the team her father coached for 30 years.

Cameron called it a great experience. She said she felt like part of the group.

“There’s no environment like football,” she said.

The commerce student records game and practice video for the Mounties and engages fans on the team’s social media platforms. She’s turned that experience into a Women in Football internship with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League where she’ll work in marketing, operations and analytics for their social media team.

Cameron will join the Riders on May 4 for four-weeks during training camp in a department with a lot of other women.

“I don’t think there’s a better club she could be going to,” said Mounties Head Coach Scott Brady. “Regina is absolutely football crazy. If there’s a hub for people in Canada who absolutely love football, that’s it.”

Brady said Cameron’s role was integral to the Mounties this season and praised her ability to quickly prepare practice film for coaches and players to analyze. While coaching with McMaster University five years ago he said the team started an internship program for women.

“You’re definitely seeing more and more women get involved at every level of the game,” he said. “Both in the CFL and at the U-Sports level. There’s just so many of them that have a passion for the game and they just haven’t been afforded the opportunities in the past.”

Cameron wrote letters to the National Football League when she was a child, trying to convince the commissioner to let women play.

“I never really felt like an outsider but I think it was just watching the NFL and CFL and not seeing any women,” said Cameron.

As a young player, she thought it would be great to have a female role model playing professional football.

“Can you give us a shot? We can be physical too,” Cameron wrote in her letters. “I’m playing and I’d love to see somebody that I could look up to in that way.”

According to a news release from Mount Allison University, both Saskatchewan and Hamilton reached out to Cameron about positions in marketing and coaching but she decided to join her favourite CFL team.

The Roughriders senior staff is made up of more than 50 per cent women, a rarity in professional football, the news release stated.

Cameron’s advice to other women who want to be involved in the male-dominated world of football is to get your foot in the door.

“I think there’s a big barrier of just starting and you feel like you’re going to be judged or you won’t belong and I felt really accepted all along by everyone – coaches, teammates,” she said. “Don’t let the fear of starting stop you.”

Cameron will be back with the Mounties in the fall and hopes to turn her education and passion for football into a career.