Gender and Coaching

Discussion in 'Women's College' started by Eddie K, Dec 5, 2019.

  1. Eddie K

    Eddie K Member+

    May 5, 2007
    A couple points and a new thread.
    Much of this has been discussed so interesting to hear some new takes.

    1- Female players, just like male players, want the best coach. They feel slighted when they get a coach for any reason other than on the merits. When players have input on these committees, they usually don't care about gender, they want the best coach they can get.

    2- Female players sometimes prefer male coaches. Many, in fact, don't prefer female coaches. This idea that they need a role model coach of the same gender is overstated. Women (and men) have role models all around them - in their homes, classrooms, all over the place, even in their phones/headphones. The idea that a same-gender coach is somehow necessary or some massive positive is again, overstated, for either gender.

    3. If a goal is to "undo" generations of gender socialization in sports, then telling young people they should prefer a same-gender coach kinda perpetuate gender identification doesn't it? The point is both genders can be mentored and learn from either gender. I had a female tennis coach in HS and she was a legend.

    4. I coach women and work hard to keep the good potential coaches involved in the game. Just like I would if I coached men. Several of my former players are still coaching but I'm not as successful as I'd like to be. These are smart, articulate young people with lots of options. Coaching is a tough and often brutal profession that doesn't pay well. I don't blame smart women (or men) for choosing another career path.
     
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  2. ytrs

    ytrs Member+

    Jan 24, 2018
    Nice of you to speak for the players. You cannot be serious with that post. Those are your generalizations based on your experience.
     
  3. Eddie K

    Eddie K Member+

    May 5, 2007
    I've been on college selection committees with college female players who have said, "why are we looking at these female candidates that don't have enough experience?"
    That is a direct quote from my direct experience but of course no group of humans feels the same about almost anything. In a similar situation, I've also seen players advocate for the current assistant coach (inexperienced as a head coach male and female).
    So my initial post is full of generalizations and opinion. I assume every post on an anonymous forum should start with "in my humble opinion". To be clear, I don't speak for anyone but me. But I've heard a lot!
     
  4. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Excellent to make this its own topic.

    A danger in thinking about this is the temptation to see what faces an Athletic Director as a choice between hiring based on "affirmative action" (whether it be based on race, gender, or another characteristic) and hiring based on merit.

    Most of the arguments I've seen questioning hiring based on "affirmative action" pose hiring based on merit as the only alternative. But, in real life, absent a high level of knowledge about the characteristics, training, and knowledge required to be a good Division I women's soccer coach (which, so far as I am aware, have yet to be determined in a legitimate scientific way) and absent a good method for determining how an applicant fits those traits (which likewise, so far as I am aware, has yet to be determined in a legitimate scientific way), the alternative to "affirmative action" -- or anything else, for that matter -- is not hiring based on merit. It may be hiring based on what an AD, or we, think is merit, but it isn't really.

    There are serious scientific studies done by very good psychologists about this and they make it clear that it is far more difficult than people think to select someone for a job who will be good at it. It's hard to define the needed characteristics for the job. And, once you've defined them, it's hard to match those characteristics with individuals -- not because of the individuals, but because of the way humans (in this case, Athletic Directors ) tend to think and make decisions. Typically, the way humans tend to think and make these kinds of decisions produce results that are not based on actual merit, regardless of what the decision-makers think.

    That's not to say having a discussion about Gender and Coaching isn't good, I think it's great. It's rather to say let's not think that if AD's aren't making decisions that include gender as factor, then they will be making decisions based on actual merit. They may think and intend that to be what they're doing, but it's most likely not what they'll actually be doing.

    To which I'll add that there are ways to define needed characteristics and to measure how well candidates meet them. They aren't, however, consistent with the way most humans like to think when making these kinds of decisions.
     
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  5. McSkillz

    McSkillz Member+

    ANGEL CITY FC, UCLA BRUINS
    United States
    Nov 22, 2014
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #5 McSkillz, Dec 5, 2019
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2019
    Wow, just wow, what a very biased statement. I disagree with you on pretty much everything. The one argument I always hate when it comes to the reasoning why someone chooses a white male over a minority is this:

    ENTER: A white male GM who happens to be selecting a potential coach for a club team. He argues he chose on merit when defending to the press on why he passed on an African American coach that had an astounding season with her club even if her stats were one loss more than the chosen guy.

