Cardinals hailed for hiring NFL’s 1st female coach
The Arizona Cardinals are being saluted as groundbreakers this week after hiring the National Football League’s first female coach.
The Cardinals on Monday signed Jen Welter, a 37-year-old former pro football player, to be a coaching intern during training camp this year, working with inside linebackers.
Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians said the internship would be a great opportunity that could “open some doors” for Welter.
“Coaching is nothing more than teaching,” Arians said in a statement on Monday. “One thing I have learned from players is, ‘How are you going to make me better? If you can make me better, I don’t care if you’re the Green Hornet, man, I’ll listen.’”
Welter, who has a PhD in psychology, joins the Cardinals’ staff after playing for the Texas Revolution of the Indoor Football League. She became the first female non-kicker to play in a men’s professional league when she played running back for the Revolution in 2014.
“I could not have dreamed big enough to have dreamed this day would ever come,” said Welter on Tuesday.
She said she would feel honored to be considered a trailblazer for other women wanting to follow in her footsteps.
“The beauty of this is that though it’s a dream I never could have had, it’s a dream other girls can grow up and have,” Welter said.
Welter won two gold medals playing for Team USA in the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship in 2010 and 2013.
Last year, the National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs made Becky Hammon, a former WNBA All-Star, an assistant coach of the team. She recently led the Spurs to the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League title. The NFL made history this spring in hiring Sarah Thomas, the first full-time on-field female official.
In other NFL news, less than eight months after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Kansas City Chiefs safety Eric Berry has been cleared to practice when the Chiefs open training camp, the team announced on Tuesday night.