coaches – Page 3 – One Sport Voice

July 23, 2009

A strange day in the world of sport media

You know how people claim “bad things happen in threes” well after the last 24 hours of things I’ve seen and read in the sport media, I believe it!

1. “The Erin Andrews Peep Show” which if you haven’t heard about by now, then you’re not reading or watching the sport media (To read about what happened and the critical analysis “it” go to the Sports, Media, & Society blog, After Atlanta blog, or a post on Feministing.com titled “A long History of Objectifying Erin Andrews”.) Unfortunately as After Atlanta points out, nearly 20 years ago we had the Lisa Olson “incident” in the Patriots’ locker room, which documents a long history of sexual harassment and objectification of female sport journalists who dare to cover and/or write about male athletes. What I found almost as irksome is the public’s reaction to USA Today sport columnist Christine Brennan’s tweets (@cbrennansports) about the issue in which she said female sport journalists shouldn’t “play to the frat boys” but write or respond as if she were talking to a “12 year old girl sitting on her couch.” Brennan’s remarks were misconstrued and she herself was called “sexist”. Anyone who knows or has followed Christine Brennan knows this is ridiculous! But on the flip side, as Marie Hardin (one of the leading experts on media & gender) points out, female sport journalists in her research often play the blame game when a female colleague is discriminated against. However, which ever side you fall, I think much of the public response to Brennan was yet another example of the sanctioning of female sport journalists…in part, the the traffic over both these issues crashed the server at Women Talk Sports! Even that is sad…that BAD and icky news about women’s sport and female sport journalists have people searching those terms and THEN click upon Women Talk Sports.

2. Then I read on the @womentalksports Twitter an unedited USOC headline: “Can an Olympic athlete be a pimp?” The first line of the story reads, “A lot of women will need to have a lot of sex with a lot of men to get Logan Campbell to the 2012 Olympic Games.Yes, you read that right. Campbell, to cut a long story short, is a New Zealand taekwondo athlete who has opened a brothel to finance his ambition of winning an Olympic medal in London…He has more than a dozen women handing over half their earnings to him. It is, in his words, ‘a good moneymaking industry.’ ” I think this story speaks for itself, but the most disturbing part as it pertains to sport media is that the story was ON THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE U.S. OLYMPIC COMMITTEE.

3. And to round out the trifecta of sexist sport stories, an article about Bernadette Locke Mattox one of only three women in NCAA history to have coached in Division I men’s basketball. “Cool!”, I thought given my research on the dearth of female coaches at all levels….and then I read it. Rick Pitino hired Mattox because “he needed a woman to burnish the image of Kentucky basketball and to emphasize academics, career planning and integrity,” and the assistants reported she smelled good….but “she was just one of the guys.” You leave the article feeling like Pitino hired a pseudo-mother for “his boys” and her pioneering position and obvious skill as a coach were lost. This type of blatant gender bias in sport media is one of the many contributing factors as to why coaching men remains off limits to women at all levels (~2-4% of boys and men are coached by females at every level) and female coaches are routinely perceived as less competent than their male counterparts according to research.

Tomorrow is a new day….

July 8, 2009

Women Coaching Sports: A New Educational Series

Currently I am working on developing the first Women Coaching Sports workshop. Research shows female athletes who have never been coached by a female often believe that male coaches are more competent than female coaches. In the absence of female coaches and role models, female athletes may devalue their own abilities, accept negative stereotypes, fail to realize their potential, or consider coaching as a viable career path. In addition, research indicates that coaches cite formalized mentoring as the most important factor in their acquisition and development of coaching knowledge and expertise. Less than 20% of all youth sport coaches are female, and many female coaches face personal, familial and structural barriers that prevent or impede them from entering and remaining in coaching.

To help address these barriers, I’m developing an educational series for women who coach sports at the youth and interscholastic levels. Some of the curriculum utilizes ideas from youth sport mother-coaches I interviewed as part of a research initiative. The series mirrors the NACWAA/HERS Institute for collegiate coaches and administrators.

