I got your back, Ashton

"How much guts it must take for a girl to decide to take the first step inside football's closed society? How much strength of character must it take for a girl to approach a football coach and say, "I want to play on your team"?
How intimidating must it be to step on that practice field the first time and know every eye is on you, waiting for you to fail, wondering if you going to cry?"

This was Charlie Vincent of the Detroit Free Press in a September 8, 1992 column about a female football player from Rochester Hills Lutheran Northwest and me, a junior on the Bridgeport High School football team.  This column came about after I reached out to offer her my support and understanding when the superintendent of her school did not allow her to remain on her team.  My experience was much different as I was welcomed with open arms and enjoyed what turned out to be a difficult and incredibly empowering experience.

Fast Forward 23 years

Ashton Brooks is a senior placekicker on the Midland Dow High School football team in Midland, Michigan.  She's a leading kicker on a team in a league, the Saginaw Valley League, with pretty big schools.  A league that has, over the years, produced countless college stars as well as NFL players. Her achievements are not a small deal.  Last night I came across the story of Ashton not just playing the game, but excelling at it.  How was that excellence received by a cross town rival's fan?  She was compared to a gorilla on Instagram.  Click here for the: USA Today article 

It is insane to me that someone like Ashton, who has done nothing but excel in many areas of her life, would face this type of situation in the year 2016.  It's ludicrous to me that she would be the target of a bully and a racial bully at that.  As a white female I am offended and embarrassed.  I am outraged at the insensitivity.  I am disgusted that this is our climate.  

You out there, who think we've gotten past this.... You, who watches the scene in Remember the Titans where an opposing coach refers to Denzel Washington's character, Coach Boone, as a monkey 

with disgust and thinks, thank goodness we've come so far....To you I remind you that you are wrong and here's Ashton Brooks to prove it.  

Maybe those kids in the Instagram picture didn't fully understand how deep this hurt really goes.  Perhaps they thought it to just be a funny and harmless prodding of their cross town rival.  Well, it is not.  Moreover, this type of comparison is as potentially dangerous as it is hurtful.  In two studies by Phillip Atiba Goff, a UCLA psychologist, disturbing correlations were found by this comparison.  Quoting from a  blog about this topic by Jene`e Desmond-Harris from TheRoot.com:

"Take two studies that Goff worked on: In one, students who were primed with words associated with cats before seeing a video of police officers beating a man considered the beating unjustified. So did those who were primed with words associated with apes but were told the victim was white. But those who were primed with the ape words and told the victim was black weren’t as sure. The association between ‘black’ and ‘ape’ left our white respondents more open to the possibility that police violence might, in fact, be justified,” Goff said.

"In another study—examining 183 criminal cases in which a defendant was eligible for the death penalty, as well as the language used in Philadelphia Enquirer articles about those cases—“it turned out African Americans had significantly more ape-related images ascribed to them than did whites,” said Goff. Worse: “Among African Americans, the more ape-related images you had in your press coverage, the more likely you were to be put to death.” 

Still thinking it's just harmless, 'politically incorrect banter'?  It might be politically incorrect, but it is NOT harmless.

Speaking of political correctness...For those that claim political correctness has gone too far..it's killing our country...blah blah blah, I say this:  demeaning, degrading, sexist and racist language is not merely being political incorrect, it's hurtful and damaging to the very fabric that makes up our nation of immigrants.  

There are many that came before this young woman that worked hard to leave a legacy of a more tolerant society, from both a feminist and racial equality standpoint.  Ashton's story should have been one of only triumph.  Instead I feel like many have been taken 30 years back in just a few shorts months.  This is not okay.  We are a society of changing demographics with evolving expectations for men and women alike.  The white knuckled hold onto the past by the loud minority who longs for old times simply because they weren't part of the demographic that felt the pain of discrimination must come to an end at some point.  Right?  For this great nation's sake I hope so.  

So now I will look to send this young lady the same message I sent to Susan Stanley, of the Detroit Lutheran Northwest team, when we met all those years ago after she watched me play the Charlotte Orioles.  You're not alone and you're awesome and we will, together, keep working each day to change the hearts and minds of those small people who, out of their fear of change, look to dim some of our brightest stars.  If I get a chance to meet her and cheer her on, I'll simply remind her to keep serving the game with dignity.  I look to do this simply to help heal the wound I can only partially understand.  After all, when in doubt, love (not hate) is always the answer. 

Charlie Vincent's Column:

Climb a Ladder

The lack of women coaching other women is at a critical stage.  There are many many reasons for this, some controllable and others not.  Women who want to be coaches, listen up, this is for you. 

