SwimSwam welcomes reader submissions about all topics aquatic, and if it’s well-written and well-thought, we might just post it under our “Shouts from the Stands” series. We don’t necessarily endorse the content of the Shouts from the Stands posts, and the opinions remain those of their authors. If you have thoughts to share, please [email protected].
This “Shouts from the Stands” submission comes from Toni Armstrong:
I was a coach for USA Swimming for over 7 years and spent one year coaching college. I personally have felt the struggle of being a female coach in a male dominated career. I have been passed on for promotions for less qualified candidates based on my gender and marital status. I’ve even heard fellow coaches say things like “female coaches just want to be mommies” and “females cannot succeed without males to push them and keep them accountable.” It was negative experiences like these that inspired me to switch careers to Leadership Development.
My most recent employment was for The Stanford Leadership Institute at Stanford University where my husband was also employed as the assistant Men’s Swim Coach. During my time in California, I was part of the Stanford Swimming family and got a front row seat to the path that Stanford Women’s Swimming was forging from a social and professional perspective. I went to their home meets, I saw their practices, I chatted with the coaches about leadership development theories, and the swimmers became family members—especially the ones who babysat my son. I most importantly got to witness the developmental side of the program. Not the national titles or the Olympic medals, but the tears, the tough decisions, the group dynamic struggles, the learning and the growth. I got a front row seat to the path that Stanford Women’s Swimming was forging and I am not surprised by their success over the past five years. I am inspired by their story; they are an example of doing gender equality right, which I believe contributes to their high levels of success.
Stanford Women’s Swimming just accomplished their most successful season to date. They claimed this year’s D1 National Championship Title along with an undefeated season, coach of the year award, academic all American status, and a handful of American Records. Last year, they birthed two new Olympians and won 8 Gold, 5 Silver, and 1 Bronze Olympic medals. Their recent resurgence of success is exciting to swim fans around the country, but should be exciting to non-swim fans as well. Their story from the past five years under Head Coach Greg Meehan and Associate Head Coach Tracy Slusser matters to the broader feminist movement and gains momentum with each person who knows it. Here are five reasons why Feminists should be excited about Stanford Women’s Swimming.
1. Associate Head Coach Slusser was Hired While 6 Months Pregnant
When Head Coach Greg Meehan was hired at Stanford in 2012, he knew Tracy Slusser was the coach to hire as his assistant. Slusser’s career before Stanford included positions at Arizona and Texas A&M, as well as a successful collegiate swimming career at Purdue University where she competed in The Division One NCAA. Meehan attempted to partner with Slusser earlier in their careers, and her pregnancy didn’t stop him from trying again.
In a male dominated career, female coaches are uncommon—and even more rare in Division 1 collegiate women’s swimming programs representing only 18.8% of the Head Coaches and 38% of the Associate Head Coaches. Assistant coaches are more even at 42% female, but it is unknown how many of those coaches are considered volunteers and unpaid. Of this years top 10 performing women’s swimming programs, only 24% of those coaches are female; with no more than 11 out of 15 receiving payment for their employment.
Female swim coaches are often pigeonholed into age group (12 years and younger) coaching and expected to dial back their careers once they reach motherhood. Slusser coaching success over the past five years demonstrates why women should not be excluded from the opportunity to advance their career while simultaneously starting a family.
2. Slusser Proves that Motherhood and Career Success are not Mutually Exclusive
During Slusser’s first five years at Stanford, she gave birth to both of her children. Motherhood wasn’t a barrier to her career, but was part of the journey to success. She was promoted to Associate Head Coach after her second season—yes, the same years as the pregnancy and birth of her first child.
Slusser coaches in her own style and doesn’t try to overly masculinize her demeanor to fit into the male coaching stereotype (as many female coaches are pressured into from both their superiors and athletes). She doesn’t hide her role as mother or separate family and career; she embraces both of them as symbiotic pieces to her success. This is evident at the most elementary level through her coaching attire, which is professional yet feminine. Slusser proves that motherhood and femininity can be strong and successful in high achieving athletics.
