Bourne wins national PLx Award

Darcy Bourne named winner of Social Impact Award at the UK Sport PLx Awards for her work across her charity Raising Her Game and Beyond our Game.

The annual event was hosted in Leeds, where nine award winners from the sector across Olympic and Paralympic sports were celebrated by their peers. 

The Social Impact Award recognises the sport, staff or athlete that has had a positive impact on their community.  

Bourne founded ‘Raising her Game’ which works to improve diversity and representation in women’s sports by focusing on the grassroots. By breaking down barriers to sports participation she has helped create spaces for girls of all backgrounds to feel welcome, safe and inspired in hockey, rugby and football. 

On her award, she said: “Honestly, I’m a bit shocked – this award means so much. We’re such a young charity so to be recognised for an award like this, I’m feeling very proud, grateful and excited for our future. 

"We’ve achieved more than we hoped to at this point and we’ve had so many girls come down to camp who say they’ve never played a sport outside of school before. This shows what is possible when you take away barriers and put positive female role models in place. 

"At the moment, we’re trying to figure out how we can keep growing and scale up – the need is there and the model is working. The Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community came together to celebrate a year of extraordinary sporting moments at the 2025 PLx Awards." 

The Awards are part of PLx, the annual conference for leaders from the high-performance community to connect, collaborate and learn. The 2025 PLx Awards were hosted by decorated Paralympians Stef Reid MBE and Emma Wiggs.