By Claire Neemann
I read the article, “Glass Ceiling: Why women aren’t coaching men’s D-1 hoops,” posted by USA Today. The article features the few women who are or have been coaches in men’s basketball and why they aren’t coaching. Currently, out of 351 Division I schools, not one has allowed a woman to be full-time head coach.
I began thinking about how the article affected me because of my love for and desire to have some sort of career in men’s college basketball.
It sickens me that the sports world we live in is so male-dominated.
Currently, only three percent of coaches in men’s sports are women, with most of them being coaches in track and swimming. Of that three percent, Teresa Phillips, the athletic director for Tennessee State, is the only woman to have coached a Division I men’s basketball game. Phillips stepped in for head coach Nolan Richardson III while he was serving a one-game suspension. Once the suspension was over, Phillips went back to her normal job and Richardson returned.
Phillips wasn’t even coaching for a whole season.
She was there for a single game, and then she was kicked back to her normal job. That’s what upsets me the most: the fact that she didn’t even have a chance to really do anything to help the struggling program that ended the season 2-25.
Ellen Staurowsky, a professor at Drexel, said, “We continue to have an entrenched sex-stereotype way of viewing coaches in general that favors male coaches in general.”
Staurowsky later concluded that male players won’t want to play for women and won’t take orders from them because they don’t know the game as well as males do.
It disgusts me to see that men’s college basketball will not hire women as coaches and make them feel welcome.
Contrary to the college-level, professional leagues have welcomed women into their programs. The San Antonio Spurs welcomed assistant coach Becky Hammon into their program in 2014.
According to “San Antonio Express-News” when asked about Coach Hammon, Spurs forward Kyle Anderson said, “She knows the game, so it doesn’t matter what gender she is.”
Other programs to hire a woman include the Sacramento Kings, who welcomed full-time assistant coach Nancy Lieberman. The Buffalo Bills hired Kathryn Smith, a special teams quality coach. The Seattle Mariners added Amanda Hopkins, a full-time scout.
So if women are hired in men’s professional leagues, then why can’t the college-level hire them as well? Schools should hire the person, not the gender.
The lack of female coaches is not just prominent in men’s sports. Every year, fewer and fewer female coaches are coaching in women’s sports. A Brooklyn College study reported by “USA Today” stated in 1972 when Title IX was instated, ninety percent of women coached women in college. In 2012 when the study was conducted the number dropped to 42 percent.
So why aren’t men frowned upon for taking a position in a female sport? Why can men coach in both women’s and men’s sports, but not women?
I’m striving to have a career in men’s Division I basketball. For that to happen, there need to be more opportunities for women to be coaches. Women are eventually going to break the glass ceiling whether or not people are prepared.
