Monday, October 11, 2010

Women Coaching....Football? Yes!

Click here for the article about Natalie Randolph from ESPN's outside the lines.

3 comments:

Kerrie Kauer said...

I am sure that to many of my peers as well as me, this course has been an eye opener in regards to the struggles of women in sport. Reading the article about Natalie Randolph, She’s the One, “named the head football coach of Calvin Coolidge Senior High School in Washington, D.C., making her what is believed to be the only female varsity football head coach in the nation,” and Just Do It…What? Sport, Bodies and Gender, a reading assigned to the class, made it even clearer of how intertwined women’s success in sport is with male dominance. Both of these articles show how woman’s participation and growing triumph with gaining equity and recognition in masculine sports is a paradox of their accomplishments. It seems that there is much more opportunity for women because of Title IX and many have managed to meet up to professional, spectator attracting levels but all under the control of men. Men are the ones who train then elite female athletes and they push them to reflect the valued characteristics of male sports such as aggression and competitiveness. In the end, it all falls back to that hierarchal order where men control women’s sport. As for Randolph, would it be a big deal if she were head coach of a women’s team instead? The media attention is in part due to the fact that she is a female in the so called “man’s world”.
-Pearl Q
Kin338I sec.1 9:30 Tue/thurs

Corey Nagle said...

Agreed! After reading the articles it is evident that a women can handle a job such as a varsity football coach. However, it is extremely sad to not that women are controlled so often by men and how men would perform a particular task. Just like Pearl states, women have been living in the "man's world" and it has affected the way women have been treated throughout history in sport. Title IX does seem to give women more of an opportunity to speak out more in sport, but it is then up to the women to follow those steps. It is sad that most women today pretty much take for granted that they are not welcome in coaching any type of men's sports so they stay away from that aspect of sport. This is just the way society today has built sport and how it is perceived on a high level today.

Anonymous said...

Woman's participation in sports is higher than ever, yet the percentage of women coaching men is not as high. Sport’s has been traditionally male dominance as many societies view male coaching male athletes as most favorable. Male athletic directors overlook female coaches when it comes to getting hire. Female coaches at times deal with resistance, experience discrimination and have to work harder to appear competent to male coaches. As we have seen Natalie Randolph has proven to be competent enough to coach football.
Natalie Randolph is “believed to be the nation's only female head coach of a high school varsity football team.” By winning her first football game as a head coach she has proven that she is capable of coaching the football team as any male coach. One of the hardest parts for female coaches that coach sports like these is having to deal with the media being criticize if they are right for the job, if there though enough and the end results of the job. We have seen male coaches coach women why can’t it be the other way around women coaching male teams. We would like to see more female coaches coach more male athletic teams. It doesn’t matter if you are a female or male coach as long as you motivate your players, communicate with them, develop their sport skills and have quality practices the do job can still be done.
Faviola Pitones
Kinn 338i 9:30 Tu-Th