    General Manager: “oh, we chose the BEST candidate in the world over them. He’s the best, yep uh huh... that’s why we didn’t hire that minority. Not because they were black or female, nahhhhhh it’s because they’re not the best. They uh... were not um punctual and uh lost a game or something. Yeah it has nothing to do with anything but that, the best candidate just happens to be white and male. Geez some getting mad at us, white males have rights too!!! We have it so hard in life, anyway affirmative action is stupid because it’s soooooooo biased and killing opportunities for white males..... we are all equal and racism doesn’t exist so affirmative action isn’t needed. Who cares if the person is black or white, gay or straight, female and male, I pretend everything is equal. But yeah white male coach dude was the BEST, I mean.... look at his CV... went to a darn good high school, sure it’s upper middle class and 90 percent white but that was a great school. Yep, and he’s always on time too, he’s not like other kinds of people that could be less punctual, uh you know what I mean. But yeah I don’t have a biases bone in my body and that’s why I uh hate affirmative action...”


    ME: o_Oo_O
     
  6. soccersubjectively

    soccersubjectively BigSoccer Supporter

    Jan 17, 2012
    Dallas
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Are you speaking, in general, for all female players who would disagree with OP or is this just your opinion based off your experience?
     
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  7. ManU Fan

    ManU Fan New Member

    Man U
    Dec 4, 2019
    There is no way you can say with some of these selections of female coaches for women's soccer that the best candidate is chosen

    For the most part, only NCAA I football and basketball and pro sports have the correct hiring practice then more then times not the best candidate is selected regardless of gender or race. That is because of the money on the line. Do football and basketball hire based on who is going to make role model? Not really

    The reason AD can make the hire they do and make it look for affirmative action is because there is not money on the line

    you want a club coach that has no experience in college coaching to get a head coaching position? That really does not make any sense. That is like saying a HS teacher should be a college professor.

    As I said in an earlier post, why are females not taking the opportunities afforded to them? In my A license course there was 1 female out of 36 candidates.My friend is another A course.25 candidate so far and no females. Applying for the jobs as stated before, about 10% of the candidates are women and do not meet the basic qualifications. The system should be the same, women should have to get their coaching education, put the years of experience and show merit just the same as men.

    Keep in mind the women's national team could not beat FC Dallas U15 DA team. If a man is coaching U 15 and above at the men's level, it means he is coaching at a high er level then US Women's Coach. That would benefit women's soccer tremendously to have coaches coaching at a higher level come in and coach females
     
  8. soccersubjectively

    soccersubjectively BigSoccer Supporter

    Jan 17, 2012
    Dallas
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I didn't say any of what you are trying to pin on me soooo yes, I suppose you are correct in stating that there is no way I could have said that.

    Think you might have missed my point ; )
     
  9. blissett

    blissett Member+

    Aug 20, 2011
    Italy
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    You seem to imply with your post that what is actual "merit" can not (yet?) be legitimately defined. Don't you think that, given that premise, the argument could be reversed? It's impossible to determine if ADs hired for actual merit but it's also impossible to determine if they didn't?

    Mind, I am just speculating, since I have no actual position to defend in this debate (or, better, I am not interested in chosing a camp in this circumstance). I am just interested in the theory that's behind it.

    Me and you, @cpthomas, had basically the same discussion over and over through various thread: you are interested in what's "measurable"; what can't be measured, in your eyes, is simply not true. I am not, and I believe there are "intangibles" in human life that can't and shouldn't be measured (or, basically, if you try to measure them, you're not actually measuring them: you're measuring something else that approximates them and that you call with the same name to avoid the pitfall to have something in your hand that defies your will to measure everything).

    I don't think that all of the carachteristics of a good coach (for men of women alike) can be strictly "measurable". That's why I don't think an A.I. could do a good job of selecting candidates for such a job, while I am quite sure that you believe instead that such a robot could one day exist. In my opinion such a robot wouldn't exactly do the job we are talking about: it would do a quite similar, simplified job that we'd like to name the same way, but it wouldn't really do "that" job.

    It basically boils down to: judging by our mutual interaction on these boards in the last years, @cpthomas, I guess you're persuaded that everything a human does can be replaced by an A.I. doing that, and one day it will. I don't believe that instead: some things humans do can be roughly imitated but not actually replaced on a real 1-to-1 basis.

