Athletic Dept. Recruits Head Coaches by Skill, Not Gender

Coaching jobs at the collegiate level are seeing more and more competition among applicants, both men and women, but the job seems to fall into the men’s hands more than the women’s.

“I don’t think it’s a prejudice or anything like that as much as its just women trying to get caught up with experience,” associate athletic director Gil Swalls said, “and right now there’s just too many men out there who have done more.”

There are thirteen men’s and women’s sports teams at the University of Tampa, twelve of them have male head coaches.

The only female in that position at the university is Leslie Kanter, head coach of the women’s softball team. Kanter has been at UT for 15 years, and has been lucky enough to have never been faced with any discrimination in the workplace throughout her coaching career. Many female coaches have not been so lucky.

While the sport of softball continues to be coached mostly by females, other sports, both men’s and women’s, are primarily coached by men. The growing success of women’s sports has made the coaching positions more desirable for males, kicking up the competition for those few jobs, most of which are given to the more experienced men.

Women are finding it harder to compete with men who have the same credentials, but the upper hand in the realm of male dominated athletic department. What it essentially comes down to is the decision of the athletic director, who is responsible for hiring new head coaches.

Throughout the nation, similar to the position of head coach, the job of an athletic director is most commonly filled by a man. Some believe that this fact is directly correlated to the amount of male coaches, supposing that the athletic director would choose a male over a female applicant.

At the University of Tampa, when the athletic department is looking for a new head coach, advertisements state that females and minorities are encouraged to apply. Steps like these are helping to shine a positive light on the acceptance of female applicants as head coaches.

Even with this kind of action being taken to try to level the playing field on which coaches are being hired, women are still deterred by the thought that a man will get the job simply because he is a man. With equal qualifications, who is to say that a woman should receive the job over the man, and visa versa?

Recruiting coaches is also a common way to find great applicants for job openings, and UT has done a little bit of this as well, but without much success. Above the amount of experience someone has had and how qualified the applicant may be, having a positive attitude towards teaching is one of the most important qualities that the department is looking for.

“The first thing we look for are teachers, the second thing we look for is experience,” explained Swalls “and we try to find experience that is comparable to our situation.”

Regardless of sex, the applicant that has the strongest qualifications and the most experience in the sport deserves the position.

In most of the situations at UT, when a female has been interviewed for a head coaching job the male applicants have just been a step or two ahead. Whether it is with great experience and success or just having a positive attitude that fits comfortably with the members of the department and teams, the men have shown to be a better match.

Often times this is seen as an injustice towards women, but the truth is that schools and teams want the best person available, no matter the sex.

Looking at the success of the women’s teams here at the University of Tampa, it seems that the athletic department has made all of the right decisions while hiring head coaches.

“Our programs here are very successful with the coaches that we have, they are very supportive of my program and me as a female and they’re supportive of their own programs,” said Kanter, “our choices here have been good, not being female.”

When asked about a possible remedy for the imbalance among men and women, Kanter replied,
“I don’t think there’s anything that you can actually do other than just hiring a woman just for the whole title nine thing, to make it equal.”

In some cases however, female coaches have been hired over a more qualified man just to make it seem like the program is helping to create equality throughout the coaching world. This is not fair to the male applicants who have worked so hard to get a well-respected job, and then lose it to a woman just because she is a woman.

Hiring men because they have more experience as a coach is just adding to his long list of qualifications. Women need to be given the opportunities to build on their experiences so they can be seen on the same level as men or else this cycle will continue, leaving potentially great female coaches behind.

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Verify you are human:

Enter the characters in the image above: