Has there ever been a better time to be a female Tasmanian athlete?

Just  a few hours apart on Saturday, Northern Hawks hosted Arrows in the Tasmanian Netball League grand final at the Silverdome before Launceston Tornadoes traveled to Bendigo’s appropriately-named Bendigo Stadium for the SEABL conference final.

On the same day, UTAS Stadium was completing its hosting of the national university women’s rugby sevens tournament in which Australia’s Olympic gold medal winners helped inspire the next generation of players.

Meanwhile, back across Bass Strait and about 250 kilometres east of Tasmania’s best performing basketballers, the state’s top female cyclists were also shooting goals, and somewhat more successfully.

Led by multiple junior world champion Macey Stewart and national and continental junior champion Madeleine Fasnacht, the TIS Racing outfit achieved the best ever result by a Tasmanian team in the National Road Series.

Stewart and teammate Lauren Perry are being lined up for a reunion with Olympians Georgia Baker and Amy Cure as Tasmania seeks to regain its national women’s team pursuit title with all four also eyeing off next year’s Commonwealth Games.

The morning after being graced by the country’s best young rugby players, the versatile UTAS Stadium was playing host to some of the state’s best young footballers.

The Northern Tasmanian Junior Football Association staged five grand finals and chairman Dale Fraser said the most noticeable change of dynamic this year has been the number of girls competing.

He said the overall total of about 1800 participants had seen the number of boys remaining stable but girls showing significant growth on the back of the successful inaugural season of the AFLW.

From basketball and netball to cycling and football, Tasmania has the facilities and structure to nurture young sporting talent of either gender.

Its set-ups in such Olympic disciplines as rowing, hockey and mountain biking are among the finest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Just last week, elected members of our state government and city council staged a photocall having jointly pledged $1 million to upgrade Launceston’s Churchill Park.

Undoubtedly the finest junior soccer venue in Tasmania, the investment was about a decade overdue, but let’s run with it and put up with cheesy photos of middle-aged men kicking balls around in leather shoes and ties.

Maybe this might be an opportune time to point out that Hoblers Bridge could do with similar car parking assistance. As has been the case at Churchill Park, excitable children with thoughts only of sport and irritable parents targeting limited parking spots is a dangerous cocktail, especially when runaway balls are also thrown in.

When it’s not staging netball grand finals, the Silverdome was the venue that helped launch the careers of Stewart, Cure, Baker, Perry and before them world champions Matt Goss and Mark Jamieson.

Athletics tracks from Hobart Domain to Penguin via St Leonards have helped produce a steady stream of national track and field representatives while Tasmanians have reached recent Olympic Games in such diverse sporting pursuits as boxing, judo, softball, kayaking, triathlon and weightlifting.

As our basketballers, netballers, cyclists and even rugby players showed this week, there are just as many sporting opportunities for Tasmanian girls as boys.

The likes of Exeter basketballer Tayla Roberts, Perth cyclist Georgia Baker and Launceston United soccer player Emily Heazlewood have proven that doors open when dedication meets talent.

Equal pay at the elite level may take a little longer however.