3. Mentoring Female Coaches is the Norm
Meehan has mentored two female volunteer coaches at Stanford who went on to coach in powerhouse conferences. April Woo, who previously swam for Meehan at Pacific, is currently the assistant women’s swim coach at University of Notre Dame, and Jordan Wolfrum is currently the assistant women’s swim coach at Ohio State University. The mentorship both Woo and Wolfrum experienced at Stanford spring boarded their careers.
In 2015, Slusser spoke at the Women in Coaching Clinic whose mission is “to educate and empower coaches through developing support networks and facilitating dialogue.” Both Meehan and Slusser believe in the importance of female coaches and are actively involved in decreasing the gender gap in high-level athletics.
4. Team Culture of Strong and Independent Women
Stanford’s female swimmers pursue a slew of diverse majors and represent the growing percentages of females in male dominated careers including engineering, political science, and computer science. Ten out of the fourteen currently declared majors are STEM focused. Meehan and Slusser mentor athletes to know that there are no limits both in and out of the pool and that high-level athletics and high-level academics can be achieved simultaneously. Their swimmers are often given activities to reflect on personal strengths and are encouraged to discuss those assets with their teammates. Meehan and Slusser encourage athletes to know and own their assets, while supporting and respecting one another’s abilities. They have created a culture where competition is an opportunity to support one another’s growth, to forge new paths, and to break through superficial barriers, where struggle, emotions, and passion are symbols of strength regardless of your gender.
5. Meehan Demonstrates that Family and Work Balance is not Gender Specific
Feminism at it’s core is about gender equality. Women, men, and transgendered people strive for equal opportunities and respect in all of life’s roles inside and outside the home. Balance between career and family is a common struggle among all parents regardless of their gender. Claiming that gender inequality in high-level athletics is due to struggles with family work balance also suggests that male colleagues don’t value family. Stanford Women’s Swimming, and Stanford Athletics as a whole, is a very family friendly workplace. Seeing Slusser or Meehan’s children at the pool is a common occurrence—in fact their children and spouses were all in attendance at this year NCAA D1 Championships. Head Coach Meehan sets the tone on deck and in the office as welcoming. Both Meehan and Slusser’s families are involved in the team, which is a benefit to both their careers as coaches and as parents. They are tremendous role models to the women they coach, and demonstrate daily that both men and women can, and do, balance work and family.
My time at Stanford and around the Women’s Swimming and Diving Program makes me optimistic for the future of women and coaching. I hope that this story will educate men on the power of a gender balanced program as well as remind them that women are more than a ticking time bomb during their child bearing years. I also hope that it will inspire female coaches everywhere to stay in high-level athletics because being female and/or feminine is an asset. The glass ceiling has been broken; let’s make these five methods the norm.
Terri McKeever and Kristen Cunnane won a national title together. Two women leading a women’s program while Kristen had a baby. No men on the swimming staff. There’s your article for feminists to be excited about.
Why can’t they be excited about both?
Because Stanford’s win isn’t much different than other coaching staffs. You have a male head coach and a female assistant or assoc head coach.
I guess I didn’t realize feminists were anti-male. I was under the impression that it was about gender equality. As in this article which describes working men finding family balance, and working females having equal opportunities. My appologies.
And… she resigned after the birth of her second child because of the family/work balance. McKeever doesn’t have children.
https://swimswam.com/kristen-cunnane-cal-womens-associate-head-coach-resigns/
Irrelevant that she resigned after having a second baby. She still won a national title as a coach on the staff. Tracy could have another child and resign, does that negate anything Stanford accomplished this year?
Reading the comments and looking at the up and down votes; I guess I don’t understand, today still, the notable resistance to the very idea of feminism? Boiled down to its simplest core – to establish equal opportunities for women in education, employment, politics and governance, and society (and really, life). This should be neither a liberal nor a conservative ideology. It’s a word, often misused, to stand for nothing more than simple, basic, human decency and fairness.
A “non-feminist”? What is that?
Egalitarism would be better then.
