Loyola - quite a stunner. Has never been a college HC and not even been an assistant since 2001. I've actually coached against her SAC teams and not been impressed at all. I don't know how to explain this one. Loyola should have had a terrific pool of candidates regardless of gender. Local players who know this coach will not be rushing to Loyola. Peye did get hammered in this situation - there must have been something about him that didn't go over well with the Admin. http://loyolagreyhounds.cstv.com/sports/w-soccer/spec-rel/041608aaa.html
Souther Mississippi= I think it was said a while back that she was on the hot seat? Well she resigned yesterday. I guess USM will do another hire from with in? ANY INSIGHT as to what happened?
From my understanding, Macklin has decided to return to Northern Ireland to work with the Northern Ireland FA.
Your understanding of is not accurate. And I agree that Dillinger will do fine, I'm sure. Track record shows she has had success. But my comments earlier weren't about whether or not she'll do fine. It was aimed at the situation surrounding the ISU and other programs hiring decisions, based on the other candidates, what seemed to be the program's best interest, etc.
Take a look at who she has signed? Track record shows she has had success. ISU Took a big leap in putting Dillinger as the new head coach.Time will tell all? Rumor that players are not impressed? Southern Miss. ???? You have to question WHY so late to decide to make such a change. I agree they will hire from with in.....again.
Well either your right that Southern Miss is going to be an inside hire or the just don't have soccer as a high priority. http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/SOUTHERNMISS/804180359/1050 Giannini now has to start looking for someone to fill Macklin's shoes. "It'll be another month or so before we start going through the hiring process," he said.
Horses Mouth I am currently a DI coach of many years, here's two situations that I was confronted with. 1. I was an assistant coach at a DI school, the head coach resigned. The other assistant and I had been hired at the same time. I had many many more years of coaching experience, both club and college. I had coached at a higher level, had better licenses and I was told by the administration that the other coach would be hired because she was a female. There was not one aspect of her soccer background that was superior to mine. 2. I was in a situation where I was to hire an assistant coach. I recieved 70 applications, four of which were from female coaches. I was told to hire a female. Based on experience and qualifications the female that I eventually chose would not have been in the top 30 candidates. Finally a very good and very succesful male DI coach once said to me, I don't mind schools hiring these female coaches, it makes my job easier. I also know that club coaches and directors of coaching know which women can coach and lead programs and who can't, (and men for that matter). It can seriously affect recruiting. I know of several that will not recommend their players to play for certain DI female head coaches. Don't get me wrong, I think there are many very good female coaches, but when a coach who has maybe one year of coaching experience after finishing as a player and getting jobs over other male coaches with many many more years of experience is not right, and who suffers..the players.
Re: Horses Mouth You know everyone is acting like this is some kind of big, deep dark secret. I had a conversation with a very good assistant coach at a DII school in the area. She is leaving the program for geographic and family reasons. Her salary as the primary assistant soccer coach is subsidized by a program sponsored by the NCAA to increase the numbers of women and minorities in college coaching. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this and support it wholeheartedly. I also spoke with the head coach who is a male. He said that he fully supports the program and is actively looking for a female replacement. Now I do agree that there is a major difference between an assistant coach who is learning the ropes under an experienced mentor and someone green as grass stepping in to run a program. I also fully agree that the majority of people doing the hiring are capable enough to find qualified applicants, male or female.
Re: Horses Mouth Uh, not really. It sounds to me like he is sharing his experience. Which just legitimizes (sp?) what many have been posting and concerned about. The fact that its not a level playing field in many situations for coaches looking for an opportunity. And the players are the ones who suffer. And someone posted that its being treated like a big dark secret. Well, no its not actually. Its talked about endlessly by college coaches. The only people who are playing that game are the administrators who lie to candidates about their viability and force a coach's hand to hire a certain profile, not the best coach or someone they prefer. Admin, especially at BCS schools, will lie straight to your face. I have been involved in those scenarios and know countless who have as well.
I guess different coaches have different motivations, but it seems to me that many male head coaches of college women partly are coaching because they believe women's sports are important. It seems to me that many of those coaches may believe it also is important to bring in young women as assistant coaches so that they can develop into head coaches, as part of helping to "grow" women's sports. I know that as a coach of high school girls who has had a couple of players come back as assistant coaches, I consider it as part of the educational process for those players/now coaches, and as part of building an increased realization that women's sports have great value. If helping to develop women's sports is part of a coach's motivation, I do not see anything wrong with this. In fact, I think it is good. Is something wrong with that thinking?
