What’s the Difference? : After Almost Four Decades Coaching Men Only, Jim Bush Found It Hard to Adjust

Jim Bush had coached men for 39 years. A member of the Track and Field Hall of Fame, he had produced 19 Olympians. He believed he had seen and done it all. Until 1991, when he agreed to coach USC’s men’s and women’s track teams.

“When I took the job, all of my colleagues told me, ‘It’s going to be like learning coaching all over again,’ ” Bush said. “Boy, were they right. If you try to coach women the same as men, you are going to be in trouble. The main thing is, women are more emotional.”

Unlike many coaches who were circumspect in their answers when discussing this topic, mindful of saying the right thing, Bush avoided the middle ground. He insisted there is a yawning gap between male and female athletes.

“You betcha there’s a difference,” he said.

Bush reels off the differences he sees:

--Female athletes are more emotional and are less receptive to constructive criticism.

--Women take advantage of a male coach, especially in feigning illness.

--Women tend to gossip and form cliques. Bush said there had never been jealousy on his men’s teams but that under USC’s co-ed system the women’s jealous nature is “rubbing off” on the men.

--Female athletes question authority more than male athletes.

--Women want to get out of work during practice while men seek to do more.

In the 20 years since Title IX has dramatically increased the participation of women in sports, the number of women coaching women has fallen off drastically, from 90% in 1972, to less than 48% in 1990.

Now, male coaches are in the majority and they have brought their own ideas about sport, competition and training. Most interesting, they have brought their notions about how women compete, work and even think.

Some, like Bush, are still trying to reconcile their chivalrous views of women with the dynamic female athlete they see today.

It has been an interesting couple of decades for both the coaches and the coached.

Bush, 65, says that he spent his first year at USC painfully learning both his own limits and those of his female charges. He acknowledges that he underestimated the working capacity of female athletes.

“They are paying for it this year,” he said.

The athletes themselves admit to taking advantage of Bush’s tentative efforts at discipline, noting that he refrained from reprimanding them, even though he appeared to have no qualms about reprimanding the men.

Some of the Trojan women felt as if Bush treated them like porcelain dolls.

“He didn’t have a clue, none at all,” USC sprinter Inger Miller said of Bush’s first year. “He didn’t know how women worked. He was afraid of us.”

Miller said that Bush is learning and that his approach this season is slightly different.

As for Bush’s assertion that the women’s team is rife with petty infighting, Miller says that Bush’s perception is clouded--that the men exhibit the same behavior.

“The guys do the same things that we do,” she said. “They talk, they gossip as much as we do. They connive as much as we do. The difference is they get away with it.”

BIOLOGY VS. SOCIOLOGY

It’s a familiar scenario: Young boys are playing, perhaps throwing a ball. One among them is lesser skilled and awkward. He is said to “throw like a girl.”

Then there are coaches, disgusted with their team’s effort, who refer to their male players as “ladies.”

Indiana basketball Coach Bob Knight once handed out tampons to his players when they were playing particularly badly.

Some of the most offensive social myths are the most subtle: Female athletes have heard for decades that they are physically weak, that they can’t take tough coaching without crying.

The effects have not always been so subtle. Not until 1984 were women allowed to run farther than 1,500 meters in the Olympic Games.

That limit stemmed from the 1928 Olympics, when several female runners collapsed after running the 800 meters. Doctors charged that women who ran foot races would “grow old too soon.” The president of the International Olympic Committee said he wanted to ban all women from the Games and return them to their all-male origins.

Instead, for the next 32 years, women’s races longer than 200 meters were banned.

With this history, how can male coaches be expected to ignore society’s stereotypes? The answer, many say, is to forget everything you have learned and learn from what you find.

Said Devin Mahony, coxswain for both men’s and women’s rowing crews at Harvard, and the first woman to cox for a men’s team at the Henley Regatta:

“The pursuit of athletic excellence transcends stereotypes. I’ve had men in my boat who have broke down and cried. I’ve had women who are so tough you can’t believe it. It’s a matter of character, not gender. If you took all the great athletes and put them in a room, regardless of their gender, you would find more areas of common ground than you would find differences.”

AGREE TO DISAGREE

No one interviewed for this story said that men and women are the same. In fact, coaches and athletes, male and female, all noted the differences. But they also said that athletes have many similar characteristics, regardless of gender.

And for every absolute that one coach offered, there was another coach holding a directly opposite view.

Bush says that women don’t want to work as hard as men.

But: “(Male coaches) are too easy on women athletes,” said Dot Richardson, a three-time All-American softball player at UCLA. “They don’t realize the drive women have.”

Or:

--”I’ve coached the top women and I’ve coached the top men, and it’s just easier for me to coach the men,” said figure skating coach Frank Carroll, who has worked with Tiffany Chin and Christopher Bowman. “Men handle criticism and discipline.”

--”On occasion, men don’t respond to what you say,” said Roger Dawes, a Redding (Calif.) softball coach. “Women are more coachable and easier to get along with.”

Figure skating coach Carlo Fassi says his upbringing in Italy affects his approach to coaching.

“I’m more patient with the girls than the boys,” he said. “I always try to help them and never lose my temper. With the boys, I lose my temper.”

NEW-AGE COACH

Bob Kersee was a football coach at San Pedro High who had never coached girls or women. His interaction with female athletes was fleeting: “They got to use the gym the last 15 minutes before the lights went out and they could use the field if the guys weren’t using it,” he said.

Now, in his 20th year of coaching track and field, Kersee directs the women’s team at UCLA and trains world-class male and female athletes privately. Based on what he has seen, he finds it impossible to make sweeping statements to characterize male and female athletes.

“There is no difference between coaching (hurdler) Greg Foster and coaching (hurdler) Gail Devers,” Kersee said. “There are times I have to sit down and talk with Greg, same thing with Gail. There are times when I have to raise my voice with Greg and we get into a shouting match--same thing with Gail.”

Kersee is irritated by the suggestion that women can’t work as hard as men or can’t take as much pain as male athletes. He points to an incident involving his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the world record-holder in the heptathlon.

Joyner-Kersee was competing in the long jump at last summer’s World Championships and was leading when she injured her ankle. After an examination revealed no evidence of a break, Joyner-Kersee resumed jumping.

Kersee said that he was later criticized for being “harsh” with his wife, whom he also coaches.

Kersee said the root of the criticism was twofold: Women are weak and should not be physically challenged, and it looks bad for a male coach to push a woman.

“No matter how you look at that, it’s pure sexism,” Kersee said.

“They understand it when Greg Louganis bumps his head and comes back and does a tremendous dive. It’s the same situation with Jackie. You have to have that toughness. If the ankle is not broken, get ready to jump. If it’s Michael Jordan, and it’s not broken, you better believe that as soon as they can get him back on the floor, they will. There is no difference with women, except we expect them to be weak.”

Times staff writers Randy Harvey and Theresa Munoz contributed to this story.