TIME TO GIVE WOMEN A CHANCE
Opportunity for pro sports to make history on horizon
Last month, a new billboard was put up near the Boston Celtics’ practice facility. After Brad Stevens announced he would leave his role as head coach and become the team’s president of basketball operations, SixStar ProNutrition strategically placed the billboard that read, “Hey Brad, it’s time to shake it up. Hire Kara or Becky!”
With seven vacancies around the NBA, rumors started to swirl that the first female head coach could be hired. While these speculations seem to be an annual occurrence now, things felt different this year, as female candidates appeared to be legitimately considered for the positions rather than a name on a long list of interviews.
The Celtics, Pacers, Magic, Trail Blazers, Wizards, Pelicans and Mavericks were all in search of a new leader, and more women’s names entered the discussion than ever before. Spurs assistant Becky Hammon, South Carolina women’s head coach Dawn Staley, Duke women’s head coach and former Celtics assistant Kara Lawson and Pelicans assistant Teresa Weatherspoon were some of the leading candidates. AP
While four of the seven jobs were quickly filled by men, three positions remain. If the Wizards, Pelicans or Magic ultimately select one of the female candidates, the NBA would make history, becoming the first major American men’s professional sports league with a female head coach.
But as history has shown, it’s easier said than done for a woman to get the nod.
The number of women in sports — and men’s sports, in particular — is few and far between, but local women have been pioneers in Pittsburgh area sports by breaking through the glass ceiling.
Reaching the top
On average, an NFL team has 18 coaches. NHL teams typically have at least four. MLB teams employ six coaches and a manager, and NBA franchises have a head coach and four to six assistants.
Opportunities aren’t lacking, but the barriers for women in sports are repeatedly upheld.
Liann Tsoukas is a senior lecturer at Pitt and teaches a class called Women, Gender and Sport, which dives into the gender inequality in sports and how it came to be. While multiple factors contribute to the male-dominated nature of athletics, she attributes the beginning of this divide to society’s definition of gender.
“The very qualities that make men men — strength, speed and competitiveness — are all things that make them great athletes,” Tsoukas said. “The greatest examples of femininity — nurturance, softness and submission — are exactly counter to what make people good athletes. … Excellence is determined by the exact opposite of what [women] are supposed to be in society.”
The effort to crack into the arena of sports requires women to defy what is considered to be their appropriate gender identity. Bridging that gap has proven incredibly difficult in a society that imposes such strict gender norms.
Even if women are able to overcome gender stereotypes, there is a level of pressure when working in an environment dominated by the opposite sex.
“It’s really intimidating, and it does get you out of your comfort zone,” said Maggie Nicollela, director of football operations at Robert Morris. She joined the
program while she was an undergraduate student at RMU and worked her way up to her current position where she oversees team travel, transportation, budgeting and scholarship renewals.
Additionally, without seeing many of their peers in similar positions, it can be hard to visualize that dream becoming a reality.
“I think we’re subconsciously preventing ourselves from pursuing it, for me personally,” said Katerina Wu, a data scientist with the Penguins. “Before I learned about the job, I thought it was unrealistic for me to even think about this. … I personally didn’t think that it was even something for me to pursue because I didn’t know or I didn’t see any other women in analytics.”
Wu joined the Penguins in March and became the first woman and first AsianAmerican woman on the scouting and evaluation side of the franchise. She works on a variety of projects but mainly focuses on tracking data to come up with new statistics to evaluate Penguins players and their opponents.
When Wu first began working in sports, she joined WISE Pittsburgh, or Women in Sports and Events, to find mentors in the field. She requested a mentor in hockey operations, but the organization had a hard time finding someone to pair her with because there are so few women in her position.
The lack of role models can be a real challenge for women in sports, but it wasn’t always that way.
In college athletics, Title IX has been a transformative law in creating opportunities for female athletes, but the disparity of women in leadership positions is one of its unintended consequences. Before it passed in 1972, most schools had separate men’s and women’s athletic departments, and women led over 90% of their respective departments and collegiate teams. Once the departments merged into one, many women lost their titles as their male counterparts took over.
A common argument against a woman taking over as head coaches in a league like the NBA is that coaching staffs should be representative of the players who play the sport. However, recent years have shown that expectation doesn’t go both ways.
In 1978, women coached almost 60% of women’s college teams, but today they coach only about 40% of them. On the other hand, only 3% of men’s teams are coached by women.
Those numbers carry over to professional sports, as well. Seven of the 12 WNBA head coaches are men.
“It is an underrepresentation of who’s actually playing the game,” Tsoukas said. “There goes that argument that it’s who’s playing and who’s participating that rises up.”
Another common trend is that people in positions of power tend to hire those with similar characteristics.
“Sport is a community that tends to hire its own,” Tsoukas said.
