For the second year in a row — eighth in the past 10 years — none of the women’s Final Four head coaches will be women of color.
It shouldn’t come as a shock, of the 209 head coaching positions currently filled by women at the Division I level in college basketball, only 25% of them are occupied by women of color. Taking an even wider view of the coaching landscape, women of color make up 16% of the head coaching positions in all of Division I women’s basketball.
So why is there such an overwhelming lack of diversity in the game’s top coaching positions? At the core, it’s simply a lack of opportunity.
“People are looking for a fit for their program and every place is different, the only thing I ask is just an opportunity of open-mindedness,” said Texas A&M associate head coach Kelly Bond-White. “At least let that person at the table to present themselves. Then if it’s not a fit then it’s not a fit, but don’t limit them off of race or gender.”
That opportunity starts at the top, with athletic directors ensuring that when searching for the next head coach of their women’s basketball program that not all of the candidates look the same. Unfortunately, that’s not always at the forefront when making these decisions.
Take the recently vacated head coaching position at Tennessee. Knoxville News Sentinel published an article listing the top 15 candidates for the job. Only one woman of color, Kara Lawson, made the list, and is listed as a “wild card” option. Of course this has no bearing on who Tennessee will ultimately interview and hire, but it’s a clear indication that women of color are not thought of as frequently when looking for a head coach.
Sometimes I do feel like as a woman of color you do have to do everything a lot harder.
Coach Bond-White attributes the lack of diversity to a flavor of the month mentality in college basketball.
“Things happen in cycles in our game,” Bond-White said. “Sometimes it’s the young male recruiter that’s appealing. Sometimes it’s the black female that’s an appealing hire. Unfortunately right now is not the cycle for [women of color]. People are going for the successful mid-major coaches right now.”
Mid-major coaches might be the current trend — Missouri State head coach Kellie Harper is considered a candidate for the Tennessee job — but when will considering more women minorities for these positions, regardless of where they’re coaching, become commonplace?
Since 2008, when the NCAA began tracking demographics of its athletic departments as well as student-athletes, the number of women of color in head coaching positions has not seen a significant rise over the 10 years of data. The total number of non-white female coaches in 2008 was 45, and while it’s risen to 59, when you see that 74% of all Division I women’s basketball coaches are white it’s a bit jarring.
Getting your foot in the door isn’t enough though. One opportunity at a head coaching position doesn’t always guarantee that more chances will follow for women. Those chances are even lower if you’re not winning.
Former Indiana women’s basketball coach Felisha Legette-Jack is a perfect example of that situation. Legette-Jack was fired in 2012 by Indiana after six years as the head coach where she finished with an 87-100 record. Her last three seasons the team failed to finish with winning records, but it was finding another job that was far too challenging. Legette-Jack couldn’t even get an interview as a volunteer assistant coach on anyone’s bench.
Conversely, when former Ole Miss women’s basketball coach Matthew Insell was fired in 2018, he found an assistant coaching job two months after he was let go.
“Sometimes I do feel like as a woman of color you do have to do everything a lot harder,” said Notre Dame associate head coach Niele Ivey. “It’s getting second chances. Sometimes women of color don’t get a second opportunity, and I think that men get second chances all the time.”
It’s about more than just giving women of color the opportunity to be in leadership positions, it extends beyond basketball. In a sport where nearly 70% of its student-athletes are minorities, it’s important that they can see themselves in the coaches and leaders that they look up to.
“We all want to be around people who are good role models and that look like us,” said Missouri State assistant coach Jessica Jackson. “It’s important to model and set an example of what being a woman is to these young ladies.”
While the pressure of winning now is a feeling all coaches experience in a new position, that pressure is magnified for women of color because there are so few of them given the opportunity to lead. South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley has spoken on this several times over, each time with the same message.
"“Any time you’re in this profession as an African-American woman you have to be successful out the gate,” said Staley at a press conference prior to last season’s Sweet Sixteen matchup against Buffalo. “If you’re not successful, you have to go back.”"
Staley has been at South Carolina since 2008 and has seen tremendous success throughout her tenure. She became just the second African-American coach to win a national title in 2017, and while she is a unique case of not having to go through the ranks of becoming an assistant first before landing the head coaching gig, that is often the path that most women of color have to take.
In fact, of the 1,056 total assistant coaches at the Division I level in women’s basketball, the most represented group is women of color — specifically African-American women — accounting for a combined 36% of the population.
That number has only increased over the years, and while on paper it might look like a positive sign, that eventually those assistant and associate head coaches will get the chance to move up the ladder, it’s a slow charge to that goal.
“You hope that’s the trend and trajectory, but that’s never a given,” said Stanford assistant head coach Tempie Brown. “But you need people like Tara [VanDerveer] to give women a chance. [Those opportunities] don’t just appear, at least women don’t just get jobs out of nowhere. You just have to have people with the conviction and purpose to hire women in our game to go up the ranks.”
It’s not that none of these assistant coaches are being offered that next step, but because of what they’ve seen happen to coaches like Legette-Jack there’s a more measured approach in taking that leap.
For a coach like Bond-White, who has been offered head coaching positions in the past, she knows that if she’s going to take that jump it has to be the perfect fit.
“You don’t always get multiple chances, so when you take that step you want to be successful with it,” said Bond-White. “What you’re seeing now is people having opportunities like myself, but they’re really patient. Sometimes our counterparts just want that opportunity, and they’re going to go grab it whether it’s a good opportunity or not and try to make the most of it.”
So what needs to change?
It can’t just be waiting around until hiring more minorites is the new trend. Some of the top coaches in women’s college basketball have long been advocates for more diversity at the top, but they can’t be the only ones. There has been a constant conversation about the decreasing number of women coaching in women’s sports, and while that is equally as important, the same fervor needs to be displayed in conversations surrounding the lack of women of color in those same roles.
Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw who has an all-female coaching staff, two of which happen to African-American women, has been one of the loudest voices for female representation in every way. Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer has also been very outspoken in the need for more diversity.
Dawn Staley speaks on the matter almost every press conference she’s at. Legette-Jack, now the head coach at Buffalo, has given powerful speeches about the topic on several occasions. All of these women have spent their careers, literal decades, pushing for more diversity and little improvement has been made.
“[We need] more people knowing that there is a lack of diversity in head coaching positions,” Ivey said. “[Coach McGraw] knows that, it’s something that is important to her and she brings awareness to it. These athletic directors are the ones making the decisions, and they need to know that we’re just as capable.”
Of the 356 athletic directors at the Division I level only 11% of them are women. Three percent are women of color. Trying to get that foot in the door as a head coach becomes difficult when nearly 90% of the people making the final decision have historically hired white people.
It starts here, and it’s more than just hiring women as athletic directors, it’s hiring women of color in these positions as well because true diversity goes beyond just gender.