Coach blazing trails for women in sports
Who’s the second-biggest star on the 49ers after Jimmy Garoppolo? It just could be assistant coach Katie Sowers.
Sowers spoke at the Commonwealth Club in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon, and was funny, engaging and a big hit with fans who hung around afterward to get autographs and pick her brain.
“I talk to a lot of young girls about how they want to become coaches,” said Sowers, who dreamed of playing and coaching football as a girl growing up in Kansas. “To see girls who are at an age where I was and to see them actually know that it’s possible — I see that change everywhere I go.”
Sowers, 32, is a trailblazer on a number of fronts. Not only is she a woman coaching in the NFL, when she did an interview with Outsports.com last year, she became the first openly gay coach in NFL history.
“To be honest, I don’t think of myself as making history,” said Sowers, whose uniform from her playing days is on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Sowers came to the 49ers in the spring of 2017 as an intern through the Bill Walsh Minority Fellowship. She joked that the application was discouraging because it asked her where she had played college football. She played in the Women’s Football Alliance and for the national team, but there was no spot to explain that.
She got the job, anyway. Kyle Shanahan had known her from her internship in Atlanta. He gave her a fulltime job when the internship ended last summer, and extended her contract this season. She has spent the offseason breaking down video of coming opponents. She will take on some added responsibility by using a computer program to draw up the plays that the coaches design, to be shown in player meetings when the game plan is put in place on Wednesdays. It’s grunt work, detail work, but important to the process.
“My goal is to become a head coach,” Sowers said. “I see myself growing as a coach and I want to move up the chain. Whether it’s 10 years from now, as long as I can make a difference, I’ll keep working.”
Sowers, like everyone with the 49ers, is excited for this season. She gives credit to her boss Shanahan for creating a culture of belief.
“When you have an 0-9 record and you know you’re not going to the playoffs but you continue to play harder than any other team and end the season 6-10, I don’t think anyone can comprehend how huge that is,” she said. “To know you’ve created something that can continue to build hope and success. It’s something you don’t see very often.
“I’m super excited for this season.”