Why are Fewer Women Coaching?
Thursday, January 29th 2009 @ 6:42 AM
It wasn't too many years ago that several girls prep basketball teams had women as head coaches.
There was Missy Beierman at Ephrata, Lesa Bland at Cascade, Desiree Phelps at Manson, and Julie Cannon at Entiat.
Now, only Cannon remains, though the others are still somehow involved with the same schools where they last roamed the gym. Phelps still coaches girls' volleyball, Beierman is an assistant tennis coach, and Bland still serves as an athletic advisor in an informal capacity and helps out with the equestrian team.
All of these women built or maintained successful programs during their days on the hardcourt. Cannon doesn't plan on going anywhere anytime soon — but the ones that have left are in no real hurry to return to an increasingly and intensely demanding job.
The reasons for the decline in women basketball coaches in NCW are many, say some of these same former coaches and local athletic directors.
For Bland and Phelps, suffering family life had a lot to do with their departures. Instead of spending their evenings at home, they'd be running practice at the gym or coaching their teams at a game, which could be even worse if it was on the road — say if Bland's Kodiaks played all the way up at Tonasket, or if Phelps' Trojans had to travel to Kittitas.
For Phelps and her husband, Frank, it was doubly tough because he also coached multiple sports at Manson. It wasn't easy to pull off with a full house at home.
"We have four children, so something had to give — we just had to make a family choice," Phelps says. "He was going to give up the fall sport (cross country), so I gave up the winter sport. That way, there was always one of us available for our kids."
Bland says she can certainly relate, adding for any married woman with a young family to survive life on both fronts, it takes spousal support.
"My husband did a lot of dinners and laundry when I was coaching," Bland says. "Had he not done that, I would not have been able to do it and run a household."
Bland, with two daughters that were already playing basketball by the time she became a head coach in 2002, didn't mind the winter schedule so much. At least she got to spend time with her girls in basketball-related activities. And instead of teaching, she worked as a bookkeeper for husband Vince, an orchardist.
But basketball, as these coaches will attest, is pretty much a year-round commitment, and it was taking its toll come vacation time. These days, periodic trips to exotic destinations like Hawaii for she and her husband definitely don't make her miss that part of the job.
"It got to be where I struggled to do things with my family in the summer," Bland says. "But to be a good team, you need to put in that time in the summer."
Summertime blues
Beierman, easily the most successful female coach in recent NCW history, can attest to what it takes beyond the regular season to maintain an elite program.
She took her teams to seven Class 2A state tournaments in her eight years and placed at most of them, including a title in 2000. Her arrival for the 1998-1999 season brought the first Ephrata girls appearance at a state tournament in nearly a decade.
But even with great teams and great players, not to mention strong support from the school and athletic director Michele Webb, who coached the season prior to Beierman's arrival, the constant grind got to be too much.
"I had been doing it eight years, and those last couple of years it really felt like I needed to step away," Beierman says. "The summer stuff was probably the biggest thing. It felt like it was an all-year thing to stay established and keep that program running. If I didn't have to do that summer stuff, I'd probably still be doing it."
What's more is that coaches aren't paid for putting in the extra hours during the summer. It was strictly voluntary — but necessary.
"It's almost a year-round thing — it takes a lot of time, and I can see somebody not wanting to do it," says Cannon, in her sixth year, who has led her teams to state tournaments the last two seasons — the only two in school history for girls' hoops. "It's not like you're in it for the money — you're making about 5 cents an hour."
"Basketball is an extremely demanding sport for a coach," Phelps adds, noting her salary was about $3,200 per season. "There are long nights, long weeks and long summers. You definitely don't do it for the money."
Choosing sides
It used to be that basketball had a monopoly on the summer, with most schools' female athletes flocking to club or AAU basketball teams. That's not the case anymore, and the competition for an athlete's time has become fierce with the formation of club teams in sports like volleyball, soccer and softball.
"What became difficult is the kids having to choose what they did in the summer," Bland says. "The soccer coach wanted them, then the volleyball coach wanted them — they were just being spread thin. It's frustrating as a coach because you're putting your time in to make your team better, but you don't have your team."
Sometimes it just didn't work out.
"Some of the coaches worked really well with you — it would be 'we're taking these two weeks, they're taking these two weeks,' " Bland says. "But there were coaches out there that would not give. They'd say, 'If you don't come with me, your chances of playing this season could possibly be limited by that.' Well, shoot ... what's a kid to do."
Kinship missing
Ephrata athletic director Webb, who coached her school's team for one year before Beierman took over, says men can coach a girls team just as well as women, though she and the others agree that there's a certain kinship that comes with the relationship between female coach and athlete — like a motherly or sisterly bond. Because of this, Webb would like to see more women in coaching roles with girls' sports.
"My goal isn't to go out and hire males," she says. "I guess I would prefer that we have a qualified female that can be role model for the girls."
But both Webb and Cascade athletic director Elia Ala'ilima-Daley say they haven't heard about many women applying for coaching vacancies in girls' basketball that have popped up around NCW over the last few years, including his own when Bland called it quits.
"There were one or two when we hired (current coach) Todd Fraker, but they were pretty green," Ala'ilima-Daley says. "Their experience didn't even warrant an interview."
While none of these coaches or ADs say one gender would be better suited than the other to coach a girls' basketball team, they all agree there is a benefit to having a woman on the coaching staff, and they're definitely encouraged to apply for open positions.
After all, it worked out pretty well at Cascade years ago with Mike Lewis as head coach, and Bland as his assistant. That combination produced six straight state tourney berths from 1995 to 2000.
"It was a good combination," Bland says. "What the girls thought they couldn't tell him, they felt like they could tell me, so I think it's good to have both."
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