    Sorry for the probably slightly off-topic diversion, but I was feeling the need to write that. Let's continue discussing the actual topic at hand, guys.
     
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  10. ytrs

    ytrs Member+

    Jan 24, 2018
    I did not speak for anyone but myself. His post was full of his opinion, as he readily admitted. I took great offense to him saying what female athletes prefer. That is only his opinion and his experience. That is all I said. The whining from males on this board about discrimination is astounding. Men, white men in particular, have lived an advantaged existence since the beginning of time. Yet when a female gets hired, many on this board scream discrimination. It would be funny if it was not so tone-deaf. I swear some of you never grew up around sisters, mothers, wives.

    Let me add that these female coaches typically have 4 years more playing experience at the women's collegiate soccer level than any of these male candidates. But, we ignore that aspect of one's resume because it doesn't work to the male coaches advantage.
     
  11. McSkillz

    McSkillz Member+

    ANGEL CITY FC, UCLA BRUINS
    United States
    Nov 22, 2014
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #11 McSkillz, Dec 6, 2019
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2019
    THANKYOU!

    And no, I don't want an AI hiring candidates either. An AI won't ever know the pain and suffering and the discrimination of people since the beginning of human kind. As a female person of color, I can sometimes get too frustrated over the lack of understanding on forums and social media but I also have to caution myself to not get so invested in arguing with such people because some individuals are always going to be set in their ways and in their philosophies until they probably die. So there's no point in me complaining about people(presumably white males but also some females) discussing issues regarding pay equality, or gender equality in general.

    I have already heard the opinions on here and I know that most on here couldn't give a rats behind about those issues. Heck, just based off the 100 pages or so of bashing Megan Rapinoe left and right over the Summer should be enough evidence to support what people on these forums think of these issues.

    Ugh, anyway, just wanted to say I agree and I'm glad someone on this forum besides me feels similarly to me. I mean sometimes I think I'm going crazy, thinking I must be stuck in some Twilight Zone episode where everybody thinks discrimination and inequality doesn't exist or I'm speaking some alien language nobody understands.

    I wanted to add something regarding Leslie Gallimore. I mean, her dedication, the players that were under her over the past 20 something years, everything... I can't imagine her retiring without anyone considering her as a head coach for a professional club or heck even the Nat'l team for that matter. I hope she is never forgotten in women's soccer history. I hope someone keeps her memory alive because let me tell you something, nobody in the system of patriarchy is going to do it. You know how I know? Because so many remarkable women in history have been forgotten and lost forever. We will never ever know some of these women that lived a remarkable life and done so many great things. Okay I'm off my soap box. I hate when I get so worked up over these issues. No wonder I'm still single. I need to put on my dating profile, "must tolerate hours of endless discussions over gender equality and discrimination...." or maybe just leave it out. :whistling::whistling::whistling::whistling::whistling::whistling::whistling::whistling:
     
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  12. devad

    devad Member

    Nov 18, 2012
    Just wait until a couple of these big jobs announce their hires! This place will have 40 pages!

    The reality is everyone has biases (or even prejudices) that affect decisions. White males have benefited from this for thousands of years. So when a white male cries foul it comes across pretty poorly. That being said:

    1. The only people who suffer when a coach who is under-qualified was hired is the players.
    2. I am shocked at the number or admins who will say outloud, they want to hire a woman. That is illegal.
     
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  13. 2footed

    2footed New Member

    Dec 6, 2019
    How many women put in for boys HS Varsity, DA, Men's College jobs? In San Diego Landon Donovan hired Women on his staff to coach men...this is progressive!

    But overlooking more qualified soccer coaches is not okay, illegal, and regressive for the game!

    USWNT level IS equivalent to U15 boys.

    I can also attest to women preferring Male Coaches. Straight quote from a player with a few Caps and National Championships under her belt.
     
  14. decidedbyall

    decidedbyall Member

    Jan 22, 2014
    Hi, hello. Is this thing on? I tend to only chime in at this time of the year when the misogyny is dripping in these threads.

    Dear MEN on the WOMEN'S College forum: go home? Go somewhere else? We truly are not here to listen to disgruntled men talk about why they did not get hired at (insert school here). You have absolutely no idea what it is like to A. be a women B. be a female athlete C. be SPOKEN for by men over and over and over. Your opinion in these black holes of the inter-webs is sad and please stop.

