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Does Gender Matter In Coaching? Oregon State's Chatterton, Drury's Miller, and UNCW's Martin

Guest Molly Miller, Drury University; Jonas Chatterton, Oregon State University; Tina Martin, UNC Wilmington; Katy Young Staudt, Ventura Partners
32:49 min watch

Summary

Oregon State Associate Head Women’s Basketball Coach Jonas Chatterton, Drury Head Women’s Basketball Coach Molly Miller, and UNC Wilmington Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach Tina Martin chat with Ventura Partners’ Katy Young Staudt discuss a number of topics, including men coaching women’s basketball. The trio also dig in on the differences and similarities between men’s and women’s basketball coaching, development, and recruiting, while also touching on mental health, coaching turnover, and advice for young coaches.

  • - Are there too many men coaching women's sports? (Chatterton)
  • - What is the value of having a male on a coaching staff for women's sports? (Martin & Miller)
  • - What will it take to have more women coaching men's sports? (Miller & Martin)
  • - What are some of the differences between coaching men versus coaching women?
  • - Do you see a difference in the development between men's and women's basketball? (Martin & Chatterton)
  • - As a man coaching women's basketball, do you feel that your student-athletes are comfortable coming to you? (Chatterton)
  • - How do you approach and manage the mental health of your student-athletes?
  • - Do you discuss the more volatile turnover present in women's basketball?
  • - What advice would you give to an athletic director on how to know if an assistant coach is ready to be a head coach?
  • - What can we do to better prepare young assistant coaches for their next opportunity?

 

 

Full Transcript

 

Katy Young Staudt: Good morning. We are here with three excellent women’s basketball coaches just to talk just some hot topics around the country right now and all the conferences and little bit different experiences for each of these three individuals. I’m going to let them just introduce themselves and tell kind of where they are and how long they’ve been coaching. Go ahead, Molly.

 

Molly Miller: My name’s Molly Miller, I’m coaching at my alma mater at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. I’ve been coaching for nine years and going into my sixth season as the head coach there.

 

Jonas Chatterton: My name’s Jonas Chatterton, I’m currently at Oregon State University, I’m the associate head coach. I’ve been doing that the last five years and part of that, University of Colorado Boulder and Brigham Young University.

 

Tina Martin: My name is Tina Martin and currently I’m an assistant at UNCW but I’ve also been a head coach for over 21 years and an assistant coach for over 10.

 

KYS: Excellent. And I’m Katy Young Staudt, I’m with Ventura Partners, we are an executive search firm specializing in coach searches of all kinds, everything from fencing to basketball, football and athletic director searches and deputy ADs as well, lot of administrators are our clients. So just want to kick it off really quick just by prefacing this brief interview, women’s basketball roundtable here. So let’s talk a little bit about just one of the hottest topics right now.

 

I know Muffet McGraw, head coach in Notre Dame, made a comment, a statement actually, after the NCAA tournament that there are too many men … and I’m not going to put you on the spot here Jonas but too many men being hired to coach women’s basketball, that she would never hire a male on her staff. So that’s kind of … what we want to talk about, just some different things, the different nuances of that subject right now on athletic director university. So let’s just start off by talking about, are there too many men coaching women?

 

I don’t want to put you on the spot here, Jonas, but I would love to hear your thoughts as a male in a women’s basketball industry and how do we come to a point where there’s so many male head coaches on the women’s side? And I know you’re an assistant, so have you tried to become a head coach? Tell us about some of your challenges.

 

JC: Sure. I wouldn’t be a head coach if I hadn’t looked at opportunities throughout the years and I think my take on Muffet’s comments were that I think she would like more opportunities for women, moving forward. And so I think that as our game grows and this goes across the board, I think socially there’s more opportunities for women and creating more opportunities for women is a good thing. I got in women’s basketball to promote leadership and develop young women, so I want those opportunities as well. I have daughters myself, so you want to see women have potential to fill those roles and to do those things.

