Opinion Article

I When you think of professional, or even college, coaches for male teams you think of a strong, dominate figure. Now when I said the words strong and dominate you most likely thought of a male figure. That's the problem, you only thought of male coach. Women have never been given a chance to prove they are capable to coach a male team and be successful while they do it. It's no secret females are constantly stereotyped, in fact sometimes females even stereotype themselves. If you were asked to describes females you may use some words such as sensitive, delicate, maybe even timid, but that's not how all females are. Women can be just as strong and dominate as males. Some male athletes may not take a female coach as seriously as they would a male, but I'm sure with time and discipline a woman could gain her players respect. It doesn't matter if your male or female you can be a great coach if you work hard enough. An argument some may have is that women can't understand sports like men can, which is a completely invalid argument. Males are not born with a special ability to understand sports better than females, anyone who watches or studies a sport can gain knowledge about it. Coaching is not for every female, some just don't have the dedication. On the other hand there are woman who are willing to be just as dedicated as men. If females work as hard as males they can eventually become just as good if not better coaches than men are. A perfect example of a female who worked hard and became a phenomenal coach is Pat Summitt who coached at the university of Tennessee. Her overall record is 1,098 wins and only 208 losses. She has an impressive win percentage of 84 percent. I took Summitt's career and compared to another great college coach, Geno Auriemma, who is a male coach at Connecticut. When I compared the two I saw that Geno's win percentage was only one percent higher than Summitt's. I also noticed that in the 2009 season Auriemma had 39 wins while Pat had 32 wins. Although Geno Auriemma's coaching states are a slightly higher than Pat Summitts her career stats are very close and just as impressive. In a society where we accept everything I don't know why there hasn't been a female coaching a male's professional or college team yet. Why is it ok that playing, understanding, or coaching a sport is still associated with men? Women need to be given a chance to coach a males team in order to end many stereotypes and to prove that females can accomplish anything they desire despite others opinions.