3 Lessons Our Female Athletes Need To Learn

While I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a feminist, I do believe there are certain things that coaches of female athletes need to talk to their athletes about. I don’t mean sitting them down in a team meeting and talking, but it could be a conversation on the bus or a conversation between tournament games… you know, casual.

What are those things? Title IX for one. This is a good time to do it because it’s the fortieth anniversary of this year’s amendment. I found out that women don’t understand that we didn’t always have uniforms with fancy pants and stay in nice hotels like the boys. We didn’t even always have the same access to sports facilities… our women need to know and appreciate these things.

As coaches, we’re trying to prepare our athletes for the next stage… of athletics and life, so that’s where these three other things come in. Always aiming to create a group of young women who are so informed and confident that they are ready to take over the world (seriously!), here are three areas where we can affect their growth.

3 Things We Should Try To Teach Our Female Athletes

1. It’s okay to talk about being a woman. Sheryl Sandberg is Facebook’s chief operating officer and was recently named the first woman to its board. For all of her incredible accomplishments, she has talked quite a bit about being a businesswoman. She can click here to listen to her great TEDtalk. She says that from the beginning she felt that she shouldn’t focus on the differences and that she was actually advised not to talk about it. In the past, she had similar reservations about speaking with my team about specific women’s issues. Now, I feel like I’m doing them a disservice if I don’t talk to them about it.
2. There may be a work/life balance. Life is about choices. I give private lessons to a First Division athlete who says I have to go up to that level. I have received numerous calls from people from institutions larger and higher level than mine and my answer is always the same: I am happy here. I’m not saying all this to sound my own horn, but rather to show our players that they have a choice. Luckily, I have a lot of people to use as role models for my team: myself… I’ve chosen to keep it at a manageable level for myself. But I also have friends who are higher corporate bigwigs who have families (and probably a lot more money than me!) and love their lives. We also need to let our players know that not wanting it all is okay too. But be warned, there is no work/life balance for a stay-at-home mom…it’s work/work balance!
3. Women are good enough. My sister-in-law is a big shot in a major corporation and is in charge of leading hundreds if not thousands of people. One of the things that she has talked to me about since I was in college is that women don’t stand up for themselves. She was telling me about going into the bargaining process with women and not having to do much, even though she had thousands more available to offer, because women just take what’s offered. While the men would negotiate salary, stock options and vacation time. She’s not alone, check out this post on how to negotiate salary. I’m telling my players this story because I want them to understand that they’re not being rude when trading…it’s expected!

This post was inspired by this great article on Sheryl Sandberg, Sheryl Sandberg’s lessons on women and success, check it out!