Torrey Hart contributored to this report.
Last week the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota published its annual findings on women coaching women’s teams at the NCAA level.
- Head Coaches of Women’s Collegiate Teams Report – Division I
- Head Coaches of Women’s Collegiate Teams Report – Division III
Prepared by Tucker Center co-director Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D, the reports highlight the percentage of women’s teams coached by female coaches at all three NCAA levels. LaVoi’s findings show that swimming and water polo are among the sports with the fewest female head coaches of female teams.
LaVoi used a sample of 3517 head coach positions of women’s teams from 349 Division I schools. She noted that of those total positions available, five were unfilled at the time of data collection (November 2017 – January 2018), which results in a final sample of 3512 for analysis.
She found that women held 1463 of the 3517 (41.7 percent) head coaching positions for DI women’s teams in general – up a few tenths of a percent from last year. The numbers for indoor women’s volleyball is doing slightly better than the average – 46.8% of D1 women’s indoor coaches are women, while beach volleyball is a little behind the curve – just 38.5% (20/52) coaches in the survey were women.
In last year’s NCAA volleyball final 4, just 1 of the 4 head coaches, Florida’s Mary Wise, was a woman. At the beach volleyball national championships, it was an even split, with FIU, USC, Florida State, and Pepperdine having female head coaches, while UCLA, Hawaii, South Carolina, and LSU had male head coaches. One of those female coaches, Pepperdine’s Nina Matthies, retired and has been replaced by a man, Marcio Sicoli.
For DIII, of the 4197 positions sampled, women held 45.7 percent of women’s team head coaching positions. For indoor women’s volleyball, 62.9% of coaches were female. Beach volleyball in Division III had 66.7% female coaches, but the sport was only offered at three schools in 2017-2018. Both sports earned grades of “B” for their efforts.
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