Women Dominate This Sport. Why Is the Coaching a Boys’ Club?
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
Women Dominate This Sport. Why Is the Coaching a Boys’ Club?
By Billy Witz
20 December 2019
PITTSBURGH — As Taylor Morgan’s volleyball career at the University of Minnesota comes to an end this week, she has set her sights on becoming a college coach. She understands what the career entails from her father, who coaches track and field at Minnesota, and she is confident that she will take the lessons taught by her respected coach, Hugh McCutcheon, and figure out the rest.
But Morgan harbors no illusions.
She recognizes that even in a sport played overwhelmingly by women, there are few former female players coaching at the sport’s highest college level.
So when Minnesota played Iowa last month, Morgan made a point of seeking out Iowa’s coach, Vicki Brown, who is one of two women coaching in the Big Ten and who, like Morgan, is African-American, a rare combination.
“She’s doing what I want to do,” Morgan said. “I told her after the game that I aspire to be like you.”
Read the full article in the New York Times.
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