Female Coaches

[GOINGDEEP]

We got a few young very physically fit female coaches in our HS district. I have found that I spend more time watching them coach, then the game.

It's so funny to watch the dads suck in their guts, and stick out their chest. I guess boys will be boys.

 

[sluggers]

In my experience, the ratio of awful male coaches to awful female coaches is around 20:1.

I hate getting into this stuff, but:

In the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, girls were discouraged by their parents and society generally from playing sports. There weren't any teams. If a girl played a sport, she wasn't taken seriously. So, the kind of women who ended up playing sports were aggressive, "in your face" people. They were all Bobby Knights--they had to be, or they would have never played any sport. So, when these women started coaching, they were extremely aggressive and hard-nosed.

I'm not being sexist--there are lots of very successful male coaches with similar traits. The problem was that few women had any other coaching style IN THE BEGINNING. A stereotype was born of the screaming female coach. (Again, there are lots of screaming male coaches...but, there are also many male coaches who never raise their voice above a whisper.)

Since the 1990s, many more girls are playing sports, and so right now you are seeing women coaches with a variety of coaching styles. Generally, though, they are still young, and are learning the ropes. The young women now coaching didn't have to fight and claw their way to find a team, so they have a much different view of sports.

Again, most of you have no idea what kind of sh*t we went through to get girls sports. E.g., my kids were raised in an affluent community in Illinois in the early 1990s. The boys had six baseball fields, including one "tournament grade" little league field. The girls didn't have a softball field, but rather used a park where they moved the picnic tables before the games. And, no member of the Park District thought it was wrong.

 

[amanda_cake]

Again, most of you have no idea what kind of sh*t we went through to get girls sports. E.g., my kids were raised in an affluent community in Illinois in the early 1990s. The boys had six baseball fields, including one "tournament grade" little league field. The girls didn't have a softball field, but rather used a park where they moved the picnic tables before the games. And, no member of the Park District thought it was wrong.

And the sh*t that small communities are still going through. There is no girls softball field--there is a baseball field. It's used by us, but if you've seen my thread about scheduling woes you'll know the whole story behind getting that.

I've been around long enough to know that the kids coming up now will have it easier. We've got a batting cage now, they can easily get lessons. It is no longer the loaded families driving over an hour to see Rita Lynn for pitching instruction. Now, we've got pitching instruction and batting lessons closer to home. Now, there is a tournament team starting up for 10U, 12U, and 14U. While I think they might be awful, the opportunity is there.

Opportunities and chances that I never had. Unfortunately, I have a feeling these chances are coming at a wrong time. The paper mill--the main source of income for this county and the surrounding area--has shut down. Money is slowly running out and there will be a mass exodus soon by people who need jobs.

 

[shockcoach]

...I've got a wallet with actual money in it (big deal to them!).

Well you obviously aren't married or have children!

 

[CoachJB]

As the director of a softball program with 130+ kids, we have both male and female coaches and in my opinion, gender is irrelevant, a good coach is a good coach. If a young person has a good or bad experience with either than I could see why they might have a preference.

Personally I like a balance, we have had good results from it.

 

[Coach JV]

I often joke that if I ever want to pack up to Florida to coach ball, I've already got a job down there with you. ;-)

We all know how well it pays too!

 

[3'sDad]

DD's travel coach (12U) is the local HS varsity softball coach and was a pitcher in college. "Coach" has a daughter who is part of the team, but there is no favoritism shown. Pitching and playing time are earned by all. She teaches the girls the fundamentals of the game, aggressive base running and playing to win.
She certainly is not quiet and lets every player know exactly what they did correctly or incorrectly immediately and then moves on. She is an excellent game coach. The girls all love and enjoy playing for her.

 

[Hollyrockartist]

DDs head HS coach is a female and she has two male assistant coaches. One of the assistants has a daughter on the team. Bless her soul - he stays on her a lot more than the other girls, so no favoritism there. DD loves all of her coaches because they are there to help, encourage, teach and chew, when needed! Until HS ball, she never had a female coach. In tb, her coach was a "favorite" picker, so did not respond well to him at all. In rec, she had fabulous male coaches - some who knew a lot more than others. She adored them.

I completely agree that gender has nothing to do with great coaches...personally agree that they are born, not molded. Sort of like an artist - either you have it or you don't and when watching other teams, it's obvious who has it and who doesn't!

Proud of you, amanda_cake!!! You are blazing a path and showing the young girls you coach how fun the sport can be while teaching them the skills needed to produce a W. Wish there were more young ladies like you out there! Keep up the good work and dedication!

 

[wild man]

Hey Amanda wanna come coach with me? You sound great. I finally asked this young girls dad about her past experiances. He said that all the women that have coached her have been so passive that nothing got done at practice, and the girls just ran all over them. The men were good seasoned coaches so this girl has a skewed vision of men and women coaches.

Here is something that happened to our JV team last year. We had been playing this one team and beating up on them for about 4 years. Now their coach is a rather soft spoken gal. she had tried several different things but could not get by us.
You could tell she wanted to beat us worse than any thing but would never say a thing about it.
Well last year she got us. We have always beat her with hitting, We would get on her pitcher and just run up the score. Now I KNEW She had some plan for us and she did. She switched pitchers Every inning. Now some of them really could not pitch BUT it threw us off our game enough that we lost in the final inning.

I congradulated her on her strategy She just smiled and said nothing.
She has become the best JV coach in our league in my opinion.
Amanda Keep it up Softball needs more competent coaches Male or Female.

 

[amanda_cake]

Well you obviously aren't married or have children!

Definitely not. Actually the money in the wallet came from mama and daddy! ;-)

We all know how well it pays too!

LOL, I'm not even worried about the (lack of) pay, more about the experience. I definitely need to spend some time out of this podunk town before I settle down.

Proud of you, amanda_cake!!! You are blazing a path and showing the young girls you coach how fun the sport can be while teaching them the skills needed to produce a W. Wish there were more young ladies like you out there! Keep up the good work and dedication!

Thank you. I hope that this fall ball season is successful, while we all work on the things that we need to--the girls on their softball skills and me on my people skills. I'm a very sarcastic person and I've got to watch how I phrase some things because I can come off as sounding like a not so nice person when it's just my way of stating the obvious.

Hey Amanda wanna come coach with me? You sound great.

I think that when I get out of college, I'm going to post on this forum and see who gives me the best offer. ;-) I would like to go places before I actually settle down and experience things. Someone here could hook me up with a coaching job, all I'd have to find would be a place to live and some work for a while. I need to experience something more than my little hick town.