 

With that, I think there’s also a curve of being ready and being in a position to be successful when you get those opportunities and I think that there’s been some opportunities throughout the years for men to come into the women’s side of coaching basketball to provide great knowledge and leadership as well for young women, and to have a male role model is not a bad thing for a young lady. So those opportunities need to grow I think for young women, for diversity and people of color across our country, in all social aspects, not just in coaching basketball but it starts, and I think can come and start, with coaching women’s basketball. I think that as that happens, there needs to be more structure and more development of young women’s coaches to be ready for those positions.

 

KYS: Well said. Tina, I’d love to get your thoughts on … have you had male assistants? And what do you think that the difference is, bringing … what do they bring to the table that sometimes assistants that are women don’t bring or maybe there’s just that diversity piece where you got just some different perspective. Tell us a little bit about that, what’s the value in having men on your staff?

 

TM: Well, first of all, I think that there’s a lot of value in having a male on your staff and I’ve always had a male on my staff as a head coach and I think it’s something that helps your student athletes because every student athlete relates to different types of individuals both male and female. I really don’t look at it as a male and female gender issue, I look at it more as an opportunity who is qualified. When I was coaching for two decades, I … as a head coach, I looked at the qualifications of the applicant and I really felt it was very important that that individual had the qualifications to mentor and show leadership qualities and to really help these individuals be well rounded.

 

I think it’s really important that we prepare our student athletes for life and they’re not just going to see female role models, they’re going to see male role models and they’re going to interact obviously with male coaches, as well as female coaches. So we’re preparing them for life in general and I … so I think yes, it’s very important to have a male on your staff. That being said, I think it’s the individual coaches’ responsibility to decide what’s important to them.

 

Obviously Muffet feels very strongly about this issue and she has spoken out about it and for her, that’s what she feels is best on her staff and help her be successful. So the bottom line is, it comes down to an individual basis, it comes down to making a decision as to what your staff is going to look like, whether it’s diversity, whether it’s male, whether it’s female and then what are their qualifications and what can they bring to the table to make you better as a head coach. So those are the things that I would look at.

 

KYS: So Molly, I would love to hear from your perspective just now as a head coach and then also as a former player at your alma mater, what style of coaching did you kind of come up in the game with and how do you feel now that that has transitioned into being a head coach, how does … how do you feel now about your thoughts on male coaches in women’s basketball?

 

MM: So when I played, I think back to some of the best coaches I ever had. And one was my dad growing up and I’m like, “Well, why didn’t my mom coach me? Why was my dad my coach?” And 1972, Title IX passed, that wasn’t until my mom’s senior year. So my thought is, I agree that the opportunity just hasn’t been there in the past. So when you’re looking at hiring and who the pool of candidates for, I just think there’s been … my dad played the game, he talked to the male mentors in the field, he played the game and played the game and played the game and loved the game.

 

My mom didn’t have the opportunity to gain all that knowledge and play the game and learn from mentors and role models because there weren’t female athletes, let alone female coaches. So I think the needle is moving in that direction of opportunity, but it’s hard for me to justify taking away a great pool of candidates that are extremely qualified, extremely knowledgeable. I’ve had all female staffs. I’ve had a male on my staff. I played for male coaches. I played for female coaches. I got a little two and a half year old and God-willing, she’ll play basketball and fall in love with it. She’s in the 20th percentile, so I think my dream of a 6’1 point guard are dowsed, but I just want her to play for a good coach, a great human being that just wants to get her far in life and mentor her and coach her and that’s what I want for my players, too. So just putting them in front of good people regardless of gender with great expertise and, you know, just a great role model I think is extremely important.

 

KYS: Awesome. And you mentioned a little bit about the paradigm shift. A little bit, you know, the moving the needle over and it kind of brings me to my next topic. What do you think it’ll take to see more women coaching, and we see that now in the NBA? You know, we’ve got Becky down at San Antonio coaching, the Mavericks, have assistant coach who is a woman. You know, more front office in the NBA, they’re hiring women as player development coaches and Philly, you know, different individuals. I saw yesterday. New Orleans Pelicans just hired a woman as a … in the front office as well. So, it seems like a … the needle is moving, right? So, we’re getting more opportunities as women to step in to that … to that role. But on the women’s basketball, said specifically, how do you see that NBA trans-shifting over… and women coaching men?