The purpose of the Women Coaching Sports workshop series is threefold:
1. To provide cutting-edge, research-based educational workshops for females who coach at the interscholastic and youth levels
2. To provide an opportunity for female coaches to build community, network, and develop on-going support for each other throughout their coaching tenures
3. To attract, develop, retain and empower diverse female coaches

The series is a collaborative outreach project of two entities at the University of Minnesota—the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and the Minnesota Youth Sport Research Consortium.

I would love to hear your ideas about content to include in the workshop series or ideas you may have. Stay tuned for more information about this exciting venture!

June 22, 2009

The Role of Fathers in the Lives of Youth Athletes

A great deal of research outlines how important father’s are in the lives of their child athletes. Here is a quick summary five positive findings (there are many more of course!):

1. Fathers typically take on the direct and active roles in sport-i.e. “the coach”. Fathers are the majority of coaches in youth sport and by most recent estimates, fathers comprise 80% of more of all youth sport coaches.
2. Fathers can be important active role models for their children. Active dads increase the likelihood of active kids.
3. Fathers’ values, beliefs, & expectations greatly influence the actives lives of their children. For example, children’s perceptions of their father’s beliefs in their sport ability can predict the child’s belief in their own abilities. This is important because children who feel competent and perceive they are good at sport, are more likely to keep playing!
4. When fathers focus on the learning and enjoyment inherent in (most) youth sport, children are more likely to stay in sport, demonstrate better sportsmanship, worry less, and have more fun.
5. Most of all sport provides a meaningful opportunity for fathers to spend quality time with their children in a context most children love and enjoy!

For some great information about the role of fathers in the lives of their children, check out The Dad Man-a.k.a Joe Kelly-who also writes a blog called Dads & Daughters.

For a summary of research on the influence of sport parents in the lives of girls, including fathers, you can download a free copy of The 2007 Tucker Center Research Report: Developing Physically Active Girls (see pages 26-28).

Happy Father’s Day and thanks to all the dads who positively influence their own and other people’s children in youth sport contexts.

June 16, 2009

A Sign of Things to Come?: Recent Departures in Women’s Basketball

I’ve read about three recent occurrences that have me thinking. While two may be related, all three may be a sign of things to come. I’m talking about the recent departures of two male WNBA Head Coaches “to pursue possibilities in the NBA” and the second-ever early departure of Rutger’s Epiphanny Prince to “play basketball professionally in Europe before entering the 2010 W.N.B.A. draft” (Schuye LaRue was the first-ever woman to leave early from Virginia after her sophomore year in 2001 to go play abroad before getting drafted in the second round by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2003…thanks @hoopfeed!)

Successful Bill Laimbeer left the Detroit Shock after three games, and the not so successful Don Zierden left the Minnesota Lynx three days before their home opener to return to coaching in the NBA. While WNBA league officials and the departing coaches were assuring fans their departures were not a sign of trouble for the league, I’m not so convinced. I hope I’m wrong. What it does signal is that despite your success as a male coach in the WNBA, you can still get “called up” or return to the NBA. Would a successful—or better yet an unsuccessful—female coach ever get the same call? (maybe if your name is Pat Summitt, but I’m pretty sure that one’s gender is not a predictor of effective coaching so in theory many women should get said call)

As for Prince forgoing her senior year of ball at Rutgers to play professionally…One one hand, why not go and start making money immediately?—males have been doing it for years as has been pointed out. Prince states she “plans to buy her mother a house and support an A.A.U. team in Brooklyn”, so the move seems to be primarily financially motivated. On the other hand now that the seal is broken, will droves of other young women follow suit maybe never to return to finish their degrees? (and I’m not saying Prince won’t finish, but highlighting the possibility). Is this a trend we want female athletes to perpetuate? In essence, Prince’s move is no different than those of Laimbeer or Zierden….all three are leaving one basketball team, to pursue what is perceived as a better, bigger, and more lucrative opportunity with another team.

I’m not sure if this collective trend signals a sign of the times or is a sign of things to come….or both. And if it is of things to come….what “things” are we really talking about?

Update: To read more about various perspectives about Laimbeer click here or here.

To read more about what Gina Auriemma says about Prince’s departure, click here or read Altavilla’s blog. The NY Times also weighs in with an article titled “She’s Turning Pro, but Is It Progress?”

