A female coaching dynasty: Celebrating the anniversary of Title IX

Watch: A female coaching dynasty: Celebrating the anniversary of Title IX

At the time, Avery Koenen was a junior at Montevideo High School and played forward or post. "We lost our first one; we played the number one seed. We gave a good fight at least. And then we won our second one to go to the consolation championship and then we lost our third one," Koenen said. "We played three games in a row which takes a toll on your body and it's tiring. But it was super fun." 

She said that it was great for her and her teammates to realize this goal that they've been working towards. "It's always been just like a team goal we've always wanted. So just to like finally see it pay off it was just super amazing."

When I interviewed Keely Foley, she was a senior and is now off to Minnesota State Fergus Falls to play basketball and study sports management. "My dream came true," she said. She played point guard. "It's not just the calling out the plays or any of that, it's making sure everybody's success is like, their success is everybody's success and helping even the younger girls like, it takes a lot to have that patience just to help them succeed and get better," she said.

Both players said they couldn't imagine a life without sports.

"Sports teach you a lot about like, like I said perseverance and just teamwork and leadership," Koenen said. "My grandma, I remember talking about, her growing up she said that she wishes she could always have played sports. She wishes she could have played volleyball but she could only do that in gym class. So just being able to do that is just something I'm grateful for."

Anthony Jackson has been the Montevideo High School women's Varsity basketball coach for two years. He's also an English teacher. "I think Title IX has been a fantastic positive influence in athletic programs all throughout the country. And I think every single year that we give everybody an equal opportunity to play whatever sport that they happen to be interested in just allows us to inch forward and and become as close to a society that we are are hoping to become."

Coaching plays an important role in gender equality in women in sport. In 2018, Dr. Nicole LaVoi and Matea Wasend wrote a report for the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport on female coaches coaching female athletes. The Tucker Center is the first research center in the world dedicated to the academic study of girls and women in sport. Their report explains that in 2018 — when the report was written, — female sports participation was at an all time high: 43% compared to 3% pre-Title IX. But that surge isn't reflected in female coaching. In 1972, 90% of collegiate female athletes were coached by women, and now, women make up about 40% of all head coaches of women's teams and 4.6% of head coaches of men's teams. 

So why did this happen? Dr. LaVoi basically broke it down like this: pre-Title IX, there weren't very many athletics in schools for girls and women, and the ones that did exist were primarily, 90%,, coached by women who were usually unpaid.

"It wasn't lucrative. You had no power, you're doing it because you loved it," Dr. LaVoi said.

Then Title IX happened. Athletic programs for girls and women were added, money flooded into girls' and women's sports and now coaches were paid. But all of a sudden, men were interested in these positions and were hired for them. This was because of many reasons. One was a social construct of who is seen as a "coach" and who is seen as the "best coach." Dr. LaVoi and Wasand report puts it this way: "What it means 'to coach' — being assertive and in control, aggressive, ambitious, confident, dominant, self-confident, forceful, self-reliant and individualistic — are characteristics typically associated with men and masculinity. This identity of the ideal/best coach is reinforced by society and the media, where coaches are constructed heroes and the male coach is a symbol and ultimate expression of the idealized form of masculine character." 

But in an article written for Forbes, Kim Elsesser argues, "many of the skills associated with being a great coach — leadership, communication skills, motivation skills, understanding, the ability to get to know each player — could be deemed as stereotypically female." So noodle on those conflicting gender stereotypes.

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"Also because of gender bias, men were perceived as being more knowledgeable and competent. So if you are growing your program and you wanted to hire a coach, you wanted to hire a real coach, meaning a male coach," said Dr. LaVoi. "And so men started being hired to fill those positions where women had always been doing those positions. But now that it got paid, you had more men being interested."

But there are women who not only pushed for gender equality in sport in the wake of Title IX but laid the framework earlier than 1972. 

"I didn't get to do these things, really. And I just felt that for the girls you need to have somebody to fight for you. And I had girls behind me too." Bernice Carlin is from Fosston, a town of about 1400 people, located in northwest Minnesota. In the 60s, Carlin attended a GAA, Girls Athletic Association, camp at Itasca State Park with other coaches of women and girls.

"One of the other coaches was Dorothy McIntyre and, of course, you know what she did for girls sports." Carlin said. "And so she was an influence and a spark plug. And helped me with my thought too that it is important for girls to have sports."

Carlin helped start extramural sports for girls in Fosston. Extramurals are athletic programs that exist outside of school. They could play against other extramural groups. Carlin started first with volleyball. "And then we started with extramurals in track and field and basketball too. My husband said, 'Bernice, why are you doing all this for no pay?' And I said, 'If I don't do it, who's going to do it?' So I said, 'When I get these teams going, they're gonna have to hire coaches.'"

"Her battles were different from mine," said her daughter Kim Roysland. "She really set the bar for getting the programs going. I really feel like other towns around us saw what she had done with the volleyball program and we had good girls sports here. I think other towns kind of said, 'Hey, we can do that too.' So it inspired that kind of thing."

Impossible for her to know at the time, but Carlin ended up establishing a coaching dynasty, acting as the coaching role model, the female coach exemplar, that she never had. Her daughter, Kim Roysland also coached at Fosston and was inducted into Bemidji State's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. And Kim's daughter, Kelly Roysland Curry, is now an assistant coach for the University of Minnesota women's basketball team.

"When our team is sharing interesting facts about ourselves an interesting, fun fact for me is that I'm a third generation female coach and I don't know how many people can say that," said Roysland Curry. "I just think it's really cool to see how she was such an advocate and wasn't afraid to be loud about what she wanted. And it makes you appreciate all the opportunity that I had certainly, and now finding ways to give back to young women and make it known it wasn't always like this and to be grateful and to play every day with like a grateful heart."

"In two generations we've gone from girls hoping there was a team because there were teams, to girls like Kim who got to play to young girls and women like Kelly, who was hoping they would make the team. And to girls now feeling entitled that they absolutely should have a team to play on and that they want equitable treatment to their male peers. And that is a huge generational shift," said Dr. LaVoi. "But in terms of women coaches, we went from, you know a lot of very few women in that space to a lot of women in that space to, less than half to women in that space. And that really needs to change because it does matter for young girls and women to see people like themselves in those important positions of leadership."

Since 2012, the Tucker Center has released a yearly "Women in College Coaching Report Card" providing data on the number of women coaching women's collegiate teams. The report card aims to help institutions learn how to retain and increase women coaches by tracking the effectiveness of hiring initiatives, bring awareness to the issue and hold decision makers accountable in their hiring practices. To dig into the data and see the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and NCAA Division one rankings, visit the Tucker Center online at www.tuckercenter.org.