 

MM: It’s phenomenal model behavior, right? Someone’s got to model it for it to kind of catch fire, if you will. Normal is comfortable. Anything outside normal is a little uncomfortable. So you just have to make it comfortable. And I think we’re seeing that trend and that opportunity, you know, show itself. And I think if more people can model that behavior, the hires, you see more hires, you see Popovich, you know, making a stance that I think that’s something that would catch on and you hope that that trend moves upward.

 

KYS: Sure. Tina, do you have anything to add to that?

 

TM: Yeah, I think that, you know, right now, obviously, you’re looking at a lot of WNBA players. Once they finish their careers, they’re looking to get into coaching and they really are branching out and looking at the NBA as well as college opportunities and a lot of WNBA players or assistant coaches and they’re choosing potentially not to go overseas, but to go into the coaching field, which I think is great. But I agree it has to be, you know, a desire to do that. And certainly right now, the people that are stepping out and doing those types of… have those types of desires are the WNBA players. So I think it’s great and certainly I want to see where it goes. You know, from a coaching perspective, there have been a lot of coaches that really enjoy coaching on the women’s side. You know, the work-life balance, certainly, you know, keeping that. So when you look at the professional ranks going to the college ranks, I think that right now, it’s more the professional players who are taking that big step and getting into the men’s side of coaching. But eventually I think people will take that next step and go from the college ranks and go into the professional ranks and vice versa. So I think it’s great. And I think it’s a good first step.

 

KYS: Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about the differences in coaching men and coaching women. I mean, obviously, the recruiting process is probably a little bit different on the women’s side than the men’s side, specifically to college. So, you know, what do you think are some of the differences, Jonas? Maybe you can take this one in coaching men versus women.

 

JC: I started my career coaching on the men’s side. And so my knowledge of that years ago was … in the recruiting process, I would say the one thing that I think men want to look at is their dreams to play in the NBA and I think it goes back to what Molly said about the grown up with that their whole life. And so they look at, “How can I take this next step to move forward in my career?” We’re coaching now on the female side, I think it becomes more about comfortable and family and where am I going to be successful in life and having people surround me that… are going to help me do that. That said, the recruiting aspect is one piece. It’s … the coaching basketball piece is exactly the same. You coach men, same way you coach women. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, there are women CEOs. There’s women running our country. There’s women all over the place. So the opportunities for women to coach basketball should be there. And a lot of I think it is I think the NBA has made a great stance moving forward and opening up those opportunities. I think men’s college basketball is a little more stubborn to things and I think that eventually that needs to happen as well. But if you can lead people and teach people, it doesn’t matter your gender, you should be able to be able to put those positions.

 

KYS: Great. So let’s talk a little bit about chemistry on… you know, team chemistry. How does that… how does that different when you’re coaching men versus women? Forget like the Xs and Os, forget the recruiting piece. But just, you know, I mean, you mentioned leadership. Of course, that’s important. You can’t win without a good leader. But, you know, what are some of the differences, team-wise, culture-wise, that you see that are different?

 

JC: Well, I think the biggest thing that I’ve noticed in coaching from men to women is that on the men’s side, it wasn’t as fun to travel with them sometimes because they’re all about themselves and how can I do my thing? And it’s just a man… men’s role. But I do think the successful men’s programs build a culture in a team based upon family. I think on the women’s side; same thing is true. I think that successful teams build culture and family. So I think whatever building that chemistry is together, to make a group of people go in one direction is how it works. And I think it becomes even more important on the women’s side to build that, to be successful, than it does sometimes on the men’s side.

 

TM: And I think, you know, chemistry wise, when you look at the women’s side, it’s more honestly about the bonding that goes on both on and off the court. Women are looking for the opportunity to be on the same plane. They like the opportunity to feel equal all the way across, all the teammates. And on the men’s side, you know, chemistry wise, it ends up being… and some people might call that like a social cohesiveness.