June 2, 2009

What if the athletes were boys, not girls?

In a previous blog, I wrote about a male soccer coach in Minnesota who had his U12 elite girls’ team throw a game to the U13 girls’ team in the same club (Minnesota Thunder Academy).

A great MN female youth soccer coach I emailed with has a great point about this scenario. She writes,

“Could you imagine if a coach had told a team of highly competitive boys to purposely throw a semi-final game to get an invitation to go on to a regional tournament? I believe people would be outraged – I definitely don’t think the sentiment would be “ Let’s move on, we have learned from the mistake.” This team he asked to purposely lose is a hand picked, highly skilled, immensely competitive group of girls and he asked them to bow out of a game – and most people seem to be okay with it! I can pretty much guarantee this would have NEVER happened if this was a boys team. I am not even touching on the fact that this was against any and all spoken/unspoken rules regarding coaching ethics. I am very concerned that a coach of his caliber would have his girls team lose on purpose because it was the “classy thing to do” – I ask myself would he have done this if he was coaching boys? That question hasn’t even come up in the communities because, I am saddened to say, I think most people still look at girls sports on a different level than boys. The playing field definitely does not seem to be level.”

Well said Coach!

May 25, 2009

How Not to Coach Soccer: A Lesson From Minnesota

When I’m not writing about gender, the other part of my research, teaching and outreach pertains to youth sport—mainly studying and trying to improve sport parent sideline behavior, and helping coaches be more effective. When a story broke last week about a Minnesota club soccer team, many of my colleagues and former students forwarded the story link to me which got quite a bit of press here in Minnesota and around the country.

In short, two of the Minnesota Thunder Academy (MTA) teams played each other in the State Cup final to see who would advance to the Regionals—it was the 12-and-under girls v. the 13-and-under girls. The game ended with penalty kicks, when Coach Abboud asked the younger girls to pass the ball nicely to the opposing keeper, in essence throwing the game to the older U-13 team, instead of taking the penalty kicks to win the game. Chaos, tears, frustration, confusion, emergency meetings at all levels, commentary, opinions, anger, a public apology from Abboud, and parental support for the coach ensued. To read all the details go to, the Inside Minnesota Soccer article, the Star Tribune article, and Coach Mark Abboud’s own contrition on his blog.

Let me put this incident into a broader context of youth sport trends. The MTA is one of the most elite of soccer clubs, for “serious soccer players”, meaning they hand pick the best kids from other clubs around the state. In fact, the MTA girls recently joined the inaugural Eilte Clubs National League…yes, “national” league for 13-year-olds.

Some would argue this type of sport club is the poster child for everything that is wrong with youth sports-specialization, not developmentally appropriate, a win at all cost philosophy, year-round training, privatization, overuse injuries, burnout due to high stress and anxiety, dropout, overzealous parents, highly paid coaches with big egos, treating children like “mini-professional” athletes, and highly structured and governed adult-run clubs and organizations (to name a few).

Sport provides many “teachable moments”. Good coaches teach athletes to give full effort, focus on what they can control, treat opponents with respect regardless of the situation, and accept the outcome with grace. One decision by a coach does have an impact on everyone involved, and this is a cautionary tale of how not to coach because, simply put, it taught the wrong lessons. In soccer terms, this coach deserves a red card, and possibly more severe sanctions.

P.S.-A critical gender note. Notice the Minnesota Thunder Academy that houses both boys’ and girls’ teams is the namesake of the men’s team (the Thunder), and not the women’s team (the Lightening).

May 10, 2009

Why Mothers Coach

In a study where we interviewed mothers who were also youth sport coaches, we wanted to know why they were coaching. A majority of the time the primary focus, including my recent posts on female youth sport coaches, is on the barriers that limit or prevent mothers, and females in general, from coaching. So, in honor of all the mothers everywhere who spend their time and energy coaching their own and other people’s children—Happy Mother’s Day and thank you!

A major reason many mothers coach is because it provides time for them to spend with their child(ren). One mom said, “You know it gave us another chance to spend time together in a different way other than just being at home or being in a social situation, and so I really enjoyed it and she did, too. Even though she was the coach’s daughter it worked out.”

