Graduate Assistants

With  a fresh undergraduate degree under their belt, some students are often presented with two options. One is to pursue their career goals. The other is to pursue their master’s degree. This can be a very good option and can have a lot of perks associated with it as well. While pursuing a master’s degree, there are often opportunities to become a graduate assistant. Becoming a graduate assistant has its ups and downs but can be very beneficial in the end.

The position of graduate assistant was created in 1976 by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.1 Although jumping into your profession is not totally bad and can be a lot of fun, the experience of being a graduate assistant has proved to be very important. While being a graduate assistant, you are still taking classes (blah) you are still getting the experience of a full-time coach. These opportunities can help a prospective coach learn the ins and outs of coaching. Learning these things before being fully thrown into positions prove to help a person develop the necessary skills needed to coach a team in the future. It has been proven that being able to properly transition into roles help with the overall development regardless of profession.2

As for myself, being a graduate assistant has showed me a lot of lessons associated with coaching young women to give their bests regardless of being on or off the court. Although I am not a full-time coach, I do help in the preparation and the administrative side of things. As a player, you do not simply think of all of the things that coaches and their staffs handle each and every day. These simple tasks can be very crucial for teams, as different fines can be assessed and just simply preparation for games. The coach has a lot of responsibility and your players are constantly looking for you to point them into the right direction. d. Not only is it essential to teach the tactical and technical aspects of the game, as a coach, you must learn to approach and communicate with each player. As a player, having a coach being able to communicate with you is huge, and can either make or break a team in general. If a coach is continually yelling, they may not directly understand each player and how to approach them. This comes with the overall development of players.

If I had to rank the issue of communicating with players, along with the others while associating with coaching a team, I would definitely put this very high on my list. I think it is important that while going through your graduate assistant job, you learn how to talk to your players and fellow staff. One must realize that not everyone's the same. This is easier said than done. It’s important that you understand that everyone do not communicate the same. Not everyone can handle being yelled at and some do not respond to nonchalant passive communication. While some need a push, others are standoffish. It is the coach’s responsibility to be able to understand the differences and be able to read others and know how to talk to a group of people and get them to truly buy into their philosophy and their program’s ways.

While playing, I was blessed to have amazing graduate assistants that worked with our team as well. They taught me and actually made things easier at times. It was really easy being able to communicate with our particular graduate assistants because a lot of us players actually had the opportunity to play with them as well. This made it easy for us to ask them for help and they also understood some of the issues and things that we were facing. I hope that with me being a graduate assistant now, that I am the positive influence like our graduate assistants were to us when we were playing. I think this is very important that graduate assistants are positive and always looking to help, simply because they have been in the same situations and can bring more insight to certain situations.

Learning all of these things are really important, and while being a graduate assistant, you get to learn all of these valuable things without having all of the hardships and responsibilities that a  full-time coach has. As a graduate assistant, you will make mistakes and those are expected. It is up to you to learn from them and develop yourself as the professional you want to be.

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” -Candace Parker

1Dunn, T. P., & Dunn, S. (1992). The graduate assistant coach: A preliminary profile of an endangered species. Physical Educator, 49(4). Retrieved December 2, 2017, from https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.zeus.tarleton.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=1543de35-9007-4d19-81f6-6e69c729606d%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=9609192513&db=s3h.

2Kirby, J. L., Mazerolle, S. M., & Walker, S. E. (2016). Support Received During the Transition to Practice for the Secondary School Graduate-Assistant Athletic Trainer. Journal of Athletic Training, 51(10), 780-788. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-51.12.10

Women in a Male Dominated Sports World

Although I have addressed this in some way in my last blog, Men Vs. Women in Coaching, it is alarming that there are very few male teams with female coaches. This stands out because after Title IX was enforced, more male coaches were hired to be in charge of female athletes, whereas there are still very few female coaches in charge of males. A lot of people do believe that there is a lack in female role models for both female and male athletes and this is something that we must address.1

In order for us to address this, we must start with the numbers. As mentioned in my previous blog, 42.6% of the time, we find a female at the head of a college basketball women’s teams. This number may seem staggering, but as to my surprise, the number of women who are coaches of male teams are less than 3%.2 This is important to note because within the sport of basketball both men and women play with the same goal heights, the same sized courts, and for the most part, follow the same basic rules. So the question is why are there not many female coaches a part of coaching staffs?

