Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404030183
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Leon Barmore and Rick Moody led teams into the Final Four of the women's NCAA Tournament here this weekend, and therein lies a delicate little problem for this growing sport.
Men coaching women's teams concerns both male and female coaches in the women's game, but not because anybody has a problem with a man leading a group of women.
"A coach is a coach," says Alabama player Betsy Harris.
"Except we haven't accepted that in the men's game yet, have we?" asked Debbie Ryan, the Virginia women's coach.
There's the rub. Men can coach men's or women's teams, but women can't cross over. Kentucky's Rick Pitino made Division I history when he hired a female assistant (Bernadette Locke-Mattox, a former Georgia player), and the word in Richmond is that Tennessee women's coach Pat Summitt was offered the men's coaching job in Knoxville before it was given to Kevin O'Neill.
"It's an extremely, extremely complicated issue, unique to itself," said Carol Alfano, the Virginia Tech women's coach. "There's no other profession I can think of where we have this dilemma.
"There's only one avenue for women. There are two avenues for men."
In 1992, the percentage of women coaching women's basketball teams is lower than in 1977-78 (when it was 79.4 percent, according to a 1992 Brooklyn College study), but higher than in 1987-88, when it dipped to a 14-year low of 58.5 percent.
Alfreeda Goff, an associate athletic director at Virginia Commonwealth, said that happened because schools began pumping more money into women's programs in the late 1980s, when Congress reasserted Title IX's jurisdiction over college athletic departments.
Until then, there had been little money in coaching women's sports. Goff, a former Pittsburgh women's basketball coach, started in the mid-1970s on a $2,000 salary and had to take a second job.
So when salaries for women's coaches went up . . .
"Administrators, for whatever reason, felt men have been doing this longer and they can get the job done," so more men were hired, Goff said.
Alfano said some women's advocacy groups want what amounts to "quota" hiring of women for women's teams.
That's not her position, she said.
Nor is it the position of Jim Bolla, the women's coach at Nevada-Las Vegas. The sentiment toward hiring women to coach women worries male head coaches enough that they have formed a subcommittee of the Women's Basketball Coaches' Association to address the issue.
It's notable that Ryan recently lost her assistant of eight years, Frank DiLeo, who became a restricted earnings coach with the Iowa men's team in part because of a lack of opportunity in the women's game.
Bolla said his subcommittee primarily wants two things: the WBCA to adopt a resolution urging schools to hire the best-qualified applicant for a job (an attempt to quell whatever "hire women" impulse may exist at a university); and to open the men's game to women coaches.
Then, there would be no tension about men coaching women, he said. The issue isn't the biggest facing women's basketball, but it's there.
"I said when I came here I wasn't going to talk about topics," Barmore said stiffly when asked There's only one avenue for women. There are two avenues for men. Carol Alfano Virginia Tech women's basketball coach about men coaching women. "This is a very, very competitive world. If you can coach, you can coach."
At the 1995 women's Final Four, Bolla said, influential people in the sport will gather to discuss what he called the "glass wall" for women between the men's and women's games.
"Up until this season, there really was no avenue to pursue that. Now, at least, we're addressing it," said Bolla, who employs two women as assistant coaches. "There should be more opportunities for women to get into the men's side."
More opportunity and, theoretically, better pay might attract more qualified women to coaching.
"We need to keep our best players, best potential coaches in the game," said Lin Dunn, the Purdue women's coach. "They're our role models. We need to be sensitive to women coaching women."
Goff echoed Dunn's thoughts about women coaches as leadership figures. She said current players must be groomed and given the chance to become coaches at a salary competitive with what they could earn in business.
If women players don't pursue coaching careers - and if the money available continues to increase - more and more men may be hired to coach women's teams, as happened in the late 1980s.
Goff thinks there is more to be done than just trying to open the men's game to women. Current female coaches and administrators, she said, need to do a better job of "nurturing" athletes to stick with the game, and of networking to get them jobs.
Several women's basketball observers said the development of the game in the past few years is producing women better-qualified for coaching jobs. Alfano said if women's salaries rise, it will encourage women who want to coach and raise families to consider coaching.
Ryan and Alfano praised the contributions men coaches have made in women's basketball. Barmore, for example, is the women's all-time leader in winning percentage (.860, 337-55).
Goff has the same sentiments toward male coaches, but, after all, it is women's basketball.
"We've got to take care of our own," she said. "We're starting to turn the corner, but we've got to continue to do it."
by CNB