Priorities

Something that stuck me immediately was in the NYT viedo There Aren't Many Women Coaching College Sports, Here's Why when one of the coaches said “Title IX asked for participation. It didn’t ask for coaching.” I never really thought about the equality in coaching positions when thinking about Title IX in sports. Title IX, however, is not only for sports, but for the protection against all discrimination based on sex in federally funded educational systems. It also is not exlucsive to student, faculty and staff are also protected from discrimination based on sex under Title IX, therefore, it does apply to coaching. A question was also asked in that video about why all coaching positions for female sports go to women coaches. My immediate thought was that if a male is coach is qualified, more so than a female, the male coach should get the position, regardless of the sex of the athletes. Of course, if the female coach has played said sport on a highly competitive level with a successful history in coaching, she deserves the job. 

In the WeCOACH video I wrote down the quote “people hire people who look like them,” from Muffet McGraw. I don’t know how true that is, in my opinion I do think more people hire people based on qualifications and many other factors that outweigh appearances. 

In Mrs. Barcomb’s presentation, I liked how she emphasized how important it is for females to have role models as a big reason to have female coaches. She also talked about how people use the excuse that many women simply don’t apply for jobs or aren’t qualified. Both reasonable answers in my opinion, however, I agree with Barcomb in that having a female coach brings many benefits. She also talks about how to increase the number of women's coaches in a school and how to encourage them to apply for these positions. I just wanted to point out one thing, however, that schools must be careful in hitting that A mark of that evaluation Barcomb was talking about, and get tunnel visioned in that goal and end up hiring people who aren’t the best of the job just because they are women. End of the day, if a person is right for the job, they should get the job, despite their gender, and the schools should not get bogged down on the statistics of the gender makeup in their coaches because it could compromise the success of the athletes.