Tess Howard brings her passion, hard work and ‘stand up for what you believe in’ ethos to the field hockey pitch as a forward for Team GB. An environmentalist since, well, birth (we’ll explain later), Howard is excited to take those qualities to the EcoAthletes Champions squad.

“Becoming an EcoAthletes Champion gives me the agency, the backing to speak out on environmental issues,” she shared. “It is fundamentally necessary for athletes to lead on climate. We don’t have time to wait. The climate crisis is not a nature problem, it’s a people problem. Athletes can influence lots of people so that’s why I’m looking forward as a Champion to working hard to inspire fans and others to evolve behavior and take climate action.”

Hard work has been a hallmark of Howard’s character on the field hockey pitch since she first discovered the sport as a youngster in Cambridge, England.

“I first played rugby but back when I was a kid, they didn’t let girls continue to play after the age of 11,” Howard recalled. “So, I tried field hockey and loved it right away. Soon, I became obsessed. I wanted to show the coaches that I was a hard worker who would be the best teammate possible.”

Like many talented, adolescent athletes trying to move up a competitive pyramid, she experienced trials and tribulations that might have prompted others to quit.

Not Tess Howard.

“When I was 14, I reached the final stage trials for the England Under 16s team,” she offered. “It was challenging, and I wasn’t ready. But after that disappointment I was offered the chance to join an England Academy Centre. It was here where I learned how to train. It’s likely that my commitment to training hard with purpose gave me an edge and helped me climb the ranks of Junior hockey from U16s to U18s to U21s in three years, winning Bronze at two Junior European tournaments.”

After her first year studying Geography at Durham University, Howard won England Hockey’s Junior Player of the Year: “It took me by surprise, but I started to build a little more confidence through the summer playing an U23 Great Britain tournament, but if I’m being honest, senior hockey was never a dream for me as a junior.” 

Everything changed for Howard when she watched the 2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup in London: “At home, the huge crowd, the hockey buzz. I watched England play Holland in the quarter final and I felt butterflies throughout my body. I realized in one moment that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to play at the World Cup. To my surprise, just three months later, I received a phone call offering me trials for the senior team. A month later I was on a plane to China for my debut tournament!”

China was a baptism of fire for Howard. She was 19, didn’t really know her teammates at all – with six being members of Great Britain’s iconic 2016 Olympic gold medal-winning team. But her mindset was to try to be herself within the team and “just play” for all the reasons she had played before.

Team GB’s confidence grew over a challenging transition period and secured Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualification at the end of 2019. Howard, who was building a reputation as an exciting attacking forward, and rest of the team looked forward to a very exciting summer.

The Pandemic had other ideas, shutting down hockey and of course, forcing the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021. After building momentum through the end of 2020 and early 2021, Howard looked in a strong position to make the Olympic roster that would defend its gold medal.

One-hundred days before the Olympics, this all changed. During a training session in April 2021, Howard suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her knee. Howard faced reconstruction surgery and 12 months of rehabilitation. With her Tokyo dream broken, she had to flip the switch to focus on rehab.

“It was incredibly hard, the biggest challenge I’ve faced,” admitted Howard. “Rehab is lonely, it is relentless, and it is the ultimate test of how much you want something. I battled the waves of grief, but I focused on my rehab and my studies, working harder than ever. In early May 2022, 13 months after the injury, I was selected for the England team against Germany. I felt strong, ready, and raring to go. It was an epic return match, where we beat Germany for the first time since 2017 and to add to a very special day, I made it onto the scoreboard.  The following week I shared my first home match with my mum, which was incredibly special given all she did to support my rehab.”

Now, Howard and the English national team are making final preparations for the Commonwealth Games next month in Birmingham, England. And, at the same time, she is beginning her #ClimateComeback journey as an EcoAthletes Champion.

That Tess Howard is taking on this challenge makes perfect sense, as growing up she was exposed to her South African parents’ passion for wildlife and nature. She and her siblings were fortunate to spend time travelling through southern Africa and south-east Asia as a family, grasping the complexity and wonder of the natural world. Mom Pippa is a leading conservation innovator at the intersection of biodiversity and business, currently working for Fauna & Flora International.

“My mum’s ardor for nature has rubbed-off on me and my siblings. It’s not only her compassion for nature and other human beings, but the fire inside her to action change,” Howard offered. “Having a front-row seat to her work was hugely inspiring for all of us. In fact, both my brothers are involved in environmental science.”

Howard has had a burning desire to ‘action change’, rather than wait and hope for years.

“When I was 13, I noticed our school didn’t have recycling bins. I went to the administration and eventually got them in every classroom,” she noted. But I noticed despite the separate bins, the refuse was put in the same black bin at the end of the week. Again, I went to the administration, but they said wasn’t their responsibility. In response, every Friday, I persuaded my friends to help me collect all the recycling across the school. It led me, at 15, to launch the school’s first ‘Green Team’ that would be responsible for recycling and other greening initiatives. I am very proud that it is still going and has grown enormously popular at the school.”

Howard’s environmental activism continued at Durham University where she majored in human geography, the study of how humans relate to the earth, with a strong interest in the confluence of feminism and environmentalism. Alongside writing academic papers, she enjoys expressing her passion through writing slam poetry pieces.

Her appetite for change making was further sparked in 2020 by her dissertation, ‘School Sport Uniforms: Practical, Professional or Patriarchal?’, and focused on how impractical, hyper-feminized uniforms impact girls in sport, causing high dropout rates.

“The results were overwhelming,” reported Howard, “70 percent of women said they knew girls who left sport due to uncomfortable sports kit.”

Her study won ‘Durham University’s Best Dissertation Prize for Geography’ and was adapted into a double-page spread in The Telegraph last September, asking schools to evolve their uniform policies to support girls to stay in sport.

That year also saw Howard take part in the Women’s Sports Trust Unlocked program. It paired an athlete with a ‘mentor’, helping the former find their voice, story, and agency.

“My mentor was Suzy Levy of the British Home Office,” she said. “She instantly gave me the confidence to chase my goal to redesign and evolve school uniform and sportswear policies to aid inclusion and participation, to leave behind discriminatory gendered traditions.” Fast forward two years and England Hockey is launching new rigorously inclusive uniform regulations.

This experience showed Howard the power of her voice and that, if she put in the effort, she could help foster positive change, on gender equality and on climate: “At one Women’s Sport Trust meeting, I listened as Katie Rood, a footballer from New Zealand who plays for Southampton, spoke of the importance of putting our voices to both social issues and climate issues. It resonated with me, because for too long I had felt helpless, not knowing where to start to both lower my carbon footprint and to speak out on climate action.”

With COP26 and Extinction Rebellion recently taking place in Howard’s backyard, her sense of urgency about the need for climate action rose exponentially.

“Climate is not a passion-project for me,” she declared. “It is frightening and the greatest challenge facing our planet. The more I read, listen, and learn, the more I know I have to speak out, change my lifestyle and commit wholeheartedly. Knowing we are not alone, that there is the incredible network of EcoAthlete Champions and that we are collectively going to help change the narrative is incredibly motivating and inspiring. I am hugely excited to begin this journey with EcoAthletes. Let’s get to work!”

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