 

But on the men’s side, there’s really a pecking order. A lot of times it’s more of a task cohesiveness where they’re looking at who the best players are and chemistry-wise and how can they get to winning programs, on the women’s side, there’s that element as well. They are on both sides and that’s why it is similar, but I think the order, the priority of that is really different. On the women’s side, the bonding is extremely important and winning is important as well, but I think bonding overall is something that … they’re looking for team bonding opportunities, team activities that they can participate in and feel good about and you either have team … good team chemistry or can also go to the opposite direction, where things can become a lot of drama, issues on your team and so you’re going to have to handle those and you’re going to have to do the best you possibly can do to get everyone back on that same plane, on that same page to make your team extremely successful.

 

On the men’s side, I get the feeling that a lot of times, even if the men are not necessarily getting a long, they’re still going to get the best player of the ball, they’re still going to set that great screen, they’re still going to … they want to win. And so the task-oriented type of thing maybe is a little bit more prevalent from that standpoint but they go hand in hand. There’s definitely that social element of being a great teammate and having that special bond and there’s also that element for both sides of wanting to win and completing your task and doing very well.

 

KYS: Molly, anything to add?

 

MM: Yeah. I mean to piggyback on that, I think in a general stance, kids are kids and at that age, I think the college years are kind of the in formidable years of their lives, regardless of gender. And so it’s our duty as mentors and leaders, who they are around the majority of the time, to lead them and mentor them. So I think regardless of who you’re coaching, that relationship has to be less transactional, “I give you a scholarship, you go perform on the basketball court” and more relationship building and it goes deeper than basketball. And I think that’s how you’re going to get the best out of your team. I mean, when I was a player, I wanted to play for my coach because I knew she cared about me or I knew he cared about me. So I think regardless if you want to get the most out of your team, men or women, you got to make sure it’s more than a, “I’m coaching you because I need this from you.” No, “I’m going to take care of you off the court and outside these basketball walls or this locker room.” And I think that’s an important thing to remember as we coach.

 

KYS: Great. Do you see a difference in coaching men and women with the development piece? Like maybe the evaluation, do you start at the recruiting when you’re watching players … maybe when they’re sophomore in high school, is there a difference between men’s basketball and women’s basketball as far as recruiting goes? And if you can identify that talent early and develop it versus that person’s ranked in the top 20 and maybe that’s their max potential that they’ve already exceeded, how do you balance that coaching back and forth men and women?

 

TM: Well, I think that you’re always looking to develop players. I don’t … it doesn’t matter what side your own, the men’s or the women’s side. But certainly with the AAU Circuit that’s been happening, a lot of players are playing more games and you’re looking at their developmental skills, their fundamental skills and how are they getting better. And so it’s really big on a staff, whether you’re an assistant coach or a head coach that you develop those skills … that skill set. 

 

And so on the men’s side, I think that men tend to play a lot more pickup and obviously work on their games and they’re in the gym a lot. With the college atmosphere as it is right now, you have 20 hours a week that you can work with them and obviously, there are even more restrictions during the fall period as far as skill sets, but you’re really trying to teach fundamental and you’re trying to look at their athleticism and what fits your program and then you look at the potential that a student athlete has. And then once you bring them into your program, yes, you’re working on skill sets, again, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the male side or the female side, you’re trying to improve their abilities to make them the best player they possibly can be.

 

So every recruiter that goes out, whether it’s men or women, you’re looking at what is your skill set currently? How can I improve that skill set? And how does that fit into my system? And so when you’re looking at the development of the student athlete, when you’re recruiting them, you’re looking at all three of those phases to help you to get to the finished product. And as they said, there’s more to coaching than just basketball now, you’re preparing them for life. So everything you do is in preparation of making them a better player and we’re talking about skill development right now, but it really comes down to them wanting to be a better player and then you teaching those fundamental skill sets.

 

JC: True.

 

KYS: Jonas? You haven’t talked in a while.