The graduate assistant system in football is a prime example. Players are often hired to become graduate assistants and then take over full-time roles within their own programs because they are familiar with the system and vice versa. However, since so few women play college football, it is especially challenging for them to disrupt that cycle.
Professional leagues like the NFL have put rules in place to encourage more diversity in hiring. The Rooney Rule, named after late Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, was adopted in 2003 and requires NFL teams with coaching and front office openings to interview a minority candidate. The rule expanded in 2020 to include women for all executive positions like communications, football operations, sales, legal, etc.
“I think everybody has a conscious decision to have a diverse pool,” said Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke, the first woman to hold the position. “When it’s not diverse, I know from our team and our staff, it’s an important priority to recruit a diverse pool because sometimes you don’t get it just by posting a job. You’ve got to be intentional about recruiting a diverse pool, and then eventually people have to come in and win the job during the interview. But you need to start with some level of diversity within the pool that you get.”
While the Rooney Rule has helped increase the number of minority coaches by 20%, interviewing female candidates hasn’t proven to be enough to lead to the first hire. Hammon is a prime example of this, as she’s been considered for head coaching jobs on multiple occasions but never hired despite her seven seasons as an NBA assistant. She was previously a top candidate for positions with Milwaukee and Indiana and was named a finalist for the Trail Blazers job this year before they hired Chauncey Billups.
After being passed up on time and time again, many have questioned whether she has what it takes. In an article for The Player’s Tribune, Pau Gasol clarified any doubts.
“I’ve played under two of the sharpest minds in the history of sports in Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich,” he wrote. “And I’m telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period.”
Players and other coaches are rarely the ones who have doubts, according to both Nicolella and Stephanie Balochko, a former Steelers defensive line coaching intern who also served stints with USA Football and the Pittsburgh Passion, the local women’s football team.
“The men will respect you,” said Balochko. “They don’t come into it not respecting you. They give you the respect right away until you prove them wrong. If you have something that’s going to make them better — I don’t care who you are, male or female — as long as you’re going to make them better, and you’re truly there to help them, they don’t care what gender you are. They just want to get better.”
Blazing the trail
The hurdles for women in sports to overcome are clear, but there has been progress with forward-thinking individuals opening their minds to more diverse hires.
“It’s really about other leaders having the courage and confidence to make that hire and see women in those positions,” Lyke said. “I think there’s been a lot of women who have been in those roles who’ve been very successful, but for whatever reason, it just hasn’t multiplied.”
The NFL showed that women have the potential to reach extremely high levels of success in sports. The league had eight female coaches in associate or assistant roles last season, and six were with teams that made the playoffs.
“We have no evidence that female coaches are doing anything but improving the quality of the industry, of their teams and of their clubs,” Tsoukas said.
Basketball has also proven a suitable place for progress. This season, eight women held assistant coaching jobs in the NBA, and the league has had 14 female coaches throughout its history. Basketball legend Nancy Lieberman became the first woman to be the head coach of a men’s professional team in any sport when she was named the head coach of Power, a team in the BIG3 3-on-3 league, in 2018.
While the NBA jobs are fleeting, professional basketball has the opportunity to make history once again in the coming weeks.
If the NBA makes the historic hire, the impact would be astronomical.
“It definitely is inspiring for women or young girls to see other women in these positions because they might never have thought that it was something that they could pursue until now,” Wu said.
“Once you get a head coach there, the whole, ‘If you see it, you can be it’ thing is really true,” Tsoukas added. “I think that network will expand, and people will see opportunities, and it will be a viable career path for the next generation of young girls.”
Outside of creating strong female role models for young women, the proven positive impact of diversity in any organization is something the sports world could benefit from.
A 2019 Harvard Business Review study found that “women outscored men on 17 of the 19 capabilities that differentiate excellent leaders from average or poor ones.” Another gender studies analysis showed that when it comes to leadership, men excel at confidence while women excel at competence. A 2018 Boston Consulting Group study proved that companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation.
“Sport is a structure in which the goal is fairly clear,” Tsoukas said. “It is to be the best. It is to win. Anyone who’s trying to be the best will do what it takes to improve the industry, and that will definitely be bringing in a diversity of talent and perspective.”
But now, the ball is in the NBA teams’ courts, and the question remains as to whether they will change the course of history or stick to the status quo.
“It would be certainly groundbreaking in many ways,” Lyke said. “Honestly, it’s a lot of pressure on one person to do it right. But I think it’s profound in the sense of that person, whoever that ends up being, has made a difference and has been willing to really take risks, make themselves vulnerable to the opportunity, not afraid to have the confidence and courage to take on those roles. I think it sends a great message to women and people of color or people who haven’t normally been represented to go and make a difference and don’t let others put limits on yourself.”
“I think we’re subconsciously preventing ourselves from pursuing it. ...”
— Katerina Wu, Penguins data scientist