Coaching Sport
In 1972, Title IX was passed and girls and women started to slowly gain opportunities to participate in sport at the interscholastic and intercollegiate levels. During the 1970’s the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was the main governing body for women’s sports. During this time women would coach women’s teams and men, mainly coached men’s teams. The AIAW soon ceased to exist and the NCAA became the main governing body for both men’s and women’s athletics, once the NCAA realized the value of women’s sports (Morrison, 1993). With that, came more men coaching women’s teams and less women coaching in general.
Men coach women’s teams, yet we rarely see women coaching men’s teams. Some argue that women do not have experience playing a men’s sport, like football. This has been an ongoing argument, yet there are men that have coached female sports, like Bella Karoli who has coached gold medal Olympic female gymnasts. As for coaches, there are some college football coaches like Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech or David Cutcliffe of Duke, who never played one-minute of college football, but had successful coaching careers at the Division I level.
College football has been around since 1869, and 2018 marked the first year that a female head coach was named to a Division I football program. In 2018 Callie Brownson was promoted to be a Division I Full-Time Football coach for Dartmouth University (Russell, 2020).
It is very rare to see women coaching men in professional sport as well. In professional football, women account for nearly half of the NFL fanbase, a third of NFL league employees, and there has never been a woman head coach or general manager of any NFL team (Brown & Butler, 2019). In 2015, the Arizona Cardinals made NFL history during pre-season when they hired Jennifer Welter as an assistant coaching intern for training camp. Since then, there have been more and more women being hired on the coaching staff, to NFL teams. Most taking the position of intern or assistant.
Discussion Board Post Assignment:
What are some challenges women may face coaching men’s sports? Do some research and explain two challenges based on credible sources (10 points).
What is a challenge that a men’s coach may face coaching a women’s sport- give one example and use a credible source (5 points).
