"I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore."

No, this isn’t a piece where I reveal I haven’t been entirely truthful about my gender.

These lyrics from Helen Reddy’s famous song are a pretty apt description of the fairer sex’s dominance of the Caloundra RSL 2007 Sunshine Coast Sports Star of the Year awards at Hyatt Regency Coolum on Friday night.

I also apologise to Amy Remeikis, too, if this is intruding on her ‘Girl Talk’ turf.

Women took out the two major awards of the night, the senior and junior sports star of the year awards, with Maroochydore swimmer Melanie Schlanger and teenage lawn bowler Kelsey Cottrell respectively getting the nod from the judges.

The senior bursary was taken out by rower Sascha Lahey, softballer Jocelyn McCallum won the senior encouragement award while sprinter Jane Larkin claimed the junior equivalent.

Seven of the 13 nominees for the Senior Sports Star of the Year award were female. Ditto in the junior award.

Sure, the blokes won their fair share of awards too, but Cottrell and Schlanger’s wins highlighted that our top female athletes deserve equal accolades be bestowed upon them.

Because most of the major sports in Australia (cricket, the football codes, etc) are male-dominated, female athletes sometimes find it tough to attract media coverage.

Only when there is an element of sex appeal, for instance in the Australian Open women’s final between Ana Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova last weekend (if I hear one more journalist call it the ‘glam slam’ one more time, I will fair dinkum punch them in the mouth) do journalists and cameramen start jostling for the best vantage point.

All those blokes out there, hands up who would have even heard of glamorous golfer Natalie Gulbis if she wasn’t, well, glamorous?

Anna Kournikova and Michelle Wie are squillionaires, but would probably be living in a cardboard box if they weren’t gorgeous.

While we could possibly print a few more women’s sport stories in this paper, it is my firm belief that our sports department is ahead of most media organisations in this category.

The Daily’s sports editor Paul Munnings has a fairly big say on which athletes are nominated for the awards each month.

As outlined earlier, 14 of the 26 nominated were female.

As I said, we could do more, but to do that we need some help from our readers.

Because women’s sport, rightly or wrongly, isn’t as mainstream as men’s sport, we need you guys to bring prospective stories to our attention.