- Update: Kathy DeBoer, Executive Director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, reacts to this report. See AVCA Director: “We don’t have a lot of good solutions”
- Correction: Apologies for misspelling the last name of Florida Coach Mary Wise.
Last season, every Pac-10 women’s volleyball head coach was a man. This season, one-quarter of the Pac-12 is run by women. Two of those coaches—Utah’s Beth Launiere and Colorado’s Liz Kritza will be in Seattle this weekend to face the Washington Huskies. Launiere and Kritza will also meet WSU’s first-year coach Jen Greeny this weekend in Pullman; Greeny is the third member of the Pac-12’s small, but growing, coaching sorority.
From zero to 25 percent: Sounds
like real progress for women seeking top volleyball jobs. But across the
country, the trend is decidedly in the other direction. D1 women’s volleyball
is increasingly a man’s game.
Volleyblog Seattle gleaned numbers
from a recent NCAA report titled Race and Gender Demographics 2009-2010. We found that the percentage of female
head coaches in Division 1 volleyball has plummeted since 1995, from 62% to 47%
last season. No other D1 women’s team sport has experienced anything close to
this gender shift.
“It’s one of the very few sports
where, since Title IX, there’s fewer women head coaches than there were
before,” says Shannon Ellis, head
coach at Seattle University. “That’s
surprising to a lot of people.”
“Women are getting into the
volleyball profession after college, and then, at some point, we have a high
rate of attrition,” says Utah’s Launiere. “We’re losing them before they get to
become D1 head coaches.”
“It seems like the higher the
strength of the conference, the fewer and fewer female coaches you find,” says
Colorado’s Kritza.
What’s happening in volleyball?
And why? Ellis, Launiere and Kritza revealed some intriguing theories during
conversations this week with Volleyblog Seattle.
THE UNEQUAL BURDEN OF RAISING A FAMILY
Shannon Ellis is married, the
mother of two young boys, ages 5 and 2. Her schedule keeps her on the
volleyball court or on the road for most of the year.
“It cannot be said enough that
anyone who is in that situation, they have to have a great husband,” says
Ellis. “Someone who is very understanding and flexible and willing to make
sacrifices. Because the whole family does make sacrifices.”
 |
| Seattle University Head Coach Shannon Ellis [photo courtesy: Seattle University Sports Information] |
“In my case, I have a lot of
extended family help. My mother-in-law currently lives with us so that she can
help take care of the children while I’m travelling or recruiting. I think,
without that, I’m not sure that this would be possible.”
Utah’s Launiere, who recently
served a term as president of the American
Volleyball Coaches Association, hears from a lot of women coaches who don’t
have Ellis’ level of family support.
“I don’t think women are afraid
to put in the hours in and work hard,” Launiere says, “but if they have the
choice to start a family and are going to be the primary caretaker, which
happens more often than the male, then it affects them more.”
“Coaching isn’t a job, it’s a
lifestyle,” says Colorado’s Kritza, who is single. “You have to really make a
huge commitment early on in order to have a long-term career.”
 |
| University of Utah Head Coach Beth Launiere [photo courtesy: Seattle University Sports Information] |
“I think a lot of times, female
coaches end up having to make some decisions by their mid-thirties,” Kritza
says. “Unfortunately, a lot has to do with the difficulty of balancing family
and career, particularly if you want to be a competitive head coach at the
highest level. Sometimes that balance can be really, really hard to strike for a
female.”
Launiere thinks the NCAA needs
to continue conversations about reducing the number of days coaches can be on
the road, recruiting. Currently, a coach can travel to visit recruits as many
as 80 days a year. “You feel a lot of pressure to be out there,” she says. “And
the time demands are great for male or female, but it seems to be affecting the
females a little bit more.”
If women coaches do indeed have
to pick up a greater share of child-rearing responsibilities than their male
counterparts, it might begin to explain some of huge decrease in women at D1
top jobs. But if that were the only difference, why hasn’t the male/female
ratio significantly changed in other team sports like basketball and soccer?
Surprisingly, it may have a lot to do with the growing strength of women’s
volleyball compared to its male counterpart.
THE
WOMEN’S GAME’S HIGHER STATUS
From 1990-1996, Jim McLaughlin was head coach at USC … the men’s head coach. After
winning a national championship and 65% of his matches, McLaughlin looked for a
more prestigious job: as coach of a women’s team. He led Kansas State’s women’s team for four seasons, before returning to
the Pac-10 as head coach of the Washington
women. In 2005, he became the only coach in NCAA history to win national titles
as head coach of a men’s team and then a women’s team.
“If you’re going to coach
volleyball, and make a career of it,” Ellis says, “it’s likely to be in women’s
volleyball. This is where the opportunity is.”
Just 90 colleges offer NCAA men’s
volleyball; only 23 are at Division 1 schools. Compare that to the women’s
game, where 1,027 schools play the sport; 321 at the D1 level.
NCAA SCHOOLS OFFERING VOLLEYBALL
|
||
Division
|
Women
|
Men
|
I
|
321
|
23
|
II
|
277
|
14
|
III
|
429
|
53
|
TOTAL
|
1,027
|
90
|
“The positions (as head
volleyball coaches) are high-level positions that pay well,” says Launiere. “They’re
appealing to male or female. They’re real good career jobs. So, it’s not
surprising that there’s more men in the profession.”
That may go a long way toward
explaining why the male/female head coach ratios in other team sports have not
changed as dramatically as in volleyball. Male soccer coaches have many men’s
soccer teams to choose from; the same is true for basketball and, to a large
degree, for baseball/softball.
