American football and masculinity go hand in hand. Young boys are taught from the very beginning of their childhood that tough men play football. Typically the coaches sending the messages about manliness and teaching them how to play football are commonly men themselves. A common belief is that it takes a man to raise a man. However, for Calvin Coolidge High in Washington DC their head football coach is female. Natalie Randolph has undertaken the responsibility to teach high school boys not only how to play football but to help them become men on and off the field.
So why has it taken so long for a woman to become a head football coach and why is it such a big and surprising story. Coach Randolph along with many other women in the popluation have just as much experience and knowledge in football as well as coaching experience as their male counterparts. Males coach female sports and it is not uncommon. Are males capable of teaching females how to be athletes and women any better than female coaches can teach males? Gender should not play a role in jobs other than coaching, if a person is qualified for the position they should receive that position and coaching should not be any different. Maybe females have not necesarily taken the steps to push to become football coaches but if women have the desire to coach a sport dominated by males they should learn from Natalie Randolph and push for the jobs they want regardless of socieites idea about gender and coaching. Women are capable but are enough willing to help change the tide and make female football coaches more common?
Marc R.
kin 338
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2 comments:
American football revolves around big, fit, and fast men hitting eachother out on a field. The common ideology of women playing football with men is that women are physically incapable of competing on the same level as these men, so the idea of a woman coaching a team she cannot physically relate to in size and strength vexes us greatly. This is why so much attention has been brought to this female high school coach. A way for this trend to catch on is if she does well with her boys, creating a means for keeping her job and allowing for other job opportunities for females. In the past, there was a time where female coaches outnumbered male coaches, and as females continued to succeed with their teams, males slowly took over the teams to reap the rewards. However, now women are starting to move in on the already successful male coaches, so now maybe there will be a cultural shift in the opposite direction from what happened before.
kin 332I.S3200
Briana R
In most sports departments, the male ego is strong. In class, we have talked about Title IX and other issues revolving women and sports and it was brought up that there are a number of women who want to coach athletic coaching positions but were denied when a male applied for the job. Most of the athletic directors are female and therefore, as a form of self reliance for the male gender, they hire males. Also, there was the fact brought up that females are generally viewed as the weaker sex, which makes them less likely to be seen as an authority figure for their players, or at least that is the claim.
Women do have the drive to become athletic coaches in many different sports they simply have the “female reputation” holding them back. Though the number of female coaches has increased over the years, there is still a huge number of men who get the job simply because they are a man. As we discussed in class, the male gender, particularly the white male, has presented itself as the majority in American society. This places them in a position of power that they are unwilling to give up. Time has increased the number of females that have entered into the athletic workforce but that is because the men who believed them to be fundamentally weaker have begun to leave the workforce.
I believe that there are a number of coaches out there that are interested in those positions but they simply need to be given the chance.
Charley Merrow
Kin338I S3017
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