Following the 1972 passage of Title IX, sports teams for high school girls proliferated, and tens of thousands of girls dove into interscholastic sports. By contrast, the shift in the gender composition of high school coaching was far less dramatic, as a disproportionate number of the new girls’ teams were coached by men.
This was not always the case. Readers of The High School will learn that during the first two decades of the 20th century, accompanying a surge of interscholastic sports competition for high school girls, women coaches were consistently at the helm.
And during a fifty-year time of doldrums for girls’ sports, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, men coaches were feted as campus and community heroes, while women physical educators labored in the shadows, coaching a range of intramural sports.
Over the past decade, and reflecting national patterns in the gender composition of high school coaching, 98% of boys’ teams at Salinas High School have been coached by men, and two-thirds of girls’ teams are also coached by men.
In a time of increased equity and respect for girls’ sports, what does the gender imbalance in sports leadership tell us?