Lawyer Amaya Athill helping expose young people from underrepresented communities to golf
August 30, 2023
For beginners, the sport of golf can be very intimidating as you learn the basics of the swing, how to putt and finding the right posture.
Even more overawing is not seeing anyone looking like you on the course.
In Antigua where Amaya Athill started playing golf at age five, almost everyone that played was of her skin colour.
“There was no question that I belonged in the sport,” she said. “When I returned to England and started playing during the pandemic, I looked around and no one looked like me. Suddenly, the sport felt very intimidating and different. It felt like the only sport I know and play is almost not for me.”
Moving to the Greater Toronto Area in April 2022 with her husband of three years, Athill – who was called to the Bar of England & Wales in 2011 and the Bar of Antigua & Barbuda a year later – came with the intention of introducing underrepresented communities to the sport.
While preparing for the Ontario Bar exams, the Rotarian and social activist saw an opening for Manager of Golf Canada’s First Tee Ontario program that targets mainly systematically marginalized and under-represented communities.
“I was already doing this work on the side with Black women in the United Kingdom trying to get them to play the sport, but I thought this is an opportunity to make an impact on a broader level with a national organization for kids that come from communities like I would have if I was raised in Canada,” she said.
In the role since May 2022, Athill is responsible for partnering with golf courses, community centres and schools.
“We give schools and community centres equipment, curriculum and training to implement golf as part of either their Physical Education program or their multi-sport offering in a community centre,” she pointed out. “We also ensure that we collaborate with schools and community centres that are close to our partner golf courses because we are transitioning those kids in the golf season from their schools and community centres to the golf course. We are ensuring we are meeting you where you are in your community.”
The afterschool program is open to young people between the ages of seven and 13
While having a good time introducing youths to the sport, Athill is passionate about advancing her golf career.
Last May, she became a member of the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) of Canada.
Athill may very well be the first Black woman pro of the national organization that, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, released an extensive diversity, equity and inclusion task force report, including 88 recommendations.
“I have been inquiring whether there have been other Black women before me and I am yet to get an answer,” said the Antigua Reparations Support Commission member. “I have not met any yet and I am still asking.”
Introduced to the sport nearly 30 years ago by her parents Anthony Athill and Anne-Marie Fisher who wished for one child — a girl — and had the name Amaya set aside, Athill played regularly at Cedar Valley, Antigua’s only 18-hole championship course, and on the junior circuit in the Caribbean, Florida and South Carolina.
She took a break from the sport for nearly 15 years to focus on higher education and establish a legal career.
“At the time, I didn’t know how to navigate the university application process to apply for a scholarship in the United States,” Athill said. “As my dad was born in England, I decided to go to school there where golf teams, as part of university life, are not popular.”
With the COVID lockdown taking a toll on her mental health, she started playing golf again in England in April 2021.
While at a charity tournament at the Edgbaston Golf Club shortly after her return, Athill ran into 78-year-old Jenny Clark who shared that she had never met another Black woman in her 20 years playing the sport.
“I was shocked by that remark,” she said. “Jenny had us all cooked. She walked and played faster than us. This woman had so much energy with such pure ‘Jamaicanness’. It was such a joy to be around her.”
Last summer, Athill met a few Black women playing the sport in racialized groups that comprised mainly men in the Greater Toronto Area. Out of their conversations emerged Black Women Golfers that met weekly at indoor simulators during the winter to socialize and practice.
“Our simulator trips doubled as brainstorming sessions as we worked through our own personal golf journeys and the ways in which we could help other Black women get into golf or feel supported in golf,” she said. “It is a space where we don’t want other Black women to feel isolated in the sport.”
The group engages in three different events.
“We have an ‘Intro to Golf’ session where we bring a group of women together and go through some fundamentals, a range meet-up where we play chipping and putting games monthly and a nine-hole session after work every four weeks,” Athill said. “Black women are around the sport, but there is not enough of us. Creating spaces where people can feel welcomed and comfortable in an all-women environment is a really great way to get them started and feeling like they belong.”
What makes golf so engaging for Athill who chaired a group of young professionals that organized and hosted the first-ever political debate between Antigua’s main two political parties?
“It is a humbling sport and it tells me so much about myself,” she pointed out. “You can be the best golfer and really have bad days. It reminds you there is no way to perfect the sport and play at the same high level daily. Also, I get to be outdoors and socialize with people while challenging myself on a daily basis. It is something individualistic and internal about golf that keeps you coming back and hooked.”
In addition to offering a great social life and keeping you fit, Athill said there are other important life lessons to be learnt from playing golf.
“It teaches you about yourself,” the Co-Chair and host of the inaugural TEDx Antigua in 2015 noted. “If you are an angry person, it will come out on that golf course. You will hit bad shots all the time and that anger will come out. If you are someone who is hard on yourself, which is something I can identify with, that comes out on the course. I have high expectations for myself and if I don’t play well, I don’t get angry or mad. Instead, I get down on myself and golf shows you that maybe this is an area in your life that you need to work on.”
Always willing to give back to her birth country, Athill joined travel agency professionals on the links at the Royal Ontario Golf Course in Milton on July 13 for the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA) annual golf day.
The Antigua & Barbuda Tourism Authority was the major destination sponsor.
“The people that were on my team had already been to Antigua, so they were very supportive and wonderful and just loved singing the praises of the island,” Athill said. “I was really grateful to play with people who understood where I came from and could relate to everything I talked about. I had a great time.”
After her call to the Bar of England Wales 12 years ago, she did a six-month Legal Education Certificate conversion course at the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, interned with the Caribbean Court of Justice, was called to the Antigua & Barbuda Bar and received a Fulbright Student Scholarship to pursue a Master of Laws at Georgetown University Law Centre.
Back in Antigua, Athill spent five years as an Associate with Lake & Kentish, specializing in civil litigation, constitutional law and human rights. She actively sought to represent victims of domestic and sexual-based violence, police brutality, death row prisoners and members of the LGBTQ community.
The former Halo Foundation Legal Adviser & Executive Member fell in love with Canada after spending 25 months in Montreal between 2017 and 2019 as a Jean Sauve Public Leadership Fellow and Visiting Graduate Researcher.
“I liked the mixture of Europe and North America that Montreal provides,” said the 2015 Caribbean-Canada Emerging Leaders Dialogue Fellow. “We have family here and so my husband and I made the decision to move to pursue life here.”
Amaya Athill has been playing golf since age five (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Before making the transition, she was an Antigua & Barbuda Legal Aid & Advice Centre Legal Counsel for four months until October 2019 before flying back to England to work as a Legal Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Qualifying for the Bar of Ontario, said Athill, was extremely challenging.
“I had to balance life working, studying and moving to Canada to start a new life,” the 2014 International Monetary Fund Civil Society Fellow pointed out. “I was a full-time student as I was preparing for my exams to get on the Bar in England & Wales and Antigua & Barbuda. That meant I could focus all my time and energy on that. The process of converting over was expensive and arduous. I had to assess my degrees which cost money and pay for study material for the seven exams I took while working a full-time job in England. All of this was happening during the pandemic.”
Amaya Athill was called to the Bar of Ontario in June (Photo contributed)
Athill, who passed her final exam last March and was called to the Bar of Ontario on June 23rd, has no immediate plans to practice law in the province.
“I am just going to enjoy golf this summer and continue working with First Tee,” she added.