    There is no debating that men have more opportunity than women in coaching...in most anything else? It's a tired argument to try to argue otherwise. Can we create a thread that LIFTS WOMEN UP? That talks about the success of female coaches? Because you know what....Representation matters! Imagine this-- you are a young college soccer player and hoping to get into coaching and someone sends you the link to this thread?? Ridiculous.

    So-- who is up for it? Let's start a thread promoting female coaches? Can we start a list? Who are the young super stars in coaching? Who are some female coaches that are crushing it? Are there assistants out there that are amazing? Let's TALK ABOUT THEM!

    And one more thing-- to those of you saying you are a current coach of women and you are on here talking about this stuff-- that is concerning. Would you say this in your locker room? Would you tell the women you are coaching that they get more opportunities than men? I truly hope not.

    Have a good day.
     
  15. Eddie K

    Eddie K Member+

    May 5, 2007
    So, you're saying THIS should be a factor hiring a soccer coach in 2019?

    I would argue that the biggest lesson learned in competitive sports is that YOU GET WHAT YOU EARN. You don't get playing time, a roster spot, a scholarship, or a job because of some demographic trait or a history of someone in that demographic being oppressed in the past. What would happen if everyone in an applicant pool could claim some aggrieved underrepresented status? They would be treated like none were and that's the point. And I'm a bleeding heart liberal with a mother and sisters in a big diverse family.

    There's a D1 near me that has hired young female after young female. 5 coaches in about 15 years. They just did it again. So far, 2 wins and 2 wins. Folks already wondering if this new young coach will make it. How does that serve the players? or even the coach herself? The role model of another failed coach without enough experience to get the job done. Reality check - are You going to send Your daughter to a program like this? Go right ahead but I'm not. There's a female head coach in the same area with 10+ years of experience at her college and I can't recommend that school enough. Frankly, the first school should put enough money on the table to hire the coach at the 2nd school but this is women's soccer :(

    It's not a gender thing for me. It's a competence thing.
    I teach my players that lesson - you get what you earn. I hold players in high esteem that understand this and perform at high levels academically and athletically and ethically. Frankly, I hate coaching men and men's college soccer is not very appealing to me at all. I'm thrilled that there are now more women's teams in US college soccer and more scholarship money spent on them. The lack of professional playing opportunities is another issue altogether but progress is being made.
     
  16. outside63

    outside63 Member

    Jul 15, 2010
    The USWNT scrimmages boys teams in order to play against faster players. The results of these games are meaningless. They are just a training tool. Women and men are different. Speed and power solve many problems on the soccer field. To say that the USWNT is equivalent to a U15 boys team is stupid. Having more experience and soccer IQ only helps so much against faster, stronger players. The faster players that can jump higher will win more balls and dominate the game. That does not mean they are better players, it means they are faster and stronger. There is NO way to compare female to male soccer players.
     
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  17. McSkillz

    McSkillz Member+

    ANGEL CITY FC, UCLA BRUINS
    United States
    Nov 22, 2014
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah I think that guy is in the wrong forum. I've heard many things on this forum that disturb me but comparing the USWNT to 15 year old boys is entering troll Facebook, dumb Youtube Reddit comments territory.
     
  18. HeadSpun

    HeadSpun Member

    Nov 14, 2014
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    This "FC Dallas U15 DA team" scrimmage win v USWNT was evidently the wet dream of every Dad associated with men's youth soccer, or at least those in TX. Those who want to think their son is SO amazingly talented and should have got more attention from college scouts. Those who want to remind others that men's soccer is so superior to the women's game.... THIS was their redemption. THIS scrimmage with 15 year old boys PROVES that women's soccer is no where near the awesome game that is performed by boys..er...MEN.

    Please. To those who continue to brag about the results of a scrimmage and extrapolate false narratives from that one match...Please stop. Your statement that any man who is coaching a u15 or above mens team is coaching at a higher level than the US Women's Coach shows your lack of logic and knowledge of coaching.

    When was this game played?! How many more years will you live in that moment? Move on. It was a scrimmage. No one except parents aching for more acknowledgement for their kid, or for those who want to yell about their perception of the superiority of male athletes over female athletes cares about this old scrimmage. Move on and keep your misogyny away from female athletes please.
     
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  19. sockerdad06

    sockerdad06 Member

    Sep 12, 2004


    In this whole discussion it is always centered on giving an opportunity to a lesser qualified Female coach in order to get more female coaches involved. I am not a SJW - so even if you are and champion this battle --> What about the players? What about giving them the most qualified coach. If not you are treating those FEMALE athletes poorly.
     
