You may remember that earlier this year, I contemplated taking some time off from coaching high school field hockey. In the early spring, I decided that I would in fact benefit from a fall season free of any coaching commitments. I contacted my AD and explained that I wouldn’t be coming back for the fall 2012 season, but that I wanted to “leave the door” open for a future return. He agreed and I took my season off.

About half way through the high school field hockey season, I started to feel as though something was missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was missing. Although my time is over accounted for as a faculty member at UNC Greensboro, there was something missing and it took me some time to realize……… I missed coaching. I missed showing up, in a hurry each day, running practice, loading the bus for a road trip, talking to parents and coaches and most importantly, seeing the players develop each day as their commitment to the game increased with each passing victory and heart breaking loss.
I have decided to return to high school field hockey in the fall 2013 season but with a different coaching position. So, I have decided that I will return to coaching as a middle school coach, rather than assuming my position with the Varsity team. My season away from the game helped me realize that I truly enjoyed the developmental aspect of the game. I enjoy teaching players new skills and “trick moves” to beat a defender. A cliché as it may sound, I love the moment when it “clicks” for a player. The moment when a player finally understands why a move or skill is used in a game and why it is important. I enjoy watching the team “form.” As leaders emerge and friendships evolve, the developmental aspect of the game is what I love about coaching.
Sure, winning is great. But one of the things I figured out is that you have to know what kind of coach you are, what it is important and what drives you as a coach before you can determine what level you should be coaching on. Right now, for me, I think I will be happy coaching middle school field hockey.

I have been coaching field hockey at the youth development and interscholastic level for over 16 years. Throughout this time, I have experienced tremendous success, not just in the sense of winning (believe me they were not all winning seasons) but in the sense of accomplishment. High school players going to on to play and compete at the next level, the parents of a 6-year old telling me that “she won’t go anywhere without her stick. We even had to take it on vacation.” These experiences and many more like them equal success for me as a coach. However, I must admit that last fall during my high school field hockey season something was missing. I denied it and denied it, but the fact was, something was missing. To this day, I still don’t know what was missing, or should I admit “what is missing.”

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Last week, I attended the “Title IX at 40” Conference at the University of Michigan, hosted by the SHARP Center and the Women’s Sports Foundation. The conference program was packed with amazing speakers from academic scholars and researchers to gold medal Olympic winners, all of whom were focused on the continued advocacy and promotion of equitable and quality opportunities for all girls and women in sport and physical activity settings.
However, one of the conference speakers really resonated with me; Judy Sweet. While I have heard Judy speak several times, something about her talk at this particular conference “stuck.” There is no doubt that Judy’s professional positions throughout the course of her career have positioned her to make a powerful impact for all girls and women in sport and physical activity settings. Judy served as NCAA Senior Vice President for Championships and Education Services until 2006 and championed Title IX and gender equity at the collegiate level by establishing policies and procedures during her tenure that are still in effect today. Prior to her work with the NCAA, Judy served for 24 years as the Director of Athletics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) where she became one of the first women in the nation selected to direct a combined men’s and women’s intercollegiate athletics program. While Judy’s work with the NCAA and at UCSD has foster growth, progress and advancement for many female college athletes, Judy’s current work as the Co-Director of the Alliance for Women’s Coaches is where her legacy will continue to cultivate opportunities for women, still on the field, and not as athletes, but as coaches.
For a significant part of her career, Judy identified opportunities for female athletes to become a bigger part of the college sports landscape. Now, through the establishment of the Alliance for Women Coaches, http://gocoaches.org/ Judy has continued her advocacy efforts for women and now specifically focuses on female coaches. Last week, Judy explained to us that the number of female coaches has significantly declined since the passage of Title IX and we are finding more male coaches, coaching female college athletes. A presentation of the data explained the possible economic and sociological reasons for the decline of women coaches and I was left wondering…. “What can we do about this?”
I understand the possible reasons why there has been a decline in female coaches at the college level, but what can we do about it? These types of questions tend to present themselves as “problems to be solved” but also tend to be very frustrating. Sometimes when change is needed we look to and rely on changes with individual behaviors. However, these types of problems are much more systematic and challenge an institutional culture that has been allowed to be created and consequently now identify the expectations of an athletic department. The more I thought about the actual root issue “How do we get more female coaches coaching?” several thoughts ran through my mind and I realize that before we can begin to problem solve we almost need to create a…dare I say… a “movement;” a collective consciousness that will challenge the stereotypical ideas and biases that seems to coincide with female coaches and why less female coaches are hired to coach. So where should we start and who should we start with?

