Riding Out the Rough Waters

After the resignation of Harvard women's swim coach Stephanie Walsh last year, members of the team gathered in their captain's dormitory room to discuss those qualities they felt important in their future coach. One former swimmer remembers several girls expressing interest in training under a male coach. They believed from their pre-collegiate experience, which consisted of all male coaching, they "could simply swim better for a man."

If this attitude is as commonly held as this incident indicates, can there really be a place for women on the coaching scene? Is there an inherent quality in a man that makes him more desirable and successful as a coach?

Many people believe so. "I really believe a man is better at getting that last ounce out of national swimmers," said one woman, responsible for the younger members of the team she co-coaches with her husband.

Swimming has traditionally been a man's world. A brief glance at the roster of the 147 teams attending senior national championships last year reveals not a single woman who holds the sole head coaching position for a club team. The number of participants, however, is roughly equivalent between the sexes.

Women currently within the coaching profession, such as Karen Moe Thorton, women's swim coach at the University of California at Berkeley, point to the fact that coaching opportunities for women really only opened up with the advent of scholarships at the collegiate level less than 15 years ago. Previously, Thornton believes a certain stigma was attached to the title "female athlete" and women were often channeled into instructor positions.

"Female swimmers at the age group and national level only have contact with male coaches," says Vicki Hays. Harvard women's swim coach. She stresses the need for women swimmers "to have role models to look at and think, 'she's nice, did well and is not receiving rewards for it.'"

But many women coaches feel the problem lies not in the lack of opportunities or role models but in the strange hours, mentally exhausting demands and high rate of divorce that appear inherent in the sport.

"It's impossible for family life and the divorce rate is incredible. The sport itself won't change. It's going to take a different type of woman to succeed," says Claudia Kolb-Thomas, who left the national championship Stanford team last year to devote more time to her family.

"We wanted to hire a woman, but there was not one qualified female with head coaching experience who applied," said Skip Kenney, men's swimming coach at Stanford, regarding the position left open by Kolb-Thomas.

Kenney believes one must go back to the club level to find the seeds of the current situation. "AAU coaches are hired by parents. Parents often feel their children are surrounded by female instructors and would like to have more male dominance in their child's life."

Diane Campbell, assistant coach at Ladora Oaks Aquatic Club, has only found Kenny's analysis too true. She remembers attending her first board meeting as head coach, only to hear the club president, in need of a meet director, ask for "either one man or two women."

The situation has a self-perpetuating appearance, when many collegiate male coaches cite the lack of AAU coaching experience as the reason for the women losing out on jobs.

One must look back to the early sixties and the coaching of Mary Kelly at the Vesper Boat Club to find a prestigious women's club coach at the national level. At that time, Kelly's all-female team captured the women's national championship in 1960-61 and the combined mens and womens title in 1966.

What is unique about Kelly girls is that last year's roster of Ivy League women coaches reads like a Who's Who of Vesper alumni. Kathy Laurel at Penn. Eve Atkinson at Yale, Janey Barkmen at Princeton, and Harvard's Walsh all swam under Kelly.

"No one was more amazed than I that so many went on to coach," says Kelly. Kelly disclaims any role in the outcome which she feels had to do more with "time and circumstance than anything else."

Her former swimmers, however, recall Kelly as a powerful influence in their decision to continue coaching. "I have a great deal of respect for her and her ability to give everyone a little reinforcement," says Tyler.

That swimming continues to be a man's world is also evident. One female coach recalls being one of very few women present at the World Coaching Clinic and listening to a lecture on the role of the coach as a "father figure." Another young woman remembers sitting at a national meet in a row of coaches only to have the server of refreshments pass over her, mistakenly believing she was a wife or mother. Incidents like this commonly lead to the feeling of being "definitely misplaced," says Thornton.

Thornton adds. "The situation should change as younger women have more opportunities to get major jobs. Already many athletic teams prefer to hire women," adds Thorton.

Others are not so optimistic. Barkemen points to the increasing consolidation of men's and women's teams under male coaches, the increasing return of male coaches as women's collegiate swimming acquires a new intensity, and to the loss of other female coaches such as Kolb-Thomas. Pokey Richardson of the University of Southern California, and Susie Atwood, formerly at Ohio State.

Among the coaches themselves there is little doubt as to a woman's ability to coach and coach well--if she wants to badly enough. Indeed, Dick Jochums, coach of the University of Arizona men's team, says. "The best coach I ever had was a woman," referring to his early swimming years under Laura Kay Bookstaver.

The future of women coaches is uncertain. That they are capable is continuously demonstrated by those few women with both the talent and the determination to go against the flow. Barriers in terms of attitude and tradition remain to be overcome but, in Jochum's words, the bottom line is still. "When you start to win, people will flock to you, whether they like you or hate you, man or woman."

Because swimmers are in it to win