It is very alarming that there are a number of male coaches who had never played college basketball, or even competed at any level, but seem to have enough experience to coach their players. Comparing the numbers, 66% and 58.3% of assistant and head coaches of women’s college basketball were female, while assistant and head coaches in men’s basketball female coaches were 0.1% and 0.3% respectively.2 This is alarming because female coaches are as qualified as their male counterparts, but not surprisingly, are not receiving the same jobs.  These numbers come from the fact that males are also predominantly the athletic director. 79.7% of all athletic directors are male, while the athletic directors are involved in the hiring of coaches and the athletic department finances. Because these male athletic directors show an unfair favoritism in hiring male coaches, women simply do not have the same opportunities. It is easy to understand that females do not simply project themselves into opportunities if they do not feel as though they will proceed. This is not always the case, but for most situations as in the sports world, this can be very apparent. If females believe there is a lack of opportunity and power, they will simply not enter the profession. For instance if there is a lack of females in a profession, there will be a more difficult time building networks and developing alliances.1 It is very important that we are able to build networks and able to build these alliances. In order for women to have these they must not be considered as a minority and need more of the same like minded people that they will be able to talk to and come up with solutions that could be very beneficial.

Some believe that there are legit reasons as to why there are not many female coaches in male sports. Some believe that this is related to females coaches as being perceived as caring, reassuring, and hearted. Having these personality attributes, people believe that women would be better as the “supporting roles” as assistant coach, volunteer, or as an “cheerleader”.1 This is sad to believe, as we would believe as we are more far advanced than to have these simple thoughts as a whole. There are those who believe that having a male coach reinforces the presence of masculinity, within the respective sports. When females behave aggressively as their male counterparts, those who are looking upon them as leaders often resist. This comes from the mantra “think manager-think male”. The whole idea of this, is very misconstrued. I believe that females try and match their male counterparts and are often look upon as just “overdoing” it at times, whereas for a male it is, just simply the norm. Most women that are hired for certain jobs are looked at as actually caring of the education of young people, while the male is simply hired on their coaching abilities. For women this is double the work! Although they may have the athlete's best interest at heart, are they also the best coach available. Yes, it is important to get wins, but are your athletes just coming to play, or are they working towards getting an  education? I think this is important in the development of players. All of these factors must be taken into consideration in some way.

I think it is important that we must get away from these thoughts and actually give each person an equal chance in showing their beliefs and making them known. A lot of the times, I believe that women are sometimes discouraged in saying the things that they believe in, but in reality everyones beliefs and values are just as important. Although, this is not fair, it is not hard to believe these thoughts. It is often said that boys and young men must have a dominant male in their lives, or a father figure, they often dismiss the thought a female can still instill the principles of becoming a great man.  Having a female coach for a male team can seem unorthodox at first, but can be beneficial and give different views to different situations.  I am not in anyway saying there should be complete female coaching staffs over male athletes, but it could help having diversity in some way.

“Every day we need to be one step up from where we were the day before.” – Geno Auriemma

photo credits: NY Daily News

1LaFountaine, J., & Kamphoff, C. S. (2016). Coaching boys’ high school teams: Female coaches’ experiences and perceptions. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching , 11(1), 27-38. doi:10.1177/1747954115624815

2Walker, N., Bopp, T., & Sagas, M. (2011). Gender Bias in the Perception of Women as Collegiate Men’s Basketball Coaches. Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education, 5(2), 157-176. doi:10.1179/ssa.2011.5.2.157

Men Vs. Women in Coaching

There are obvious differences between male and female basketball coaches. When people first start discussing these differences, they usually bring up the fact that male coaches get paid considerably more than female coaches. Although this difference is significant in its own way, along with the pay gap, people must not forget about other important issues. These issues can, in return, greatly impact the student-athletes.