The numbers do not lie....I haven't added it up this year, but last year over 90% of the NCAA Tournament teams DI, DII or DIII, as wel as NAIA teams were all coached by males. At the club national championships, about 95% of the coaches (some clubs call them trainers) are males. I do agree that there are some outstanding female coaches out there....you got to really look hard, but the factof the matter is....the top club kids are used to male coaches, prefer male coaches an doften gravitate to the male coaches in college. Judge credentials regardless of gender....that should be the foudation of every search committee's mission....often though, it is not! Great collegiate women players DO NOT necessarily become great or even average collegiate coaches...if that were the case, there would be a hell of a lot more UNC, Notre Dame, UCLA and Portland alums as big time head coaches. Count'em up!
It is simply amazing to me that you can quote the above data and use it as a justification for favoring male soccer coaches. Apparently the NCAA looked at the data and found that women are being excluded because of their gender. Can you honestly tell me that you believe in a totally merit based selection system that women should only make up 5-10% of the coaching total in college soccer? Your comment about great women's players not making great college coaches is probably true. I would expand that statement to great SOCCER PLAYERS (regardless of gender) do not make great college coaches. To insinuate that men are inherently different than women in this regard is laughable. I would go as far to say that most male American college soccer coaches above the age of 50 came to the game with precious little playing experience.
I obviously missed making my point. I agree completely that not all great players (regardless of gender) make great coaches. Men are not off the hook on this point! My point about the stats was to say that many very good male coaches are being immediately excluded from job opportunities because they are males...yet, the stats show that right now, there are more male coaches with greater success rates. There are very few Jill Ellis or Beck Burlieghs out there...I am very much pro merit based appointments....but tell that to the Admis out there are are looking for the next Becky or Jill!!! Look at the last coching hire at say...VCU. 2 coaches with absolutely NO collegiate coaching experience not club nor high school....now they had a good year, but the hire was late and many of those players were already there. Time will tell.
I think you are also missing the point that there are 3X as many mens coaches then women. You have not seen Title 9 benifits in the coaching world
And you totally missed my point that using data that shows that 90-95% of all women's head coaches being male simply shows that women are being excluded from the party. You seem to think it shows that we shouldn't let any women in because that data shows there aren't any good ones out there. Obviously you didn't take an introductory logic course in college. For men to be whining that college administrations want female coaches now is at best silly and hypocritical.
Simple hypothetical test question: Your daughter is a top shelf recruit and lets say, all things being equal, (again hypothetical), she has to make a choice between a program with a young inexperienced female coach or one with a more experienced proven male coach, which do you choose? Since you must know that data show that the average tenure of a female head coach is 3 years, your daughter may likely end up playing for 2 inexperienced female coaches in her career if that's the decision she makes. The logic is simple - you don't care what gender her coach is as long as they've proven to be good at what they do. Your priority in the decision is the quality of the experience your daughter will have...period. Now, why don't the administrators hiring your daughter's potential coach have that same priority? Are you willing to gamble your daughter's college career on someone else's demographic imperative? It's a classic nimby example - I'm happy to see young females getting jobs and gaining experience as college head coaches, as long as my daughter is on the other team, playing for the guy that's kicking their butt every year. Do you care what gender your heart surgeon is, or how many succesful heart surgeries they've performed? ......'nuff said.
Since you brought up the "heart surgery" analogy I'll give a more telling and appropriate medical analogy. About 25 years ago women had two choices when seeking out gynecological care. One an insensitive, barely caring male who could no more relate to their problems than a blackboard eraser or another male physician who was exactly the same. And hey since there were virtually no female gynecologists they must not be any good right? Women started going into OB/GYN residencies and guess what? They could relate to their patients and mostly gave better care and the female patients loved them. The guys response? Hey its unfair. They're not playing fair. This is our job, I know we treated you crappy and were totally uncaring but hey that's unfair. If good female coaches are given HALF of a chance they will excel. Why are there so few female soccer coaches? Me thinks I hear a burp and a fart coming from the Old Boy's Club door. Trust me if medicine can change the Good Old Boy's can change as well.