Mothers in our study coached because they saw a need for female coaches and good coaches in general, and felt coaching provided an outlet to share their experience, passion for sport and sport knowledge with their children. Mothers discussed the importance of providing positive role models—particularly for girls—and felt coaching was fun and rewarding.

Thanks to the many women—mothers and non-mothers alike—who coach our children and youth! You are the missing piece of the youth sport puzzle.

April 29, 2009

Equal Pay Day…not for female youth sport coaches!

The following information is taken from the National Women’s Law Center’s Campaign for Fair Pay. April 28, Equal Pay Day, marks the day in 2009 when the average woman’s wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average man in 2008. In the United States, women are paid only 78¢ on average for every dollar paid to men. More than 45 years ago, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, making it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work. The following year, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, making it illegal to discriminate, including in compensation, on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. At the time of the Equal Pay Act’s passage in 1963, women were paid merely 59 cents to every dollar earned by men. Although enforcement of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII has helped to narrow the wage gap, significant disparities remain and must be addressed.

In Minnesota, my home state, in 2007 on average, women in Minnesota working full-time, year-round earned only 77% of what men working full-time, year-round earned — one percentage point below the nationwide average of 78%.

Since I’ve been writing about youth sport coaches in the last week, just a little data about this group as it pertains to being paid….or in this case, NOT being paid. In study being conducted by one of my graduate students, male youth sport coaches are twice as likely to be paid than their female counterparts in Minnesota youth soccer clubs. She didn’t collect how much pay disparity exists, which I think would be an interesting follow up study! I’ll share more of these research findings when we finish the full analysis.

April 28, 2009

“You Gotta Be Tough”

I thought a triad of blogs about female coaches in youth sport was appropriate given the amount of emails I received and blogs written in response to this topic. It seems like there is a need to continue the conversation.

To that end, the video of Michael Messner’s talk delivered on April 22, 2009 for the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport 2009 Spring Distinguished Lecture, “You Gotta Be Tough”: Challenges & Strategies of Female Coaches in Youth Sport, is now available to view free of charge. Messner is a professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California.

April 24, 2009

Women “On the Field”: Strategies for Increasing Female Youth Sport Coaches

Given that less than 20% of youth coaches are female, which I wrote about in my last blog I wanted to post some strategies that developed from the voices of mother-coaches that I interviewed with colleague Sarah Leberman (Massey U, NZ). The women identified many creative ways to increase the number of female coaches in youth sport.

To achieve this goal is much more complicated than convincing women they should coach or throwing up our hands and claiming “women just don’t WANT to coach” as the person below suggests in a letter to the editor in the StarTribune He states, “If a woman wanted to coach she would seek a coaching job. It is wrong to assume because there are not a lot of women coaches that there is some conspiracy to not have them coach. A more common-sense assumption is that they don’t want to coach. Just as not many men go into nursing or shop because they would prefer to do something else. Is there a conspiracy among women to keep us from shopping? Ridiculous.”

Yes women have “choices” but their choices are shaped by the gendered context of youth sport in which men hold most of the positions of power (i.e., club directors, youth sport organization Presidents, Head Coaches). Many women want to coach but they encounter what sociologist Mike Messner (USC) calls in his book a glass ceiling and “chilly climate”, due in part to the existing “old boy’s club” that controls youth sport.

Increasing the number of female coaches will take a variety of strategies at the individual, family, organizational and societal level. Arguably, the hardest levels to change are family and societal norms. A majority of women are still the primary caretakers of children and responsible for household organization which makes taking on coaching a “third shift”. The juggling of the worker-mother/wife-coach roles is exhausting and makes it challenging and/or overwhelming for many women to continue to coach or to agree to begin coaching. Changing societal gender norms and family division of labor is out of my control(!), but implementing some “easier” strategies at the youth sport organizational level might result in more women “on the field”.

Click here to see the handout I made on Strategies for Increasing Female Youth Sport Coaches

If you have other suggestions or strategies to increase female youth sport coaches, I would love to hear from you.