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They are (almost always) led by men
By MATT MIDDLETON,
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Published: Sunday, December 23, 2007
Jennifer Trowbridge had seen colleagues march down the same path and was sure she would never follow.
Swamped with the responsibility of juggling coaching, a job and a family, they had surrendered their coaching duties to have children and never returned.
Trowbridge came to know this wearisome lifestyle well during her eight years coaching the girls varsity basketball team at Bolton. During the season, which sometimes stretched from Thanksgiving to near St. Patrick's Day, she would leave for her job teaching computer technology at the school before 7 a.m. and often not return home to Lake Luzerne until past 10 p.m.
"It was headlights on in the morning, headlights on at night," she said. "I never saw the sun."
In 2004, Trowbridge took a leave of absence to have her first child. She returned this winter to coach the girls modified team, a position that's considerably less time-consuming.
Trowbridge's circumstances seem to have been patterned by many female coaches in the area, and the nation, especially basketball coaches. The result is a dearth of females coaching sports at a time when girls' participation is booming more than three decades after the passage of Title IX, the federal law that led to athletic equality for males and females. Of the 27 basketball-playing high schools in
The Post-Star
's circulation just one varsity girls team is coached by a female (Ticonderoga). Teams at Skidmore College and Adirondack Community College are also coached by men.
"One of the most interesting and surprising things since Title IX is this substantial decrease in the number of females coaching," said Terri Lakowski, public policy officer for the Women's Sports Foundation, an advocacy group on Long Island. According to the Women's Sports Foundation, 42.4 percent of women's college teams are coached by females. That number was greater than 90 percent in 1972, the year the government enacted Title IX.
Athletic directors, as well as current and former coaches, cite various reasons that contribute to a coaching life's decay: lengthy, after-school practices, night games, long road trips, year-round seasons. These issues, they say, can affect women more than men. Women get married, have kids and handle family duties. They are constantly being pulled in any number of directions.
"Late nights, worrying about dinner, kids, missing vacations -" said Terry Martin, who, having coached field hockey for the past 31 seasons at Queensbury, is one of the longest-tenured female coaches in the area. "From a woman's perspective, it can be difficult (to coach) without a good support system."
Said Sarah Kill, a former standout basketball player at South Glens Falls and Siena and mother of a 6-month-old: "As soon as I'm done having kids, I want to give (coaching) a shot. Maybe next year. - I miss (basketball) tremendously."
Doug Kenyon, Section II executive director and former Glens Falls athletic director, said basketball can be the most time-consuming sport to coach.
"Let's face it," he said. "Basketball is a year-round commitment. When you consider summer leagues, AAU, clinics - it can be a hard commitment to make."
The proliferation of high school sports has created a wide-range of coaching opportunities. In schools where a physical education teacher is required to coach one or two sports, Kenyon said, he or she is now more likely to gravitate toward lower-profile sports: skiing, lacrosse, swimming. There is less public attention on these sports, therefore less pressure and greater comfort, Kenyon said.
Kenyon, who worked as the Glens Falls AD from 1987-2004, said he always received more applications from men for coaching jobs, especially for basketball.
Jason Harrington, the Hartford girls basketball coach, used to co-coach the team with his wife, Wendy, a former star at the school. Wendy, since 2002, has also coached the volleyball team. Together, they've found a way to balance two coaching schedules as well as raise three children, but Jason said he sometimes wonders if the length of the basketball season makes it worthwhile.
"There are times when I go home and all I want to do is think about (a) game for hours and hours," he said. "It's hard for anybody to balance sometimes."
The downside to the absence of female coaches, officials say, is the lack of female role models for young girls, who are racing to sports in droves. (The number of girls playing high school sports in 2006-07 exceeded 3 million for the first time, according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations.)
There is no program or study on the state level that examines the disparity in coaching between men and women, said Nina Van Erk, who is in her eighth year as executive director of the New York Public High School Athletics Association. She said it is important for girls to be surrounded by positive role models, male or female, including coaches.
Nancy Lieberman, an ESPN analyst and former professional basketball coach who is considered one of the greatest female players of all-time, said girls should try to absorb the positive qualities of their coach, male or female. She said she played for 27 coaches during her career. About 1/3, she estimated, were female.
"I learned how to coach by watching them. Take the good, leave out the bad," Lieberman said in a phone interview this week. "I like to think they all had a great effect on my (coaching) style."
Trowbridge, the former Bolton varsity coach, said she now gets home before 6 p.m. She still maintains a strong relationship with her team without spending so much time coaching that it can seem, as current Bolton coach Luke Schweickert said, "sort of like 'Groundhog Day' - the same thing over and over again." Modified teams play a maximum of 14 games, usually have a regular practice schedule and rarely play or practice during the three winter school breaks: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Winter Break.
"I miss it, but I don't miss the late nights," Trowbridge said. "There's nothing like walking inside your house and your kids coming up to hug you."
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