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Why aren't there more female coaches?

Re: Why aren't there more female coaches?

My daughter wants to be a women's hockey coach. Support systems and perceptions in our schools for girls who want to do this are really lacking.

In Junior High grade, she had a career fair, and told her teacher her chosen career was to coach women's hockey. Her teacher said go back home and pick another "real" career. We looked at night for info on coaching. She used Digit Murphy as her example and brought in info about her. She told her teacher this is what she wants to do. Her teacher was embarrassed and said "oh, okay."

This year, she was picking her curriculum, and asked her science teacher about her chosen science class for next year. He asked "what do you want to do?" She said, "I want to be a girls hockey coach." He said, "well, let's focus on a real career first." Luckily, she she now finds this response amusing.
 
Re: Why aren't there more female coaches?

Very good article. To be fair, I've even seen men that have coached the women's game leave because of the strain on the family and limited pay. I don't know that moving the pay structures up would even help. If you look at the college coaching world in general, you rarely see the female coaches chasing the money like their male counterparts(Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier come to mind). The women push more for the stability in their life instead of spending half their winter out recruiting, another quarter on the road coaching. Here in Minnesota, you see a number of coaches like Laura Slominski and Natalie Darwitz that could be coaching at the women's collegiate level but prefer to stay with the high school teams. 96, I appreciate your daughter's drive to be a women's hockey coach but coaching at the college level isn't a career, it's a lifestyle. I wonder why the writer of the article didn't look at the D-3 level? If I had to guess, there are probably more female coaches there than D-1.
 
Re: Why aren't there more female coaches?

It seems to me the real problem is that husbands and fathers aren't stepping up to fill in the gap, forcing these women to feel like they're abandoning their families. Plenty of male coaches have kids; there's no reason women can't do it too.


Powers &8^]
 
LtPowers said:
It seems to me the real problem is that husbands and fathers aren't stepping up to fill in the gap, forcing these women to feel like they're abandoning their families. Plenty of male coaches have kids; there's no reason women can't do it too.


Powers &8^]
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I dont think this is unique to college coaching, but very common in a lot of careers. I know lots of professional women who turned down a promotion or job opportunities because it would've meant more travel and time away from home. While they may have supportive spouses, some women just don't want to leave their kids for days at a time.
 
taz91 said:
I wonder why the writer of the article didn't look at the D-3 level? If I had to guess, there are probably more female coaches there than D-1.
Click to expand...

Yes, because the pay isn't as high so it's not as attractive a career option for men with families.
 
Re: Why aren't there more female coaches?

Be patient........it wasn't that many years ago that there weren't even D1 woemn's teams. Women's hockey has been on the steep part of the growth curve, and the population of qualified female
candidates has been slim. The women's program has benefited greatly from the avaliability of several D1 men's assistant coaches - Brian McCloskey (UNH) and Brian Durocher (BU) come to mind.
Having coaches with prior D1 experience is prefferable for a new women's program. Soon the critical mass of capable women will grow as women assistant coaches grows, but it won't happen
as fast as we all would like. I think having women as recruiting assistants, at this point, is more critical that having a female head coach.
 
Re: Why aren't there more female coaches?

What current womens hockey assistant coaches are good candidates to run a program?
 
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