 

JC: I don’t … As far as developing players and skill development, there’s not a difference, we’re … as Tina said, we’re all developing players and trying to make them better in the skill set. I think as you go, one thing that I think she said was important is and this is true in life of just people, is a lot of times you’re not ready to gain … it’s absolutely necessary. And so I think once someone finds out that it’s affecting playing time or it’s affecting my abilities and they work at it even more. But our job is to develop players, men or women in basketball and in life and so how can we do that successfully and be there for them, so, yeah.

 

KYS: So, a follow-up to that, Jonas, as a male coaching women, tell me kind of about your experience … You don’t have to use specific examples or names, but how do you go about like the mental health issue in today’s student athlete world, right? They have so much going on, there’s so much pressure to get their grades and make sure they’re eligible and make sure they’re being actually a student athlete and doing more than just playing basketball. So what … how do you feel like? Do you feel like the women are comfortable coming to you as a male if they have issues? If they have issues with their boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it happens to be, do you feel like they … tell me a little bit. Because when you have said …

 

JC: Sure. So yeah, yeah, I know … and I sure hope so. I think that obviously as you have a staff, certain players are more comfortable talking with certain things about other people on the staff. But my door is always open as well to every staff I’ve been on, our coaching staff’s door has been open, so yeah, you have to have those people to have those conversations with your student athletes. And it’s like being a parent, you can’t be afraid to ask them about their boyfriend or what they’re doing on the weekends and mentoring them to make good decisions and helping them make a decision. You know, when you recruit a student athlete, you’re telling the parents we’re going to take care of your daughter for the next four years and so part of our job is to … a huge part of our job is to mentor them and help them make the right decision as people put themselves in the position to be successful. So, yeah, I’ve had many conversation of kids they’re having tears or having things that have come up, there have been issues and how we go with them and moving forward. And so, those things are all great growing opportunities for student athletes.

 

KYS: Great. Do you all have anything to add to the mental health, you know, issue in our country right now? Much less … I mean, women’s basketball which represents our country, you know, there are a lot of student athletes, you know, with the pressures and the social media and, you know, making sure that they’re in the right frame of mind and making sure that you’ve got that under control. How do you manage that?

 

TM: I think the biggest thing is to help them with their coping skills. You know, if they haven’t done well on a test or an exam and they’re really down and they’re upset … I mean, especially on the female side, it’s difficult and I think on the male side as well, they get down. They really do and they’re very hard on themselves. And so I think you have to be uplifting, you have to be positive and you have to explain to them that there’s a new day just around the corner. And you have an opportunity to improve and whether it’s a test that you’ve done poorly on or whether it’s a performance that you haven’t performed as well as you’d like to perform. I think so much emphasis is put on competition and success and … you know, everybody is striving to be the best that they can but let’s face it, no one is perfect and student athletes aren’t, coaches aren’t, administrators aren’t. We all make mistakes and so learning to deal with that, the coping skills, talking to them about being able to move on and to really strive to continue to do their best, their very best. And I think that’s one of the things that the open door policy that he was mentioning I think is extremely important. And when they come in, help them cope and that’s what we try to do when the student athletes come into our offices.

 

MM: Tina is exactly right. Because we coach perfectionists, right? And they … they’re always striving to be better and do better. So you just have to have kind of that open platform of, “Hey, I’m here for you. Whatever you need, the B+ in that science test is not the end of the world.” So I think that’s important just to have that open line of communication. I often take my kids off campus and talk and something I ask them a lot is, “Tell me something I don’t know about you.” And it just opens up the door, good, bad, indifferent but it just opens up just some conversation. And getting to know your players, so they just … there’s that comfortability factor when you talk about family and we preach family in our program all the time. You can’t really preach it unless you’re actually getting to know them. We recruited them more than just basketball players, we’re recruiting them as people and what that comes with in life.

