One Sport Voice

Best Buy Speaker Series.

The Title IX Speaker Series, Presented by Best Buy®, centers around conversations with local and national leaders representing a wide variety of industries and communities. The speakers will share how Title IX legislation impacted their opportunities and how it continues to influence their worlds today and into the future.

July 21, 2021. The State of Women’s Sports; 50 Years and Counting, a conversation with Dr. Nicole LaVoi, The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport; Lisa Lissimore, Minnesota State High School League; and Jen Flowers, Western Collegiate Hockey Association;, moderated by Lea B. Olsen, Minnesota Lynx

Recently I presented data for the BreakThrough Summit 2021

Breakout Session: Women Coach Data

Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, will share new data from the most recent Women in Coaching Report Card—compiled from 357 schools within NCAA Div. I conferences—including new research around women coaches of color. Additionally, Dr. LaVoi will share strategies on how all of us can play a part in continuing to increase the number of women in coaching positions across all levels.

Game On: Women Can Coach toolkit

I recently had a chat with Sergio Lara-Bercial for the ICOACHKIDS conference 2021 about girls and women in sport. (15mns)

I got to talk with Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports on her podcast Token CEO.

Listen to our conversation & why we are both pissed off. (~17mns in)

Listen to three seasons of Tucker Center Talks, a bi-monthly podcast I host, produced by WISP Sports. This podcast is a place where I talk to, amplify, and support my female colleagues—amazing women who study sport and gender. We let the data tell the story, and talk about our research and ways we are changing the world, through the context of sport.

The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota released its annual Women in College Coaching Report Card (WCCRC) in collaboration with WeCOACH. The report documents the percentage of women in all coaching positions for women’s teams at NCAA Division-I institutions.

Key Findings:

• The percentage of D-I women Head Coaches went up and is now at 42.3% (up from 42.1% in 2018-19)—the data is trending in the right direction! but is remarkably stagnant.
• LEADERS for Percentage of Women Head Coaches of Women Teams
  • Institutional leader: Tennessee State (85.7%)
  • Conference leader: Ivy League (52.4%)
  • Sport leader: Wrestling (100%), NCAA emerging sport
• The majority (52.7%) of the 442 head coach hires were men. 
• As the coaching position became more visible, lucrative and powerful, fewer women occupied the position. (i.e., from Graduate Assistant to Head Coach to Director of Sport)
• Starting at the Assistant Coach position, men are statistically and significantly older than women and are more likely to have children. 
• Based on the data, we identified that the Assistant Coach is a critical zone of attrition in the career pipeline for women, possibly due in part to parental status. This report identifies leaks in the pipeline and opportunities for policy, support and programming.
• Very few coaches at any position (42 of 10,697) are openly gay within their online biographies, indicating that homophobia is prevalent within college athletics.
• The culture of college sport privileges heterosexual men with children. Coaching, like many occupations, is gendered. Much work remains to ensure all women, regardless of identity, feel safe, valued and supported.

To read the full WCCRC and to see which institutions, sports and conferences receive passing and failing grades, and read more about factors that contribute to the leaky pipeline visit TuckerCenter.org

In this episode, I talk to Matea Wasend, my former School of Kinesiology MS student in sport sociology, Tucker Center research assistant, two-time recipient of the Tucker Center‘s Pam Borton Fellowship, and inaugural recipient of the Erin Reifsteck Student Paper of the Year award from the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal (WSPAJ). Matea received the WSPAJ award for her publication, “Are women coached by women more likely to become sport coaches? Head coach gender and female collegiate athletes’ entry into the coaching profession,” which in WSPAJ vol 27, issue 2. To honor Matea’s work, her winning article has been given open access for the coming year. The podcast highlights how Matea came up with the idea, what she did, and what she found.

Listen to this episode of Tucker Center Talks here.

In October 2019, I gave a keynote, “Girls and Women in Sport: Research to Practice” at the Sport Canada Research Initiative (SCRI) Conference which brought together sport researchers and practitioners from across Canada.

I outline three lines of research we do in the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, why and how I decide to do which research projects, and the importance of public scholarship.