Fair Ball? Women Coaches Seem to Come Up Short : Athletics: More girls are competing, resulting in more jobs, but men still have most of them.

Women’s athletics may have come a long way, but most of the people coaching high school girls’ sports in Orange County are men.

More than 20 years after Title IX put teeth into the women’s sports movement, only 31% of the varsity head coaching positions for girls’ sports in the county are held by women. In large-team sports such as soccer and track, the percentage is less than a fourth.

That creates a problem, says Encinitas sports psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino.

“It would be an unusual male coach,” she said, “who could successfully understand, who could relate to, a majority of young female athletes.”

But not everyone agrees with Palladino’s assessment.

Dr. Brent Rushall, keynote speaker at the 1990 World Conference of Sports Psychology and a four-time U.S. Olympic team psychologist, is one of them.

“Coaching is dependent upon education, the ability to perform the characteristics of successful coaching, how you positively inform kids, the quality of the program, getting them to improve,” he said. “That’s very androgynous.”

Women’s coaching positions have increased because of Title IX, which provided for gender equity in high school and college athletics. But consider the sports in which women coaches are most prominent in Orange County: gymnastics (50%), girls’ tennis (43%), softball (41%) and field hockey (40%); notably, there are only four gymnastics programs in the county and 10 field hockey teams.

Even the one sport most identified with girls suffers. Volleyball has been a sanctioned sport for girls since 1972--the boys had one division competing in 1974 but its participation numbers didn’t take off until 1986-87--and 39% of the girls’ head coaches are women. Perhaps more surprising, given the number of women who understand the sport, is that only 17% of the boys’ volleyball coaches are female.

Based on the number of participants nationally, the most popular girls’ sports, in addition to volleyball and tennis, are basketball (with 23% women head coaches in Orange County) and cross-country (25%). The percentage of women coaching large-team girls’ sports--soccer (24%), swimming (28%) and track and field (16%)--is well under one-third.

Women make up 36% of the coaches for badminton, a co-ed sport.

Some schools are doing a great job of maintaining gender equity among the coaching ranks. Mater Dei and first-year Aliso Niguel have eight head coaching positions filled by women.

University, Mater Dei and Ocean View have at least two boys’ programs under the direction of women.

Which schools have the lowest numbers? Excluding small schools, which often have fewer teams and smaller staffs, El Dorado, Foothill, Trabuco Hills and Santa Ana have no female head coaches, and Capistrano Valley has one--its gymnastics coach. Almost as bad is Fountain Valley, with a student enrollment of more than 1,900, whose only female head is girls’ basketball Coach Carol Strausburg, who was hired 16 years ago.

But those schools have a defender in Newport Harbor girls’ basketball Coach Shannon Jakosky, who grew up in an athletic environment as the daughter of Ralph Miller, the Oregon State men’s basketball coach for 19 years.

“There aren’t that many available women who know what they’re doing,” she said. “Are you looking for parity? The market pool is not there. The cream of the coaching crop is going immediately into the collegiate ranks, where it is most profitable. If I weren’t doing this for fun, what enticement would I have to go teach in a public school and take on the problems that you take on?”

Before Title IX, there were 32,000 members of the Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The AIAW disbanded in 1982, but there were 94,920 women athletes in the NCAA in 1993.

Girls’ sports have become more popular, not only at the collegiate level, but also in high schools.

According to figures from the National Federation of State High School Assns., the number of high school female participants in 1992-93 was 1,997,489; 10 years earlier, there were 1,779,972. By comparison, the number of boys participating has remained about 3.4 million since 1988-87.

Greater access to facilities generated more female players, more teams and more coaching opportunities. Nationally, women held 90% of the coaching positions for girls’ teams in 1972 because administrators sought anyone who would take on that responsibility, but by 1992, they held only 48.3%. As heads of programs, those numbers decreased from 90% to 16.8%. At the high school level, 90% of girls’ team coaches were women in 1980, but that figure is now down to 35%, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation.

So, there are more jobs but fewer women’s coaches.

Here’s why:

* Mariah Burton Nelson, who wrote “Good Sports: Women’s Ways of Playing,” contends that winning and losing aren’t as important to women as being involved in games. Men tend to place more emphasis on hierarchy and who wins and loses. Women look at the competition as a means to better their own level of achievement as participants.

* Despite unprecedented opportunities in sports brought about by Title IX, Frances Munning wrote in the September, 1990, issue of Women’s Sports and Fitness that women’s teams became more competitive, but women coaches weren’t interested in the new emphasis--winning. While female participants were increasing because of access, female coaching and administrative numbers were taking a nose-dive.

The nature of the beast built its master. The competition of women’s sports attracted male coaches, and now men dominate the coaching ranks. That is true in college, that is true in high schools, that is true in Orange County.

“We need more female coaches in our girls’ programs,” said Dean Crowley, Southern Section commissioner. “I’m absolutely sold on that.”

