One Winnipeg high school will have something the other teams don’t this year — new customized sport hijabs with their team logos.
Last year, then-student and basketball player at Dakota Collegiate high school Amina Mohamed came up with the idea to look for alternative hijab options when a referee thought her hijab might be unsafe because of the pin holding it together.
“With the help of my principal and my coaches we decided to come up with this idea and create this alternative for what Muslim women can wear without being uncomfortable,” Mohamed told CBC.
While Amina is now a student at the University of Manitoba, her younger sister, Nusaybah, still attends the high school and will be given the option to wear a sporty hijab when she plays basketball.
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Dakota Collegiate isn’t the first school to provide a sports hijab — a Montreal all-girls school reportedly did as early as 2009.
How great is this? Our newest addition to our Lancer wear ...Sport Hijab with our Lancer logo! Go Lancers! pic.twitter.com/vWVXMIgpk4
— Dakota Collegiate (@dciLRSD) October 13, 2017
While the school’s basketball coach Eric Sung said that his varsity players never had issues wearing their hijabs during games, he also pointed out that the International Basketball Federation had banned religious headgear in games until this past summer.
The new hijab, made by a designer from Minneapolis, is black and gold with a Dakota Lancers logo on it, and it is lightweight and versatile.
Nike has also created a sports hijab, which was unveiled earlier this year, and was met
Nusaybah said she's proud of what her sister did for Muslim athletes.
“I feel like it will encourage people to want to play sports more knowing that there is something for them,” she told CBC.
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