The University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, under the guidance of Nicole Lavoi, has produced the 11th edition of its annual Women in College Coaching Report Card.
This year’s report focused on the “Select Seven” that the Center deemed to be the most powerful conferences in NCAA Division I athletics: the American Athletic Conference, ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC. This is a reduction in scope from prior years, where all NCAA Division I institutions were studied.
The results of this year’s report were more positive for women in coaching than in any other year in the report’s history. In fact, the 2022-2023 season saw the biggest increase in the percentage of women’s head coaches of women’s athletics teams in the history of the report – jumping from 43.7% to 46.0%.
The Center credits this, in part, for the opportunities afforded by higher-than-average head coach turnover. Among the 980 head coach positions analyzed from women’s teams at 87 institutions, 12.7% (124) turned over. That’s significantly higher than the average yearly turnover rate of 9.3% over the last 11 years.
For the second time in 11 years, the majority of those positions were filled by women – 72 out of 124 (58.1%).
Table: Gender of the outgoing coach and gender of the coach who replaced them.
Aquatic sports did not fare well overall by the Center’s grading system. Water polo, where 37.5% of women’s teams have a woman as head coach, received a D; swimming, where just 19.7% of women’s teams have a woman as head coach, received an F; and diving, where just 8.8% of women’s teams have a woman as head coach, also received an F.
Last year, those numbers were, 32.4% for water polo, 20.9% for swimming, and 19.7% for diving, though last year’s report included all Division I conferences (rather than the Select Seven used in this year’s report).
The report notes that many sports with F grades like swimming and diving are co-ed, meaning the men and women are training together. In those cases, the vast majority of head coaches are men, even if the women’s rosters are, on average, larger.
The report hypothesizes that the hesitance to hire women to coach co-ed teams “may reflect gender bias and reluctance of Athletics Directors to hire women to coach male athletes and/or men’s teams.”
The report also broke down and gave letter grades by institution, and broke down data for women coaches of color and BIPOC women coaches.
By institution, 10 out of 87 studied (11.5%) received “A” grades, with the University of Cincinnati and Cal leading the way with 77.8%. Cincinnati, notably, has a woman (Mandi Commons DiSalle) who leads their co-ed swimming program. The school doesn’t list a separate head diving coach, but their assistant diving coach Audrey Capannari is also a woman.
Institutional Grades:
Texas, one of just three schools studied that received an ‘F’ grade, does have a woman leading their women’s swimming program – Carol Capitani. That team finished 2nd at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships last year. The next-best women’s teams at that meet led by a woman was USC in 12th (Lea Maurer), and Alabama in 14th (Margo Geer). Georgia (16th – Stefanie Williams Moreno), Northwestern (28th – Katie Robinson), Miami University (33rd – Hollie Bonewit-Cron), UCLA (34th – Jordan Wolfrum), and Georgia Tech (39th – Courtney Shealy-Hart) are the other scoring teams led by women – though in some of those cases, the points came from divers and not swimmers.
The Tucker Center is amazing. We need more research like that which it produces!!!
As a female who was a D1 assistant swim coach, I can firmly say that the reason is because the pay is not high enough for the amount of work that is put into the job. Between being on deck 4-6 hours a day, writing practices, managing travel and expenses for the entire team, being in compliance with the NCAA and tracking hours of practice and meets in ARMS (software), organizing recruiting weekends, and THEN making 1-6 calls a day to recruits (range depending on the season), you have VERY little time for yourself. You’re also only making 30k-40k a year for minimum 12-hour days IF you’re lucky….
When I started to think about having a family, I… Read more »
This post wins. @Braden Keith can there be a bigger discussion of this topic on swimswam? Your post about time involved with coaching is very true, but most other sports pay their coaches more than swimming. That is really hurting college swim!
So true. While I’m a guy I left college coaching for the exact same reason. It’s getting to the point it’s not a good job for anyone.
And it will continue as long as our current cadre of swimmers and swim parents at the age group levels continue to undermine and reject assertive female coaches. The current culture supports a demanding male coach who holds his athletes accountable. When a female coach does the same thing, she’ll get 5 phone calls demanding an apology and accusing her of bullying. Great female coaches get run off.
This!
Too many do not want to step into the head coach shoes as they watch their peers whether club or college get bullied by groups of athletes through gas lighting, blatant lies and retaliation whenever one of their teammates do get held accountable by the female coach. When a female coach holds someone accountable, they are being too hard on them and are unreasonable, and when they do not, they are too easy and a pushover.
And we need to stop calling it a token female position. There is a shortage of qualified coaches male and female – everyone is hiring qualified coaches they trust to work with and will get the job done.
Terri McKeever
Reports like these from political activists disguised as academics focus on current positions rather than changes in the whole aquasphere describing how people got to where they are.
Got to start somewhere and it all adds to the greater body of knowledge surrounding collegiate coaching.
Time….
Add Northwestern
Well, in the data, she’s actually a 1:1 replacement for the prior head coach Katie Robinson.
Stand corrected, at least not a net loss.
Forgot Georgia (placed 16th)
Thanks, good catch. Adding.
Forgot Georgia