“When I had a job opening for an
assistant,” Kritza remembers, “I got a number of male coaches in the men’s game
that were looking into the women’s game because that’s where the resources are
being spent, that’s where the money is.”
OPENINGS
AT TOP PROGRAMS ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN.
17 of the previous 22 D1
championships were won by teams from either the Pac-10 (now Pac-12) or the Big
10. Of the remaining five titles, three were won by Nebraska, now a member of the Big 10. The coaches at those championship
schools are legends. And all of them are male.
In the 30 years of NCAA women’s
D1 volleyball championships, no team coached by a woman has ever won the title.
The closest anyone has come is Mary Wise at Florida, who led the
Gators to seven Final Fours, losing the 2003 title match to USC.
Understandably, top coaches—male
or female—aspire to coach in the Pac-12 or Big-10. But those jobs rarely become
available.
“The top conferences, you like
to think that when you get to that job, that’s your last career move,” says
Launiere.
Washington’s McLaughlin, USC’s Mick Haley and Stanford’s John
Dunning are all in their 11th seasons at their current schools. Between
them, they won every national title from 2001-2005; each won earlier championships
at other schools, too (McLaughlin with USC men, Haley with Texas women and Dunning—twice—with University of Pacific women.) Dave Rubio has been at Arizona
for 20 years. Before he retired last year, UCLA’s
Andy Banachowski headed the Bruins
for 43 years, earning three titles of his own (and AIAW championships before that.)
“In the Pac-12, there are a lot
of male coaches who’ve been coaching as long as I’ve been alive,” Kritza
chuckles.
 |
| University of Colorado Head Coach Liz Kritza [photo courtesy: University of Colorado Sports Information] |
In the Big-10, Penn State’s Russ Rose is in his 32nd season, with five titles to
show for it. Nebraska’s John Cook has led the Cornhuskers since
2000. Pete Waite started at Wisconsin in 1999. Before he retired
last season, Minnesota’s Mike Hebert had logged 28 seasons in
the Big-10 (including 13 at Illinois).
When Banachowski retired at UCLA, his replacement was a male, Mike Sealy. At Minnesota, US National Coach Hugh
McCutcheon was hired, though he won’t join the team until after the 2012
Olympics.
“The people that have been
coaching for a long time have made huge sacrifices to be there,” says Ellis. “So
I think you could see a woman there at some point, but it just has to be the
right woman in the right situation.”
SOME
WOMEN COACHES ARE SET UP FOR FAILURE
Sometime in the mid-1990s,
volleyball evolved. It attracted bigger, faster and stronger athletes; cerebral
coaches began to dominate the game. Today’s marquee male coaches often spent a
decade or more in the trenches, where they quietly experimented with new ideas
and were given a chance to learn from mistakes before emerging into the
spotlight.
Launiere, who has headed Utah for 22 seasons, says too many D1
openings now go to women who have not had similar opportunities to learn the
game. “Sometimes we’re throwing 21, 22-year-olds into those situations. Just
because they played doesn’t mean they’re necessarily ready to take the reins.”
“I think it’s our job to make
sure that these young female coaches are ready to take on some of these jobs.
And this is coming from somebody who took over this job at age 26.”
MAKING
IT WORK
Ellis, Launiere and Kritza all
say they enjoy coaching.
“It’s a wonderful job,” says
Ellis. “It’s a great job. And I think anyone who gets to coach college
volleyball must consider themselves lucky.”
Kritza believes it’s important
that all young women, including athletes, see plenty of women in positions of
authority. “In this society, young girls need strong female role models to help
build a real level of confidence.”
Launiere realizes the next
generation of women coaches have to come from those who are now college
athletes. “They have to have been your leaders. I think you have to be a leader
to be a coach.”
But will those leaders look at
the current trend—the trend toward fewer and fewer D1 women head coaches—and decide
it’s not for them? It’s something Shannon Ellis says goes way beyond coaching.
“I know there are other demanding
professions for a woman that are very time intensive. It’s something we (Ellis
and her husband) have to consider at the end of every season: is this worth it?”
But when Ellis considers perhaps
the most important question of all—the effect on her two boys—her answer is … yes.
“I work with fantastic
student-athletes, and my children love them. They see many professions for
women. They see what it means to work hard. They see how to deal with failure,
and how to overcome when you have struggles. They grew up in the gym. They know
how to throw a ball better than any other kid on the block.”
“They see first-hand what it
takes to be great. And I think that will translate to them in their lives in
other pursuits.”
[UPDATE: KATHY DEBOER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN VOLLEYBALL COACHES ASSOCIATION, REACTS TO THIS REPORT.
See: AVCA Director: "We don't have a lot of good solutions"]
See: AVCA Director: "We don't have a lot of good solutions"]
GENDER
DISTRIBUTION OF HEAD COACHES IN SELECT WOMEN’S NCAA D1 TEAM SPORTS
source: Race and Gender Demographics, 2009-2010, NCAA Member
Institutions’ Personnel Report, ncaa.org
[note: Women’s Rowing was not an NCAA sport in 1995-96]
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If you are going to label it as percentages then don't include the decimal point. For instance, it is 89% not .89% for field hockey coaches.
ReplyDeleteAs to the content, I think the fact there are so few collegiate men's teams is the reason there are so many men coaching women's teams. If you want to coach a college team, it will most likely be a women's team. Plus the women's game is where what money there is is.
ReplyDeleteNot to be too picky, but the head coach at the University of Florida is Mary WISE, not Weiss. Coach Wise is a coaching legend, one who should garner the respect of the entire volleyball community.
ReplyDeleteApologies for misspelling the last name of Coach Wise. Thanks for pointing it out.
ReplyDelete