sports

How female athletes are motivated by male and female coaches.

By Laura Tuveson
Chief Copy Editor

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, has win-loss record of 983-182 as head coach of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball program.

In 2006, she broke the record of 900 wins and the Lady Vols’ coach signed a contract with the University of Tennessee for $1.125 million. The deal made Summitt the first women’s college coach in history to be paid an annual salary of $1 million or more.

But not every female coach can be like Pat Summitt, in coaching standards or paid value. The NCAA reports that in the 2003-2004 season, the average salary for a Division I men’s basketball head coach was $330,900 — more than double the average salary of a women’s basketball coach, which amounted to only $162,300.

In addition, the NCAA reports that 2006 was the worst year for the representation of female coaches as coaches of women’s teams. Only 42.4 percent of women’s teams are led by female coaches.

Athletic director Geri Knortz said there are a number of reasons why there are less women than men coaching women’s teams.

“Women have a lot more options, career-wise, than they used to,” Knortz said.

Title IX opened the door to opportunities not just in sports, but in business. Prior to the passing of Title IX in 1972, women were limited to fields of work like nursing and teaching degrees, but the Title IX Educational Amendments created a positive outlook. In effect, however, the number of women coaching women’s teams dropped from 90 percent in 1972 to 42.4 percent in 2006, according to a study by Acosta & Carpenter sports research.

More men are coaching women’s teams because the pay has improved. In addition, women are sometimes held back by the traditional obligation of taking care of a family, Knortz said.

“There’s more money than there was in the early days, historically,” Knortz said. “And number two, the reliance on women more so than men to be responsible for children and the demands of coaching prevent them (to coach).”

At St. Michael’s, five women’s teams  cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, basketball and softball — are led by female head coaches. Six women’s teams — soccer, tennis, swimming, skiing, volleyball and hockey — are led by male head coaches. There are 21 sports, 11 for women and 10 for men, making 45 percent of the women’s teams coached by women.

 “It’s interesting because it’s pretty close. It’s slightly better than the national statistic,” Knortz said.

In 2000, the International Journal of Sport Management reported that 68 percent of female assistant coaches did not want to become head coaches because they liked their role on their current team. Fifty-nine percent said it was because head coaches are under too much pressure to win and assistant coaching brings less stress than head coaching.

At St. Michael’s, there are seven female assistant coaches, all of which reside on women’s teams. Basketball and lacrosse are the only all-female coaching staffs, and soccer is the only all-male coaching staff for a women’s team.

St. Michael’s women’s soccer head coach Marcel Choquette, who has coached at St. Michael’s for nine seasons, stresses the importance to incorporate a female in his program. The team has had female assistant coaches in the past, but the team’s current situation has lent itself to incorporating Joanne Nelson, associate director of Campus Ministry, to serve a female role with the team, Choquette said.

Choquette, a former athletic director and girl’s soccer coach at Missisquoi Valley Union High School in Swanton, Vt., coached men’s soccer at Lyndon State College as well. He said the difference between coaching men and women is men tend to be over-confident and individualistic, while women tend to emphasize team dependency and gain confidence through others.

He said his experience with both genders allows him to continue to learn how to adapt to his players.

“Looking back on 20 years, there are some things as a coach where I made a mistake that I thought I learned from,” Choquette said. “Just as you preach to your players, ‘let’s not keep making the same mistakes over and over again.’”

Choquette said he has noticed difference in his experience working with male and female assistant coaches, but it attributed to personality differences, not gender differences

Knortz said that research shows female athletes often prefer male coaches, even if the two have the same qualities.

“Because our current female intercollegiate athletes have been coached by males from youth, to high school, and now to college, if you asked most of our female athletes if they wanted to be coached by a man or woman, a lot of them would say I don’t care I just want the best coach I can get,” Knortz said. “But if you really pressed them and said ‘they’re both equal, which would you want, the research has shown, because the majority of their coaching has been men, their comfort level with male coaches is higher.”

Senior Molly Cole, who played for a female soccer coach in high school and then for Choquette at St. Michael’s, said she prefers a male coach. This had an influence on where she applied for college soccer programs that interested her, she said.

“I almost would rather have a male coach telling me what to do than a female,” Cole said. “My personality specifically, I’d rather take directions from a male than a female.”

Her high school soccer coach was her only female coach, in either head or assistant titles, she said.

“All the male coaches I’ve had in club were awesome, we got along well,” Cole said. “I looked at schools with female coaches, like Southern New Hampshire, and I was not interested.”

Knortz said a possible reason behind female athlete’s response to male coaches versus female coaches is related to the complacency created as the female athlete develops.

“It seems like there’s something to the comfort level of athletes with males, and part of it has to do with the gender of the coach they had all the way up,” Knortz said. “And for some it was their dad, and why was their dad doing it and not their mom.”

Cole said her father played a huge role in her athletic involvement, and it tended to be the case for most of her teammates as well.

“During Saturday morning soccer, it was always the dads, not the moms,” Cole said.

Whether it was as a coach or simply driving her to games and tournaments, she said it was her dad who was involved with sports.

Cole said this may tie into why she has become more responsive with male coaches rather than females.

Female coaches, because of their gender think they can relate and act more authoritative over female players, Cole said. They are more likely to get a negative response, she said.

“You can tell that (male coaches) are not going to overstep that boundary, when I feel like my female coach ripped into me,” Cole said.

Part of her struggle was a personality clash, which she rarely experiences with male coaches, Cole said.

“We didn’t get along at all, she was a Type A, I was a Type A personality,” Cole said. “I think maybe because we were the same gender, she didn’t feel wrong about stepping down from a situation.”

She said it wasn’t a mother-daughter relationship because her coach was dominating over the entire team.

Knortz said she doesn’t think athlete’s response to certain coaches can be entirely weighed on gender. She said a lot has to do with how a particular athlete is motivated.

“Every athlete is motivated by different things,” Knortz said. “Some players are motivated or play better when coaches are in their face or very aggressive about how they communicate, and with other athletes, that’s a huge turnoff.”

 There can be aggressive female coaches and more laidback male coaches, she said.

“Whether you play for Pat Summitt or Geno (Auriemma), you have to have thick skin,” Knortz said. “But in general, when women tend to take on perceived male characteristics, they’re often viewed negatively in a leadership role.”

She said it becomes hard for a woman to know how to act, because if they start acting like one of the guys, they get criticized, Knortz said.

“They get called aggressive versus a more gentle word like assertive,” Knortz said. “And if they start acting more feminine they are seen as weak, in general.”

As female athletic involvement continues to grow at a young age, as found in a 10-year study by the Women’s Sports Foundation that notes female collegiate athletic participation grew by nearly 26,000 between 1995 to 2005, Choquette said he believes more women will fall into coaching and administrative careers in athletics in the future.

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