 

KYS: Great. So let’s switch gears just a little bit and talk about kind of the state of the hiring process and becoming a head coach, and some of the trends were seeing. You know, and actually, you know the firing as well. So we’ve had … there was a study done by athletic director Hugh recently and that they’ve found that the rate at which basketball coaches are fired is higher on the women side than on the men’s which kind of surprise me a little. Because you always, you know … I guess you just hear all the chatter of this person could fire on the men side and, you know, who’s going to get that coach … coaching job just because some of the fans may be on just on Twitter, whatever learning about that, trying to figure out who’s going to get the next job. But on the women side, you know, they discovered that it was much higher and then in fact, the minority of women in particular, are six times more likely to get fired and … than to get a new job. So I thought that was really surprising as well. Have you all thought about that much? I mean, is it something that is … it is kind of a thing in the women’s basketball. Are people talking about it?

 

MM: I think as a … personally as a head coach, it’s my responsibility just as in the corporate world. If your people move up, that’s a feather in your cap. And so we’ve got to prepare our assistants for the life of a head coach. So my assistants dabbling a little bit of everything. You know, they don’t just wear the hat of a recruiting coordinator or the academic liaison. They do it all so they are prepared because I want them to develop and reach their goal potentially someday as a head coach. So hopefully, you’re preparing them so you see those numbers decrease in the firings and I think it’s so important just to develop our assistants to be head coaches and be successful, so we can’t pigeonhole them and I think that’s super important.

 

TM: I think the hiring and firing process … you know, right now, with the hiring process, so many things come down to fit. You know, that’s the word that’s being used over and over again. A lot of my peers, younger assistant coaches as well as veteran coaches were looking for that next job. They’re talking about fit. What is the administration … what are they looking for? And, you know, we have … talking about my peers, they basically feel that if I’m not the right fit, when am I going to be the right fit?

 

And so, fit is such a broad term and I think that that’s the standard line right now but I prefer to think of it as what are your qualifications? And as what Molly was saying, you’re trying to prepare your assistant coaches to become head coaches and you want them to not only just be the guard coach, you don’t want them just to be the recruiter, you know, you’ve got to as a head coach. I think that’s part of your responsibility, is to make sure they’re coaching the guards, make sure they’re directing the forward and coaching the forwards as well. And then give the, the opportunity to do, and the game situations in your practices, give them an opportunity to go to a radio show, or to do some type of panel. That’s only going to strengthen their opportunity to become a head coach. And the interviewing process, they want to know what your qualifications are. So I think the big thing right now, is, that, people are a little confused about is, what is the fit, because every institution is different, and every athletic director is different. They may be looking for a male coach, they may be looking for a female coach, they may be looking for someone who is married or who’s single. I mean there’s so many different categories that athletic directors are looking for. So really, for me, it comes down to qualifications. And as a head coach, it’s your job to help these assistant coaches really fulfill their dreams and help them to become a head coach.

 

KYS: What advice would you give to an athletic director? How do you evaluate if an assistant is ready?

 

TM: Well, I mean, again, you have to really, as an athletic director, really go to a lot of different sources. I think that you know, when you’re at … talk to a lot of other head coaches, look at the conference that they’re in, and see if they respect that assistant coach from a different institution if you’re considering them for the head coaching position at your institution. You know, ask those other head coaches, do you see them on the road, are they really diligent about the recruiting aspect of it, are they committed to their job, do you see them doing the right things away from you know, particularly the head coach that they’re currently working for. And so athletic directors, I’m sure that they’re actually looking for a lot of different resources to determine whether someone is ready, but in order to prepare them, you really do need to go to the practices, you really do need to see if your assistant coaches are being trained, and if they’re really, you know, excelling at the things that I just mentioned. I think that’s extremely important.

 

JC: To touch on that, I think a huge part of what you said is educating administration, ADs in the hiring process, especially women’s basketball. It’s just not as well-known, and I don’t think they spend as much time in that process of evaluating talent and coaches coming up, and it’s not just assistants getting that job, it’s head coaches from the major… going to be as fit. And so I think that as we can educate more administrators and athletic directors, and I think a part of it is, in a certain job, they go for a certain profile, more than they do the correct person for the job as part of being ready for the job, and as you said, fit, and it’s more how… sometimes, for profile. And so the more that we can hire the right people that are ready and trained for those positions, then they’ll be less people getting fired. But the trend of women’s basketball, has been their higher profile, and they’re not ready for that position and they get thrown into the wolves, and then they end up getting fired. And so I think the more we can train administrators and athletic directors as far as hiring the right people, and then training from there, to move forward, would a huge movement for women’s basketball, actually.