Every once in a while for the past few years, a few articles or studies come out around the same time talking about the lack of women in coaching.  I read most of them, I don't read every single one.  But every time I do, I'm left with the same feeling.  It's a feeling that there's something missing in these statements of outrage.  

Although I agree in part with many of the suspected reasons for the decline, I feel that at least in part some of the onus has to be on us - women in coaching.  As a female coach that fought her way up the ladder for 21 years, I am passionate in my belief that we own some of the blame.  No one will ever be as passionate about this cause than those that it directly affects.  Since that is true, let's just take ownership of the problem so we can fix it. 

I can't tell you how many times I have looked at coaching transaction websites with utter dismay at a hire that was in no way or shape ready for a position.  I know, it sounds caddy, right?  It's not. This is not professional jealousy. The eye roll is all too often prompted by a female coach who seems to have gotten a job that's over her head.  Not just over her head, but WAY over her head, to the point that the end result of the hire is entirely predictable up to the number of years or months she'll hold the job.  It happens and it happens a lot...many times with good intentions of administrators who mandate that either the department or their head coach 'MUST' hire a women.  Cool, but the female coaching soroity would rather those well meaning administrators looked at qualifications first, gender second.   

Gone are the days of past where a young and perhaps promising coach can get thrown into a head coaching job after her playing career, pat her on the back and let her work her way into the vast knowledge this job requires. The job is too big, it's too visible.  It's a good problem.  That means people - and a lot of them - are paying attention to our women's teams.  But hey, it also means people are paying a lot of attention to our women's teams.  

This is not to say that administrators shouldn't aim to try to find the most qualified females to coach their female teams.  I think they should.  However, there are administrators that have actually admitted to reopening searches after only finding men who were qualified for their coaching opening instead of hiring one of those qualified men.  So what's the problem with that you ask... Why so down on females getting more of an opportunity? 

Two reasons...

#1: The scenerio has played out numerous times...coach gets in over their head, they fail, they leave coaching to never re-enter the profession - that school is scarred and is less likely to hire female coaches in the future (even highly qualified ones) and MOST IMPORTANTLY there is one less female building her skill to move forward in the sport.  Perhaps this coach would have been great, we'll never know.

#2: That female fails and confirms some people's suspicions that males are just 'better coaches'.  The female candidate pool has a harder time getting gigs in the future.  Female athletes who played for this very under qualified woman have a bad role model, they themselves don't think for a second about coaching as a career and the pool loses future female coaching candidates.

So why is it worse when a female gets in over her head and fails?  Because as it is well documented, there are fewer. If you count men's and women's teams in Division I, about a quarter of head coaching jobs are held by women.  That 40% number you keep hearing, well that's only talking about coaches of female teams.  Add the 100% of males coaching male teams and you drop the overall number from under half to under a quarter.  The ripples of failure from female coaches are felt more fiercely than if a male coach fails.  Unfair, perhaps, but it's reality.  A seemingly outdated notion, maybe, so let me expand.  There is an unspoken thought amoung many male coaches in the volleyball world, usually expressed with only an eye roll at the story of a woman that failed.  'Of course she failed, she wasn't as qualified or ready as so and so that applied for that job' is what that eyeroll seems to say.  Perhaps it doesn't lower the glass ceiling for other women in coaching, but it does make it a bit harder for us to gain credibility with our male counterparts upon first glance.    Since all coaches, regardless of gender, need assistant jobs to gain expereince and becuase male coaches hold the vast majority of head coaching jobs and therefore are doing the hiring, those eyerolls cannot and should not be ignored.  Credibility in coaching is important for men and women, and I'm asserting that for females the importance of credibility is amplified and harder to come by when time and time again young female coaches get in too far over their head.  Again, is that fair - NO.  Is it reality, as someone who has seen a behind the scenes look at it, I'm here to tell you it is.  Especially in the world of coaching.  

  

My point? To all aspiring coaches, male and female: be smart, toil, work your way up, take your time to rise to the top, read more, study harder, learn from people before you, be responsible for your own mentorship, become an artist of your craft.  There is no such thing as a super star fast riser...it takes hours, a lot of practice, and many failures to build the skill of a master coach. Learn the craft apprenticeship style so your failures aren't so large.  Then, if you ware so fortunate to work with young women, build them day by day into confident women who will not be afraid to stand up to her boss for the raise she deserves or intimidated by the overzealous guy who thinks he can interrupt her every thought.  Like I say to every young athlete I work with in gyms across this country, I need you to be awesome so that you can, in small and large moments, change the world.