From my experience there seems to be a running dialogue about whether or not girls/women should be coached “differently” from boys/men and this very topic came up in my last coaching practicum class of the semester, especially among novice coaches. Some believe that a coach should treat all athletes, regardless of biological sex, the same and expect similar results. For the younger athletes, coaches should teach fundamental skills and FUN. For the older athletes, coaches should teach more advanced skills and winning; and I agree …to a certain extent. However, we cannot overlook the fact that girls/women and boys/men experience sport participation differently, have different participation and training needs and participate for different reasons.
One point that I tried to make clear to my coaching practicum students in our last and final class and I think is critical for all coaches to explore and understand, was that there seems to be a general assumption that although sport participation needs are different among the sexes, somehow the notion of “less than” seems to equate with the female athletes and the way they are coached to participate in their sport.
I provided my students with the following data for their consideration. I presented two different lacrosse coaching books: one for girls and one for boys.

http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Boys-Lacrosse-Baffled-Parents/dp/0071385126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336160126&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Girls-Lacrosse-Baffled-Parents/dp/0071412255/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1336160126&sr=8-3

I asked the students to review the chapters in the Table of Contents for the lacrosse coaching book for male athletes. They are:
• Lacrosse in a Nutshell
• Setting Up the Season
• The Fundamentals of Lacrosse
• The Practice
• The Game
• Dealing with Parents
• Fundamental Drills
• Offensive Drills
• Defensive Drills
Then, I asked the students to review the chapters in the Table of Contents for the lacrosse coaching book for female athletes. They are:
• They Can Do it!
• Coaching the Female Athlete
• Issues with Coaching Girls
• Designing Women
• Strategies for Coaching Young Female Athletes
• Pregnancy and Other Practical Considerations
• Coaching Girls
– How Girls and Boys Play Sports
– Physical Differences Between Boys and Girls
– Psychological Differences Between Boys and Girls
– Sexual Harassment

Even at a quick glance at the chapters in each book provides a startling realization. Coaching consumers who are looking for resources to better understand how to coach lacrosse are given two very different messages about male and female lacrosse participation in terms of how to coach their athletes based on biological sex and to that end, what they should expect male and female athletes in terms of performance and behaviors.
The male based coaching book focuses on skills, offense, defense and the fundamentals of lacrosse. In fact, 5 of the chapters in this coaching resource are dedicated to skills. However, the chapters for the girls’ lacrosse coaching guide reads much differently. In fact, none of the chapters in the girls’ lacrosse coaching guide address skill based coaching. Instead theses coaching chapters focus on “issues” with coaching girls, sexual harassment, and pregnancy, psychological differences among boys and girls and finally, “THEY CAN DO IT.” Was there ever a question that girls could “DO IT?” According to these two different texts, yes, apparently there is.
The chapters in the coaching lacrosse book for girls focuses on the affective side of coaching and present coaching girls as an “issue,” and provide no mention of performance and skills. While I realize that this is not an extensive examination of coaching education for male and female athletes, I am left wondering what we, female coaches can do about the perceptions of how we are “suppose” to coach girls. How can we help people understand and accept that female athletes coached by female coaches are just as capable as the male athletes to compete, sweat, develop skills, succeed and perform at a high level?