U.S. MISSION WILL HELP AUSSIE WOMEN COACHES REACH TOP
Alison Mitchell talks to Julia Price about her fact-finding trip to meet America’s foremost sports teams and coaches
Cricket Australia are investing heavily in a quartet of female coaches in an attempt to combat the dominance of male coaches in elite cricket in both the men’s and women’s game.
They recently sent those four coaches to the USA on a study tour as part of their development. So I caught up with one of them identified by CA as a “long term coaching asset”, Tasmanian Roar and Hobart Hurricanes women’s head coach Julia Price.
The itinerary of the USA trip sounded like one to test even the most seasoned of travellers, but the access to knowledge, Price enthused, was second to none.
“We flew into Detroit and visited the University of Michigan and spoke to a heap of coaches in different sports like lacrosse, soccer and basketball,” she said via a phone call from San Francisco. “We got to see all of their facilities and had access to their coaching and support staff.
“Then we drove to Chicago. We visited the University of Notre Dame and spoke to a lot of their coaches and administrators and looked at the difference between the Uni of Michigan, which is a public university, compared to a private one – which Notre Dame is – and how that can affect students and their programmes.”
The trip then moved on to the Chicago campus of Northwestern Uni, another private establishment, before a behind-the-scenes visit to defending World Series champions Chicago Cubs, where they met with the baseball team’s assistant coach. From there, it was on to San Francisco and the chance to sit on the bench during a Giants game, with full access to their coaching staff.
It wasn’t just about the frontline of sports coaching, though. Price and her colleagues – former Australia bat and Perth Scorchers coach Lisa Keightley, former Australia all-rounder and SACA Coaching Pathways officer and Adelaide Strikers coach Shelley Nitshke, and former Australia bat and Sydney Thunder coach Leah Poulton – were also given the opportunity to meet with experts in the field of psychology.
“When we were at Northwestern Uni, we spoke to Dan McAdams who’s a psychology lecturer up there,” said Price. “He wasn’t really up with sport but it was great to pick his brains and his knowledge on personality types, leadership styles and things like that. We also did a lot of work with another psychologist called Wade Gilbert (California State University) and did some theory with him.”
The aim of the trip, according to Price, was to challenge their thinking and encourage the quartet to use different sources of inspiration, whether that be drawn from sport, life or other corporations.
“We went to Facebook and Twitter as well,” says Price with a grin in her voice. “It was awesome. It was like another world out there. It was all about innovation and creativity. So we’re trying to bring that into our coaching styles and trying to get that open mindset about how we’re going to coach. It’s about developing ourselves further so we can develop our athletes better.”
Price and co are the first women to be sent on such a trip by Cricket Australia. Last year a group of male coaches followed a similar itinerary, but Price believes the trip was expanded this time, with an even greater number of coaches and academics drawn into the programme.
“We ended up seeing about 29 coaches in all and I think the boys last year saw about ten. The more we got into it, the more we started knowing which questions we wanted to ask and what direction we needed the conversations to go in. It was excellent. A lot of good access. CA did an amazing job of putting it all together.”
The quartet currently work primarily in women’s cricket, although Nitshke has coached the Australian U19 men’s team, working under Ryan Harris, showing that CA are offering a breadth of opportunities. So to what extent are Price and her colleagues being developed as coaches of cricket as opposed to coaches of women’s cricket? The question isn’t one Price has really considered before.
“They’re developing us as ‘coaches’ I believe,” she proffers, after a
In San Francisco there was the chance to sit on the bench during a Giants game, with full access to their coaching staff
contemplative pause. “This is a 12-month process. We’re got an elite coaches conference coming up in Brisbane, and that’s with every male and female elite coach in the country. So they’re really trying to work on that integration and cross over between men’s and women’s cricket.
“Initially I suppose this is about the WBBL, the international team and that sort of women’s cricket pathway. But I really think there’s no reason why it couldn’t go into the men’s programme as well. Shelley Nitshke has shown there are opportunities that come up. We’ve just got to be ready for them.
“I’d like to coach Australia (women) eventually. I’ve still got plenty to learn at the Women’s Big Bash League and Women’s National Cricket League level at the moment and I still have a few things I’d like to achieve with the team I’ve got.
“But Cricket Tasmania is going through a bit of a restructure – they’ve just appointed Gary Kirsten as BBL coach and Adam Griffith as Tigers coach. They’ve got a lot of openings in their assistant coaching positions, so it’s a conversation that’s worth having for the future. We’re a pretty tight community down in Tasmania but I suppose my passion is female cricket and I really enjoy the female coaching side of things.”
On the current trend for male coaches to be appointed to the top jobs in international women’s cricket, Price acknowledges the game eventually needs to develop more women capable of taking up those positions.
“Now you can actually make a bit of a living out of it (women’s cricket), there’s a lot of male coaches who are crossing into female cricket. I would always hope it’s for the right reason – that they’re actually interested in developing female cricket. Matthew Mott does a great job with the Australian women’s team. Before he got that job, he was in a role where he was developing the pathway girls, so he’s been a big supporter.
“Females do offer something slightly different when they’re coaching other females. One of the things we learnt from our trip from one of the psychologists – a lady from Switzerland at Northwestern University – was that a lot of females prefer to be coached by a female purely because of the emotional side of things.
“The extent to which that’s true or not, I don’t know, but there is definitely a role there for females to be involved in those programmes if they’re going to have that really good connection with their players. I’m not saying men can’t have that connection, but she gave us a different perspective on the way women can offer something different in the coaching world.”
Different, fresh, and diverse. Investing in the development of the game’s female coaches could be the next way the top cricket teams around the world start to find that extra edge.