A couple weeks ago , Olga Hrycak, the recently retired coach of the Université de Quebec à Montreal men's basketball team, was awarded the prestigious Award of Coaching Excellence at the Usport annual gala. This award comes as just the most recent of her awards which include induction into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame, the lifetime achievement award by the Federation d'Athlète d'Excellence du Québec and many others.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Olga, she coached men's basketball for almost 40 years, yes men's basketball, even though she was a women. She coaches in the cegep ranks from 1977 to 2003 and then went on to coach at the university level for an additional 12 years. During her time coaching at Dawson College between 1988 and 2003, she won 9 provincial championships, a record that no other coach even comes close to achieving. She was also an assistant coach with Canada's 1984 Olympic team in Los Angeles. So seeing the success of this one example of a woman coaching a male sport, the questions can be asked, "why can't women coach men?". Many will say that she is a rare exception. That yes, she was successful but that it can't happen regularly. For me, asking why can't women coach men, is the same as asking why women can't manage men in a work environment. Aside from coaching, I have had a professional career or what I always refer to as my "real job that helps we make money to do the things I enjoy" spanning 28 years. I have many bosses, different personalities, backgrounds and styles, and to this day, I can honestly say that the best boss I ever had was a woman. She was the second manager I worked for after finishing university and to this day, no other person I have worked for comes close to her as a manager. I consider her a mentor and someone who really help define who I would become as a manager, as a coach and in some ways as an adult. It should be noted that she was my boss at a time when I wasn't as enlightened or understanding about gender issues, stereotypes etc. She was just a good boss, because she was simply a good boss, the fact she was a woman, wasn't really relevant, at least not to me. To others, well of course there were stories about how she got to where she go to. So why can't women coach men's sports? I really don't know. A few months ago, Mike Francesca, a fairly well know US radio host was in the news for saying that he could never imagine a woman ever coaching in men's professional sports. His exact words were, a woman as coach, specifically in the NBA, would be a "sad publicity stunt." He believes that there will never be a female head coach ever in his life time. He admitted women can be very successful, even become US president, but he does not believe that he will see a female coach in any professional sport any time soon. He is not the first and sadly probably not the last to make this type of comment but the timing of his comments certainly brought up the debate... again. The reason I have a problem is with the concept that a woman can't coach men, is that if a women is capable of any other job in this country, politics, running corporations or being in the public eye, then why is the idea of a women professional coach so hard to grasp? The logic for dismissing a woman as a head coach of a women's professional sport has often been the notion that how could a woman stand up to the pressures of coaching professional sport with all the scrutiny, media attention, social media activity etc. Well in essence how can anyone if they aren't cut out for it? Pia Sundhage, former coach of the US women's soccer team and currently coaching Sweden's team, was asked if she thought she could ever coach men and she had the following reply (these are her words) "Well, then, let me ask you a question: does it work with a female chancellor in Germany? Angela Merkel [is running an entire] f***ing country. Clearly it works." Coaching players or managing people, is not about men and women but is more about being respected by the players and the players wanting the coach to be there.While being a great coach requires more than just respect, it does get to the point that a coach does not need to compete with the players. If a coach has a good coaching philosophy, can train and motivate players, and execute a good game plan, it doesn't matter whether the coach is male or female. Like many other things, success will determine the outcome. If a a team wins, I don't think the athletes will care about the gender of the coach.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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