Mary Gainey Hauser at Mater Dei, Joni Easterly at Katella and Mary Mulligan at San Clemente are girls’ basketball coaches who used to play at those schools. Costa Mesa’s Lisa McNamee, Kennedy’s Karen Wolfe and Irvine’s Connie Brazell all attended high school locally and played basketball in Orange County. Their ages range from 22 to 30 and they are among the first wave of females who grew up as athletes under Title IX.

“The only way you’re going to get more women in coaching is to give them a chance,” said Eric Tweit, Newport Harbor’s athletic director and girls’ cross-country and track and field coach. “As an A.D., you need to have some representation of women on your staff. If you have all male coaches, I don’t think you’re being fair to the girls, giving them role models. . . . (But) it’s easier to hire males--more males apply for our jobs.”

Sally Reclusado is the girls’ athletic director at El Dorado, which has no women head coaches. “It bothers me to a certain extent,” she said. “It’s important to have a female role model. Males seem to have a certain way of reacting in the heat of competition--language being one of them. I just think a female manner in competition is important.”

So why doesn’t she hire a female coach?

“About 20% of the applicants for our positions are women,” Reclusado said, “but it seems the best people for the jobs of those who apply are males.”

McNamee made this observation about girls’ basketball: “It’s interesting how not a lot of women coach, but for the most part, all their teams are successful.”

Four of the 16 female coaches in the county have teams in this week’s top 10, and two others were considered. There are 14 girls’ soccer programs with women coaches, and four have programs among the 15 named in this week’s poll.

Said Strausburg, whose career record starting the week was 280-151 (.649) and who has taught at Fountain Valley since 1966: “More girls want to get into coaching and get into education, but the problem in our area is that there are no teaching and coaching jobs, or there may be a coaching job but you can’t survive on the stipend. When that opens up, I think you’ll see more women in coaching.”

An informal poll of some Orange County athletic directors showed they would like to hire women to coach girls’ teams, but their prevailing theory is that the best person be hired, regardless of gender. Most of the 11 female basketball, soccer and softball coaches interviewed for this story agreed, but advised that there are key differences between boy and girl athletes:

* Girls’ mood swings are greater, they’re more emotional and tend to be more sensitive to criticism.

* They tend to talk behind a teammate’s back, whereas boys are more outright and honest.

* They bounce back from losses easier.

* They don’t tend to have the same type of intense, aggressive nature as boys.

“It takes a particular type of person to coach girls,” said Hauser, who played for a woman coach in high school and a man at Fresno State. “Men and women are different and girls are much more emotional, especially as teen-agers . . . You can push them as hard as boys, and you can expect them to work as hard as boys, but you can’t motivate them the way you motivate boys.

“It’s advantageous to be a woman coaching girls, but there are real successful men who can do it. But they have to be able to communicate. They have to be a little more patient; they can’t expect miracles.”

Brazell, half-joking, was more to the point: “The advantages are that women are women and men don’t understand us.”

But today’s female athlete is changing and is not the same as the one who grew up with the Girls’ Athletic Assn. playdays that preceded Title IX. Today’s female coaches, too, are more serious than the scores of mostly unknowledgeable girls’ coaches who make up the 90% of coaches immediately after Title IX.

Wolfe, who played basketball at Garden Grove and Cal State Northridge, said girls have been socialized differently, and the ones who grew up as athletes--the way boys are socialized--stand out immediately.

“There may be some guys who have problems coaching females because they see females. But I don’t see a girl and I don’t see a guy, I see an athlete,” said Wolfe, whose teams are 29-14 in two years. “That’s just the way I coach.”

Nearly all the coaches expressed the importance of being a positive role model for their athletes, helping them become more well-rounded individuals.

“Girls need to see women as authoritative figures in leadership roles,” said Cypress assistant athletic director Kathie Maier, who actively recruits female applicants. “It allows them to see themselves further down the line, whether it’s in athletics or as CEO of a top company. When we only model males in those roles, it sends the message that that’s not an option for a young girl.”

Said Jakosky: “We’re the first generation of competitive athletes who have had a chance to play in high school and college who are now returning to the sports world. We’re evolving. The women over the last 10 years or so are pioneers.

“In the next 20 or 30 years, we’re going to really start reaping the benefits. . . . Everything good takes time.”

What Sports Women Coach

Percent of women coaching Orange County high school sports:*

Gymnastics: 50%

Girls’ tennis: 43%

Softball: 41%

Field hockey: 40%

Girls’ volleyball: 39%

Co-ed badminton: 36%

Girls’ swimming: 28%

Girls’ cross-country: 25%

Girls’ soccer: 24%

Girls’ basketball: 23%

Boys’ volleyball: 17%

Girls’ track and field: 16%

Boys’ tennis: 13%

Boys’ cross-country: 9%

Boys’ track and field: 3%

Water polo: 3%

Golf: 2%

* Percentages based on varsity coaches listed in 1993-94 Southern Section Directory of Member Schools. There are no female head coaches for football, boys’ basketball, wrestling, baseball or boys’ swimming.

Source: 1993-94 Southern Section Directory of Member Schools