So you want to be a doctor?

In our profession, and ones directly related to it, we are constantly faced with the reality that women are leaving coaching. Research is now beginning to suggest that there are numerous reasons why women are leaving coaching. As a result, it seems like there is a growing effort to identify innovative approaches to keep women in coaching including work-life-family balance support and educationally based seminars like the ones presented by the Alliance of Women Coaches.

Last week, the program I direct at UNC Greensboro, the Program for the Advancement of Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity, had the opportunity to work with several local Girl Scout troops to host, “Goals for Girls,” which was soccer clinic for girls in Guilford County (North Carolina) who need financial assistance to participate in non-school based sport leagues. We met monthly from October 2011 to April 2012 to plan this event.
Two girls, Clara and Victoria seemed to naturally emerge as the leaders of this project. When this happened, I talked to the mothers and the troop leaders about stepping back and letting Clara and Victoria lead this effort using us for support. In meeting after meeting, I was excited and amazed to watch Clara and Victoria negotiate food donations for the day of the event, find free space for the clinic through Greensboro Parks and Recreation, secure peer volunteer coaches from their soccer teams, determine what snacks should be provided and why, advertised the clinic to the girls in the communities they were targeting, convince local sporting supply stores to donate 30 soccer balls so that each participate could take one home, and persuade a local t-shirt store owner to donate t-shirts for the event.

The day of the soccer clinic, I realized that Clara and Victoria really had a “crash course” in coaching. Through their efforts they recruited, sought donations, coached their coaches on how to teach specific technical soccer skills, managed the clock, provided tactile feedback and made sure that “fun factor” was always present.
Throughout the past week, I have spent a lot of time thinking about Clara and Victoria and a very specific question, “When do you introduce girls to coaching a possible profession?” Throughout our childhood play experiences, we are constantly creating different identities for ourselves as teachers, doctors, lawyers, nurses and policewomen. We spend time imagining ourselves in these professional roles and consequently this type of role playing sets the stage for what and who we may become professionally; where we will leave our impact. Why not pretend to coach our friends and siblings rather than pretend that we are saving them from a fiery blaze? Or cure them from an unfortunate disease? What could be more exciting than coaching the last inning of the softball world championships or the final turn for an Olympic gymnast in the gold medal round?
It seems to me, that if we are going to keep women in coaching, we may have to start sooner than later by creating opportunities for girls to experience coaching at a young age and at UNC Greensboro we have decided to do just that. While my idea is only a week old (and I won’t write too much about it yet as the ideas are still flowing), I am confident that by the middle of the fall 2012 semester, we will have a community based program at UNC Greensboro run by the Program for the Advancement for Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity and the Department of Kinesiology that introduces girls to coaching as a possible profession that has an educational component and community based, hands-on experiences. Stay tuned…………..