In recent decades, the numbers of female coaches have steadily declined. This is important because, there are actual opportunities for females to coach, but they do not feel as though they would get the job going against a male. For example, in 1972, about 90% of intercollegiate head coaches of women's teams were in fact female. This dramatically changed in 1978 when Title IX came into effect in all schools, which dropped this number down to only 58%. Today, this number is falling more and is close to 45%.1

Some believe that this number comes from female coaches being discriminated against during the hiring process. While others believe that the decline is due to their lack of experience. As for myself, I strongly believe that being a young female basketball coach has many advantages for female student athletes. But we live in a society and industry where athletic directors believe women are less qualified than men, that are competing for the same exact job. But  why? This question is important because in my personal experience, women actually have better training and experience in the delivery of the sport of basketball. Once female athletes graduate, they usually go straight into their field and occupation. Some would believe that although they had played the sport in college, it does not directly prepare them academically to enter the field right away. Whereas men seem to serve longer as graduate assistants and part-time assistants.1 This piece of evidence may be one reason why athletic directors have certain beliefs but there must be other factors that account for the significant and constant drop in female coaches.

I feel very strongly that there should be more females in coaching. Female coaches can closely relate to their players because they have been in the same situations before and can simply be great role models for their players. Although there is nothing wrong with having a male coach, sometimes they may not fully understand situations that a female may undergo. Being able to talk to your coach is very important, and I strongly believe that it is important that the line of communication is open. Some females may find it difficult to talk to their male coaches so it is important that we preserve this and make it easy to communicate to our players.

After examining the numbers of female coaches in college basketball, we must open the discussion of pay gap as both pay gap and the decline of female coaches seems to be correlated. In women’s college basketball, female coaches seem to make more money compared to men coaching females. On the other hand, according to the graph provided, there is a dramatic difference between men’s basketball coaches and females basketball coaches. This difference can be amounted to 0.57 and 0.52, where men basketball coaches are ahead. Overall, women’s head basketball coaches only earn about half the salary of men’s head basketball coaches.2 I believe this can be closely related to attendance of games. There are more attendees to men’s game than there are for women’s.

Along with the drop in female coaches and the correlation between the pay gap between men and women’s basketball coaches, I believe this can also affect the recruiting process for women’s basketball in general. If the women’s teams are not funded the same as their men counterparts, this can show up in the recruiting process. If teams are not able to receive the same amount of funds, they will not have the resources available to be able to recruit the same ways. Some coaches rely on prospective players to send their film in and through email. But, if programs do not have the resources to make visits and attend big tournaments that are held to showcase the best players, this can help their chances of improving their programs as a whole. Less money coming into programs can overall hurt the culture that a coach may be trying to build on.

I believe that we should try to look closely to fill this gap, and help bring more money for the women’s game as well. More women’s games being played on television can help boost the numbers as well. This can be very vital to the game as a whole. If more games are played on television, more young female children will be exposed to basketball and in turn will strive to make it to the college level. Simply put, we need more female coaches. I believe this would help bridge gaps between coaches and players. There are solutions out there, it is upon us to find them and actually use them to our advantages.

