1/18/2011 - More Females Join Coaching Ranks
Two of the more interesting storylines thus far this girls basketball season has been the early fine play of Newton and Lenape Valley.
Newton is off to a 6-5 start with a 4-1 record in the Freedom Division, while Lenape Valley is 6-4 overall with a 3-2 mark in Freedom play.
Both the Braves and Pats should be commended for their good start, but what strikes me about the two clubs are the coaches---Bridget Jones at Newton and Kat Boger at Lenape Valley.
For old time Sussex County girls hoops fans the duo made a name for themselves as players in the old Sussex County Interscholastic League with Newton and Hopatcong, respectively.
Jones was Bridget Brennan then, a 1,000-point scorer who went onto to a Hall-of-Fame career at William Paterson University. Boger was Kat McPhail back in her playing days and she was key member of the Chiefs’ squad which won the SCIL Festival in 2000.
Boger, who is a few years younger than Jones, also went onto an outstanding career at William Paterson where she was a 1,000-point scorer for coach Erin Monaghan, who coached both players.
Ok, enough of this is your lives Bridget Jones and Kat Boger.
The point of the blog is that after Title IX was passed 35 years ago, we still have a shortage of female coaches, but I firmly believe that both Jones and Boger are products of the federal mandate that leveled the playing field as far as funding for sports is concerned.
Currently in girls hoops there are four female head coaches and numerous female assistants around the area. Joining Jones and Boger are Boger’s old running mate at Hopatcong, Jamie Douglas, who is the head coach at her alma mater, and Jill Masker at North Warren, who also returned home to coach her old high school.
In fact, all four coaches were outstanding players during their high school days and were all 1,000-point scorers.
To the best of my memory, that is most female head coaches our area has seen in my 20-plus years of covering girls hoops in the area, which is a great step.
When I started in the business, the only female head coaches were Bev Keur at High Point and Hall-of-Famer Greta Sencevicky at Wallkill Valley, the Godmother of female hoops coaches in the area.
The big-name girls hoops coaches back then are the same ones today, oddly enough, in the legend Fred Geffken at Sparta and Jim O’Connor at Jefferson. But most of the girls hoops coaches were men, including Bob Wheeler at Hopatcong Pat O’Donahue at Newton, John Hapes at Lenape Valley, Phil Hardin at Vernon, Andy Meyers, who is back for a second run at Kittatinny, and if my memory serves me right, Jim Costello at Pope John.
Throughout the years a couple of female coaches had nice runs, including Bonnie Lewis at Pope John, who won 100 games in five years for Pope John in the mid-1990s and led the Lions to their only appearance in a state final and Liz Cleary at Vernon, who coached for a decade-plus leading the Vikings to the North 1, Group 4 semifinals in 2003 as a low seed.
But other than Lewis and Cleary, female coaches have had short tenures. Betty Schanstra had some real nice teams when she took over Meyers at Kittatinny, but she only coached for about four seasons before Joe Cleary took over.
With all the advances female athletics have made since Title IX you would think there would be more female coaches. The number has grown, but not to the point of participation levels in female sports, which has exploded.
I have a couple of theories which are completely my own opinion. First, there is still an “Old Boy” network when it comes to athletics. Some schools would rather hire a male over a female in non-gender sports such as soccer and hoops.
These administrators have no trouble hiring a woman for field hockey and cheerleading because those are considered “female” sports. These closed-minded individuals would never make their feelings public for the fear, and rightfully so, of the public backlash.
But I have been around long enough to know it still exists. It just makes no sense to me to cut your hiring pool in half if you exclude women.
My second theory is that many women after awhile want to start families and family concerns are very time consuming and something has to give and coaching is one of them.
Although, more and more, you see female coaches balancing both and doing it very successfully. A perfect example is Jones, who is married to Wallkill Valley’s outstanding football coach Daryl Jones.
The couple have publicly stated numerous times that they share duties at home and when one coach is in season the other picks up the slack. I also think it helps that both come from coaching families and knew the rigors of coaching when they got together.
If one of the spouses is not sports-oriented, that could be a recipe for disaster. But as the Jones family has shown, it can be done.
So we have made a lot of progress, but with the wealth of basketball talent this county has produced over the years as a byproduct of Title IX I think we will see more female coaches join the ranks.
Just look at Jones’ staff. She has two former 1,000-point scorers in Shannon McCarney of Jefferson and former Newton star Whitney Dugan on the bench. Lauren Boyle, now Lauren Dexter, is a volunteer assistant at her alma mater High Point and Aimee Stormes is back at High Point, too, as a coach.
At Jefferson, Nancy Harris has been a long-term fixture for the Falcons and was a fine player herself back in the day when she was Nancy Zminglhaus playing for the late, great Bob Elder. Former Falcons sharpshooter Michelle Lopez is also on Jim O’Connor’s staff and the list goes.
As a guy who seen great, positive change in girls hoops the last 20-plus years, the last thing I think we lag in is more female head coaches. But I have a feeling we are on the right track.
HUNTERDON/WARREN/SUSSEX—State power Phillipsburg nipped Kittatinny to win the Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex Wrestling Tournament last weekend, but there was a catch---High Point, the consensus No. 1 team in the state, did not compete.
Here is a quick primer on why. High Point originally backed out of the tourney due to budget concerns in all sports last year. But the Wildcats rejoined the tourney in September, catching a lot of the High Point coaches off guard, to say the least.
The wrestling team, which won the H/W/S last year had made plans to wrestle Shore conference power Southern at Rutgers that same weekend. Long story short, the Wildcats received a waiver and did not compete at the H/W/S.
Now here is something to think about. I was talking to our Mugs Media wrestling gurus, Mike Weilamann and Nick DeGennaro and I asked them this question---If you took the tourney champs and squared them off with High Point in a dual match, who would win?
After thinking about it and going through the matchups, they both felt that High Point would win a close one and I agree. But it is something to think about all of you wrestling junkies out there and you know who you are.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
|