  20. upprv

    upprv Member

    Aug 4, 2004
    The argument is poor because as it stands for women to have “more opportunities” that means hiring less qualified candidates. So if you are ok with less qualified candidates getting hired to coach your Alma mater, or your daughter, then ok. You can feel that way.

    I think more women should be in coaching. But I also think women should earn it. Go coach club for 4 years, be a volunteer at a div 1 school and climb the ladder. So when your resume sits on the desk of an AD it has the same experience and weight as anyone else’s.

    But in all the back and forth about hiring women I rarely hear female mentors telling the ladies to go out and build a worthy resume. They seem to just lecture the AD’s telling them to “give women more opportunities.”
    I’ve been on the hiring process and in general the resumes for women vs men are shocking. If you blacked out names and genders 80% of female resumes wouldn’t make it out of the sorting phase.

    certainly that is changing. And that’s a good thing. And if two resumes are close and the interview process shows it to be tight race, then heck, hire the female! But to overlook huge experience gaps in order to hire a woman is not ok. ESP if my daughter is on that team. Why does that one coach’s “opportunity” to have a job trump my daughter’s “opportunity” to have a good experience?

    If the unlv coach’s name and gender was blacked out of the application are you all saying that a candidate with 1 year of club experience and 2 as a college assistant would get that candidate in the room for an interview for a HC job at a div 1 school?
     
  21. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I don't think Artificial Intelligence can do it, but humans are much poorer at this than they think. Humans can learn to do it properly: As in, learn how to identify what you should be looking for in terms of a good coach at your school; learn how to conduct an interview process that will help you determine whether a candidate will match what you're looking for; learn how to monitor your own normal human tendencies to mis-evaluate a candidate. There actually are people who are experts at these things, having learned them in helping with hiring practices where life and death is involved. That tends to cause one to want to get it right rather than simply feel good. A complaint heard, though, when people are told to implement these things in a hiring process, is that it makes them feel like robots.:thumbsdown:

    So again, I don't advocate for replacing humans with AI. But I do advocate for humans getting real about their shortcomings and learning how to really think, which includes thinking in the context of good data and science and recognizing that humans have tendencies that, unless brought to consciousness and addressed, can cause them to make decisions that are inconsistent with what they think their intentions are. Certainly our current political world indicates the need for that.:)
     
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  22. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Just a reminder from an elderly white male -- who by some very lucky circumstances was brought up to value women's sports and female athletes at least as much as men's:

    In 2004, there were 300 Division I women's soccer teams. Women coached 99 of them and men 201.

    In 2019, there were 336 teams. Women coached 96 of them and men 240.
     
  23. devad

    devad Member

    Nov 18, 2012
    That is disturbing! I guess the question is why? It seems to be more of a situation of lack of women coaching in the game period vs opportunities of the women that are in the game. Number of women in the club game and in the A license courses is a valid concern. There are some very good ones. So the quality is good! But why is the quantity so low?
     
  24. blissett

    blissett Member+

    Aug 20, 2011
    Italy
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    I don't want to divert too much from the topic of this thread, so feel free to answer to me privately if you feel like it, but I would be curious about those "hiring practices where life and death is involved": what do you exactly refer to? Hiring soldiers for an army?
     
  25. ManU Fan

    ManU Fan New Member

    Man U
    Dec 4, 2019
    To be honest I wrote this and not a troll either...Thanks

    You responded so tactfully to it with the reference to a wet dream. You definitely should not coach women

    I actually am a college coach(Head Coach for 16 yeas) and have coached men and women at the intercollegiate level, have an A license, Premier Diploma...let's compare bios of coaching and see who is more qualified to evaluate differences between genders in soccer.

    The score was 5 to 2 in the "scrimmage" that is pretty sound. Have you watched a U15 DA team play in particular a MLS DA team? I have. A lot of them play very good soccer. Better then US Women's Soccer Team play? I have and during my A course we spent a decent amount of time analyzing them during She Believes Cup and the World cup. Not impressed with their play, fluctuating tactics,etc.

    Yes men that have coached at the U15 DA level and above and have played at the U15 DA level and above are used to playing a game at a higher level for sure. So when both of those are taken into account based on soccer knowledge and ability they would be more qualified then any female.
     

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