“You can’t always be the strongest or most talented or most gifted person in the room, but you can be the most competitive.” - Pat Summitt

References

1Cunningham, G. B., & Sagas, M. (2002). The Differential Effects of Human Capital for Male and Female Division I Basketball Coaches. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 73(4), 489-495. doi:10.1080/02701367.2002.10609051

2Humphreys, B. R. (2000). Equal Pay on the Hardwood: The Earnings Gap Between Male and Female NCAA Division I Basketball Coaches. Journal of Sports Economics, 1(3), 299-307. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/152700250000100306

Photo credits: NBC News

The Transition from Player to Coach

Earlier this fall, after 4 years of playing TexAnn basketball, I accepted the position of Graduate Assistant Coach for the Tarleton State Women’s Basketball team. Many would think that transitioning from student-athlete, to coach would be easy. After all, I have played here for four years, I know the community and the players. But what some do not consider are all the challenges I face each and everyday. It is important that those who want to get into coaching must understand that there is a lot more to it than just directing players and managers, there's more backstory to it all. As a student-athlete, you may be used to being at a gym for two to three hours, but as a coach, you must do all of the preparations for practices and after practices, so you may be at the gym for close to five to eight hours. “One will not become a successful coach until one is able to put their playing days in the rearview mirror.”3

I know for myself that has been very important. I came from playing with more than half of the girls on the team, to having to be an authoritative figure to my players. This is important because the head coach is looking for you to “grow up” and be able to make the line of distinction of whether things would be ethically right. For example, when encountering your players at a party, is it okay for you to stay? Or should you leave? These decisions can be difficult, especially if you and your players have the same group of friends. It often can make things very difficult and strenuous on your mind and body. That being said, throughout the process, you will not only learn things about yourself, but you will push yourself to become the person you want to be.

This is why I have decided to start this blog. I think it is important to “find your why”, as it can help you determine the way in which you are going to reach your goal. My “why” started from a very young age. I have played basketball since the age of three. It was pretty much instilled in me that I would play basketball. My parents put in a full length basketball court in our backyard, and yes, I was out there everyday. Not that my parents forced me, but because I saw the backyard so much, I saw basketballs, I gravitated towards it. In highschool, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I had what it took to make it the collegiate level of basketball. This was a very big deal to my family. In high school, I never would have thought that playing collegiately would open up many doors for me. It was important for me to realize that in order to effectively attend the right college for my education and athletically that I had to perform at a high level and make it into my daily life.2

I attended Tarleton State University, in Stephenville, Texas. I played all four of my collegiate years for Tarleton State and could not have asked for a better outcome. Although I just seemed like a typical player, I had the drive and commitment to totally withstand all hardships that came my way. I had the best coaching staff, who pushed me, not only to be the best basketball player I could be, but the best person I know I can be. Most people think you go to college to party, play basketball, and occasionally throw in some school work. In reality, you are learning life lessons and learning about yourself and others.1 You learn the things you like and don't like, you learn how to deal with bad times and how to celebrate the good times. I believe that the coaching staff that I had while playing, were the best representatives of what being an adult and a good person was all about.

Having such good role models has pushed me to want to be the same for other young women who love the game of basketball, and want to continue their education. Education is very important and not only can they learn classroom essentials, but education about the world around them and how to be productive in it as well. I believe that playing sports in college, no matter the sport, can help you develop qualities and habits that can help you become a great person once you are done. I want to be a women’s basketball college coach. In order to get there, I will be faced with hardships and it is up to me to use the techniques and trainings that I have received up to this point. As a young woman, I must understand that there are opportunities out there for me and there are very viable career options.1

“A lot of people notice when you succeed, but they don’t see what it takes to get there.”

-Dawn Staley

1Kerr, G., & Banwell, J. (2014). Striving for gender equity in coaching: female athletes’ perspectives on pursuing coaching as a career. Canadian Journal for Women in Coaching, 14(2). Retrieved from http://www.coach.ca/files/CJWC_JULY2014_EN.pdf

2Owen, C., & Kotrlik, J. (2016). The mentoring role of high school girls’ basketball coaches in the collegiate recruiting process. The Sport Journal, 19. Retrieved from http://thesportjournal.org/article/the-mentoring-role-of-high-school-girls-basketball-coaches-in-the-collegiate-recruiting-process/

3Reinhard, M. (2015, January 3). The Transition from Playing to Coaching. Retrieved October 5, 2017, from http://www.banishedtothepen.com/transition-from-playing-to-coaching/

Photo credits: Tarleton Sports