Where Are The Women Coaches?

I never thought about how few female head coaches there are until our discussion in class. However, after hearing the statistics of fewer than 17% of both male and female teams have a female head coach I felt inequality. Why is it that I grew up with expecting all my coaches to be men? Why should I assume that a man would know the best strategies for woman's sport? My experience with male head coaches started when I first began playing. My coaches were always Fathers of other girls on the team. I also assumed it was ever Fathers' dream to teach their child to play sports, but how come Mothers did not share this dream? The Mothers were the team mom or score keeper as if they would know enough to actually coach a team to victory. Based on my experiences with coaches, I have always viewed male coaches to be great leaders for female athletes. They were loud, aggressive, and knowledgable of the game. I never had any issues being assigned male coaches over female. I believe this is a serious problem that young girls are fed from when they first start playing. All of their coaches are male and they have good experiences with them, not that could have got the same coaching ability from a female. The young girls get use to having male coaches and do not argue for the opportunity for a female head coach. This also feeds into girls do not experiencing great female coaches, so they do not pictures themselves being a great coach in the future. Our discussion in class brought up several other great explanations for the shortage of female coaches. One that particularly caught my attention was female head coaches are labeled to be gay or constantly under stress about defending their sexuality. This is just adds to the reason woman do not grow up thinking they want to be coach for a living. It is a sad reality that I hope woman can change in the future.

Gennifer Kluver

KIN 338I 9:30-10:45