i just read a very interesting article in the new york times (thanks, dad!) about female swim coaches – somewhat surprisingly there are very few of them in the competitive swimming world – and only three who coach 2008 olympians, all of whom reside in california.
i just don’t get the preconceptions that female coaches will be “easy” or “less competitive” than male coaches, but that’s probably because when i was in high school we had an awesome, laid back male coach who created loooong, grueling workouts for our afternoon practices. but in the morning (we’re talking 6am monday-friday, people), we had this gnarly female coach who made us focus on stroke refinement instead of yardage. i believe it’s due to her that i dropped so much time in my events my senior year – as well as the reason why i was able to in turn teach swim lessons for almost a decade. i ran into her a couple of weeks ago when i went swimming with my mom at ucsc, and she’s still going strong with the coaching, setting up the next generation of swimmers for success.
ok, enough from me, check out this article:
Women Jumping in as Elite Swim Coaches
ps- is anybody else excited about the summer olympics? i don’t know bout all of you, but i plan on spending all of my free time in front of the tv, watching my favorite summer sports!
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July 14th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I was just having a conversation yesterday about how sometimes as a coach (of Ultimate) it was hard to get the respect I needed to do my job. I thought part of it had to do with my being a woman, but I think it also had to do with wanting the players to like me.
Do you think we can do the olympic game again? I could try to set up a data base to make data entry easier?
July 15th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Yes very excited about the Olympics… watched some of the trials before we went on vacation. I hate that they don’t show all the events, I like watching some of the ‘lesser’ sports e.g. table tennis. I think NBC has said they will put events online but only after they air on TV first.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am
kate: that’s a really interesting thought about respect vs being liked. cause i certainly didn’t LIKE the female coach, and i really hated her methods at the beginning, but i definitely respected her. i would love to do the olympics game and access could be our salvation! :)
shaun: i, too, enjoy the lesser sports like table tennis and water polo. my fingers are crossed in hopes that the online coverage is good, cause we don’t have cable – only hi-def bunny ears.