WE need more female coaches~

[radness]

It is good for kids to play for all kinds of coaches. For example I had a bball coach who would chuck a ball at you when you messed up so I learned that when a coach gets mad at you to duck.

Geeez now we know where the water bottle throwing came from...

 

[ANNASDAD]

We had one of the worst experiences that anyone could have imagined with a female (hesitate to use the term "coach") at our HS. To use your own words she was a "bad person and a bad coach".

Tatonka, I have to say that we’ve been extremely lucky to have had some phenomenal coaches along the way, some way better than others but all pretty great.

But there’s that one! A POS female when Anna first moved to our orgs 14U national team. She was 13 and we were so honored to be asked to move to this team, no tryout, nothing, we’re told “next weekend you’re moving to this team, welcome aboard!”

They had just brought in this 24/25 year old former D1 player, I’ll spare any of the details as I think I’ve wrote about her here years ago. But I’ll say as a grown man, she’s the only female I’ve EVER wanted to punch in the mouth, a couple of times!!

Haven’t thought of her in awhile, getting somewhat pissed just thinking about her and that time period. She came VERY close to causing my DD to quit softball and never look back!

It all came to a head in Savannah, GA when another dad just about went after her! As much as I love and have bragged on our organization, that was definitely the low point!

 

[whiporee]

'm left to ask, do you believe that this philosophy should go so far as to mandate that male athletes only play for male coaches? Is it not important that females learn how to deal with men and for that matter vice versa? The world has a lot of interactions in store for these kids to deal with all kinds of people of both genders (as well as transgender and Gender Non Binary identities). Taken a step further because that's what seems to be happening these days...should players of color only play for a coach of similar color? How about cultural or religious beliefs? Income levels or maybe political parties? Because you know, they'll understand each other better? The examples here could go on and on and I know it would surely offend some people. Diversity and Inclusivity is a good thing and most of our kids are probably better at accepting that than their parents.

We can get so caught up in the potentials that we get forget the realistic. I don't think there are enough women coaching men's sports to make a difference, and I can almost assure you that given the choice between a female coach -- no matter how qualified -- and a any male coach for a male team, the male coach gets it 99 percent of the time. The reciprocal is not true. There are a lot of men coaching college softball teams, but there are no women coaching college baseball. More than a few men coach women's basketball; the opposite doesn't exist (except for the Spurs, on a one-time occurrence). So while your question about women coaching men is fair, it's also not really applicable because it reality it doesn't exist. Same thing with the trans/non-binary situation. Could it be a problem? Sure. Is it enough to a problem now to demand the status quo? No.

Would I prefer a highly qualified man over an inexperienced woman? Sure. But given equal qualifications, I prefer the woman coach. Given close to equal qualifications? I prefer the woman.

No one knows more than you about how bad I think HS softball can be. Would I have preferred a different coach for DD's team? Of course. Would I prefer that neither of us ever had to deal with the HS coach you speak of (I had my run-ins with her, too)? Of course. But DD's freshman year, her JV coach was the PE teacher from the middle school (he coached some baseball at some point). He leered at the 14-year-old girls all practice until he had to be told to stop, then he got mad and pretty much left town. Would I have preferred any woman coach over that? You bet. It's not a question of very qualified vs. unqualified and me choosing unqualified. But when the margins are within reason, I prefer it go to the woman. I prefer DD be coached by women.

You raised the question of us all learning to deal with each other, and I think that's a noble idea. But a coach should be more than an associate; they should be someone a player can come to when they need them. Part of their support network. I'm not all that comfortable with part of her support network being an older man to whom she is not related. Here's why: The nicest and best coach I've ever met in any sport was Mitch Ivey, the coach of Florida's swim team. Great guy, insightful of the sport. Fantastic interview. Cared very deeply about his swimmers. Grew to love them. And then he loved them. Three over the course of his career. The girls -- and almost all of his swimmers -- loved him back. They were furious when he got fired. I don't think he was malicious and I don't think he was an abuser, but I do think that there are lines that get crossed. I've seen it up close. I saw it in high school where my best friend ended up in a relationship with her very caring, very devoted Civics teacher/Cross Country coach. Of course it doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough that there's merit in not putting older men and young girls in situations where they come to care a lot about each other.

And while I wish both if us had been able to avoid a-hole coaches for our daughters in high school, I do think there's merit in our girls seeing that women can be a-holes, too. It's just not fun for us to watch.

 

[radness]

~Great reads DFP! Excellent conversations.
Really neat to see people acknowledging each other's opinions and perspectives!~

*Especially in that
Reading is not always knowing if the perspective comes from man or woman!
And the responses seem to be the topic and not who's labeling who.

 

[Anthony Vertuccio]

I think Ken stated that no matter the gender, you should be an assistant 1st. I started as an assistant knowing nothing about the game but the Varsity HC needed a volunteer assistant who told me teach the OF and I will teach you the rest. I joined her, studied the game, got a HS JV HC spot, then a Varsity spot then became a College Assistant Coach. Im coaching a 14u travel team and I will have two graduating female assistants who want to coach. One will be the pitching coach and one the OF coach. Both will coach 1B and also be given time at 3B. This way they learn and grow in the coaching profession.

 

[Westwind]

These ARE great reads.

My DD’s have played for many Coaches. Awesome coaches. Decent coaches. Good people that knew what they are doing, some good people that didn’t know how to coach. Psychopaths. Some pretty toxic environments. Decent people who are duds. A female hs coach that seemed to prefer the boys to her players in P.E. Class and had no personality or chemistry with her softball team. At. All.

Here is the thing- gender didn’t matter. Some people are good at this. Some aren’t. Some are willing to work at getting better, some aren’t or can’t, no matter how many inspirational messages they retweet.

 

[_MIA_]

If my DD can deal with me she can deal with anybody..

 

[Tatonka]

If my DD can deal with me she can deal with anybody..

^^^^ Preparation

 

[Tatonka]

Maybe it was brought up already in this thread but it should be noted again that prior to Title IX there were more female coaches (than men) involved with women's sports. Then the $$$ came in and it changed. Now it is started to come back to a more equal balance. The trends and more current studies bear this out (you can look it up). Hiring patterns are starting to recognize the importance, quality and experience of Female Coaches. Further behind in this trend but hopefully gaining momentum is the prevalence of Women in administrative/executive roles (such as Athletic Director) at Colleges and Universities. Think back just a few short years ago (2018) when all four teams in the Women's College World Series Final Four were coached by Female Coaches. Coach Tarr of Washington talked about that and mentioned how proud she was that at UW they had a female President, female Athletic Director and female Asst. Director of Athletics. The examples of women being successful at the highest level are out there.

 

[radness]

No matter the gender, you should be an assistant 1st.




I started as an assistant knowing nothing about the game but the Varsity HC needed a volunteer assistant who told me teach the OF and I will teach you the rest. I joined her, studied the game, got a HS JV HC spot, then a Varsity spot then became a College Assistant Coach. Im coaching a 14u travel team and I will have two graduating female assistants who want to coach. One will be the pitching coach and one the OF coach. Both will coach 1B and also be given time at 3B. This way they learn and grow in the coaching profession.

For all~
This in itself would mean...
(what % ) atleast half of all head coaches should not be HEAD coaches ? !

To the point of
'Learning the game as an assist' would be under the presumption the person intending to be a head coach actually wants to invest in learning and growing.
( rather than do it their own way)
Then who says its learning a good way or learning to perpetuate a bad way?

Which brings this back to
its a people issue
willing or not to invest in growing as people for people!
...since there are already educational tools for coaching. And people skills.