 

KYS: Anything to add to that, Molly?

 

MM: I agree completely as well.

 

KYS: Very well said, both of you. So let’s talk about mentoring some of the younger women’s assistant coaches. They happen to be women. How do we do that? I mean you mentioned, give them more responsibility, you know, radio shows, letting them go do more. What else can we be doing? I mean as a person that’s … as a search consultant, I love spending my time going to different clinics, and coaching clinics, and you know, final four and you know, things like NACDA or you know, some administrators and then also coaches, you know, I always tell coaching, you have to be known to be needed, right? So it’s both ways. So I can go out and know all these coaches, and every time we go to a campus, I try to spend time with women’s basketball coaches, fencing coaches, like I mentioned, tennis coaches, whoever it might be, helping them with professional development with some of our clients.

 

But it goes both ways, you know? I would challenge all the young up and coming assistant coaches, to get to know all the search firms, because I feel like there is a trend going in the direction of … athletic directors do want to get the hires right, and sometimes, they might not have the network, and maybe they’ve been at the same school for a long time, they don’t know a lot of women’s coaches of tennis coaches or softball coaches or whatever it may be, so they’re relying heavily on us, to just, not to pick who wins, but to bring great slated candidates. They might have a couple of people they’ve worked with before, someone … one of their peer friends they’ve recommended, and you know, being able to just expand their network, and you know, this is what we do for a living.

 

So if we can say, hey, here are 10 people you might not have thought of, but it goes both ways, so I would challenge every assistant coach in the country to get to know, you know, their own administration, because that’s who’s going to recommend them for a job, you know, the people I call aren’t really coaches as much as, hey, administrator, who do you like, who’s worked for you that you like, and if they have done that radio show, they’re going to know who they are, and go to lunch with your compliance person, go to lunch with your SWA, whoever it may be, get to know, get out of your box, get out of your gym and your film room.

 

So would you all agree? Have you encouraged some of your assistant coaches, and have you been encouraged to do that?

 

JC: Oh, I absolutely …you want to get to know … and network as many people as you can, and I think it goes from … at one point you are networking with a lot of head coaches, potentially to move assistant jobs, and those type of things. One other thing I would say, I think it’s great to have different bases of background, and not get stuck in one role, and one situation. And then from there, get to know as many athletic directors, and I agree with you. I think as the trend is moving forward, there’s a lot more search firm involvement in hiring women’s basketball coaches.

 

TM: I think something that may help the situation also is to just have search firms maybe go to final fours and be there, and be available to the assistant coaches, and have a round table for the assistant coaches, so they can meet the search firms, because they honestly don’t know who the search firms are. And then as a head coach, being able to help your assistant coaches learn who the search firms are, but also, be willing to open up and talk about you know, the strategies of the game, and helping them as grow as just coaches in general, and the game situations, and why you made the decision you made at the 5-minute mark of the third quarter or the end of a quarter. And you know, I don’t think there’s enough discussion necessarily as to head coaches talking to their assistant coaches and preparing them for those strategies, because as we talk about being thrown in the fire, when the game is on the line and there’s 10 seconds left, what player you’re going to call. And a lot of times, the assistant coaches don’t have the reasoning behind that, and if the head coach can share whether you fail or whether you succeed, if you share the reason why you’re doing something with the assistant coaches, they’ll help them to start and think about what they would do in that situation when they’re a head coach.

 

KYS: Excellent. We’re on the same wave length there. Sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, right? And who recommends you. 87% of jobs are placed off of one reference, that could be an AD for you, that could be another coach that work with the athletic director that they trust. And so it’s all about trust and it’s not that we don’t want to know who these great assistant coaches are, we just, you know, they haven’t been recommended because they’re not out of their own film room.

So well, I will leave it at that, we are out of time today, but I appreciate everyone being here. And it’s been really great talking to all of you. And thanks a lot.