First of all, I would hope she would have the sense to choose the school she wanted for the best overall college experience, not just soccer. Blow out a knee or get a chronic injury, and it doesn't matter who the coach is. Second, it's my observation that a lot of girls don't just choose based on the coach, but on what the whole team environment is like when they visit. The vibe from the other girls counts just as much as what the coach has to say. And comparing soccer coaching to heart surgery is a bit ridiculous. Aside from the whole 'life and death' vs 'a game' thing, the best heart surgeon might be a total prick, but you're only spending what, 2 hours, max, talking to them? You're spending 20 - 30 hours a week, easily, with a coach, and you'd better be comfortable with the way they'll treat you. Maybe it's the best tactical coach on the planet, but if you're miserable while you're at soccer, what kind of experience is that going to be? And your comment about turnover being higher among female coaches isn't the case, at least not this year, at the D-1 head coaching level. If you look at the Soccerbuzz website, there are 45 head coaching changes; 24 departures are men, 21 are women. And more men have been hired as replacements--of the new head coaches, at least 25 are men, some haven't been named yet. Besides, do AD's really care about whether their soccer teams win? Aside from a few programs with storied histories, soccer's pretty far down on the priorities list, along with all the other sports that lose money.
Ok, I’m fed up by the chatter on this topic. Let me speak from a female coaches’ perspective. Is the there an old boys club? YES. Are there some bad female and male coaches out there? YES. Why is the lifespan of a female 3 years? Because a) all of you lot make it even more difficult for a woman to excel because she has to fight harder everyday to prove her worth b) Women have different priorities in life. And I think we realize that there is more to life than hanging your personal identity on whether your teams win or lose. c) There are not a lot of mentors out there for women to follow. I do agree that sometimes places hire less experienced female coaches, but how do you expect these women to get any experience unless they are given a chance? Oh and there are more good females out there than just UF and UCLA. Let’s look at West Virginia, OSU, Louisville, Illinois. ALL female head coaches, all have done well for themselves and have been there longer than 3 years. This is a tough business for either gender. But you know what? Why don’t we talk about how to improve players in this country and stop attacking coaches before they have even coached a game(like you all have with Dillinger) As coaches we should be learning from one another and helping each other by mentoring younger coaches, male and female in order to improve the level of coaching in this country especially on the club level. Encourage your young players to go into coaching and get licensed. When I teach licenses there are usually only 1 or 2 females in a group of 30. That’s really pathetic. How many of you go and watch other peoples training sessions in order to improve your own coaching? Lose the ego and learn from one another instead of back stabbing people on here and then being all "smiley" to people when you see them on the recruiting trail. Share ideas and stop thinking that you invented this game. And who decides what a good coach is? Is winning the only mark of a good coach? Let’s be honest, sometimes winning is just about having better players than the other team (ie: being a good recruiter or having more resouces to work with) and has NOTHING to do with coaching.
"If good female coaches are given HALF of a chance they will excel. Why are there so few female soccer coaches? Me thinks I hear a burp and a fart coming from the Old Boy's Club door. Trust me if medicine can change the Good Old Boy's can change as well." Do you honestly think there is ANY evidence at all, that there is currently gender discrimination against female coaches in college soccer? Again, currently. I've been in the college coaching ranks since 1993, applying and interviewing for jobs over those 15 years. I've been a HC now for 6 years. The significant bias in favor of female applicant's in college women's soccer coaching has been significant and obvious in my experience. Countless examples of it have been discussed here and are occuring all over the place. I've been on search committees and actually witnessed the gender bias first hand. It is a fact that if I was a female, I'd have gotten more interviews and more job offers coaching women's teams than I did as a male. I've been told that directly off the record on numerous occasions. The opposite bias, the one you claim, has not existed in my direct coaching experience of 15 years. The "old boys club" is now called the "paranoid gender equity club" so if you're looking for reasons why there are so few female head coaches, it is NOT for lack of opportunities. The lack of candidates, however, as I mentioned in an earlier post, does have many causes that are historical, sociological, etc. So - in the real world today: what's your answer? are you sending your daughter to play for the young inexperienced female for the cause of gender equity? Praying that maybe you got a good young female coach that might stay longer than 3 years? or do you choose the best coach you can based on merit and experience regardless of gender?