Because “feminism” presupposes that there are NOT equal opportunities. It assumes that any discrepancies in numbers are caused by discrimination rather than self-selection. Equal opportunity never was meant to guarantee, or imply, equal outcome. If (making numbers up here) 8 out of 10 applicants for a full time coaching position are men, then it stands to reason roughly that same percentage will reflect the numbers of the work force. As a female, if I had been willing to put in the hours and make the sacrifice in family time that is required to rise through the coaching ranks at either a club or college level, I could have and would have chosen to do so, and there is no doubt… Read more »
I have to say I completely agree with you. Equal opportunity does not mean equal representation and we can’t force women into jobs if they want to do other things. I have been on a number of teams with male head coaches and they treat the assistant females and females in general incredibly well. No one is being put down. Stop trying to force women to do things they don’t want to do on the basis of equal representation in a profession. The equal opportunity is there, but that doesn’t mean the desire of women to have that job is. Plus, jobs should be based on merit, not gender, age, or race. I want someone coaching me who knows what… Read more »
Both you and SWIMMOMFL are missing a big part of this article. If men are encouraged to become more involved with their families, then women won’t have as much of a burden regarding children and will have the flexibility to stay in coaching. Our society still doesn’t find it acceptable for a man to take on primary (or even equal) child rearing duties.
I know a bunch of men who have the primary child care responsibilities and the less demanding job. You are again assuming that some silent mass of females want to have children and then take a secondary role in raising them but are unable to do so. Again, who stays home, who works full time, who has the higher profile job — these are all individual (or couple) choices. There is NOTHING in our world today stopping women from working and men from staying home. And I find it extremely offensive that you would call raising children a burden, or imply that someone who chooses to forego an intense career to do so is somehow suffering or being unfairly burdened.… Read more »
Well! If I’d just read your comment before posting my own, I could have save a couple of minutes! Bravo! Well said.
But, DMSWIM, “men” taking on more child-rearing is YOUR agenda. Why do you want to try to force YOUR values onto others? And, when “the numbers” don’t result in some idealized proportion along gender (and, by extension, I assume you’d also want to see proportionality along all other ‘group identity’ lines – just to maintain intellectual consistency?) lines, you trace it back to some straw-man, overpowering lager societal pressures? Why don’t you just focus on the “burdens” of child-rearing in YOUR situation, and leave others to determine where they draw the lines for themselves?
Raising children is a burden ?
Man tell that to kip and mona lisa harding a couple from montgomerry who have 10 kids and sent 6 to college by the age of 12. They take it joyfully. Their house is like one big dance party with the lonely only kids coming over to have some fun ?
Okay so all we need to do is get more African Americans to apply for membership in the KKK then the organization will become fully-integrated. But its not discrimination when they are turned down for membership? Then what is it?
Wow, TAA. I believe the term is “red herring.”
It may not be binary, black or white. Much of the feminism view of unequal opportunities IS based on decades of lack of opportunity for females in leadership roles, voting, service in the military, equal pay for equal work, politics, etc. So the author may have a point, and you may have a point also. Win-win.
I don’t understand the point of this article. Seems irrelevant to me.
Identity politics. It’s all about the numbers . . . . I wonder why the article doesn’t address minority coaching numbers? Seems like the profession is even more discriminatory against minority coaches.
How many minority swimmers do you even see in USA and Canada? Why is this an issue in only predominantly white countries? You never here countries in Asia and Africa complaining about to many black or Asian people in a certain profession
Marx – are you making rhetorical questions, or do you really want answers?
Marxism you don’t hear of that in predominantly white countries because only whites don’t have a homeland.
Black African homeland Africa
Asians homeland Asia
Arabs homeland Arabia
Turkick peoples homeland Turkey although they,ve extended their presence past Turkey into central Asia. Eg Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc
Jewish homeland israel
white European homeland. Did I hear you say Europe? Europe is hardly white these days. Western Europe at least. So there,s no white homeland per say. Unless Europeans decide to establish “their” own homeland in Greenland. I say “their” because i,m black.
I meant “the reason” not marxism in the first sentence
Well yes you would say Europe would be the White homeland. Not as you say anymore, but that is for poor immigration policies that some countries (UK, France perhaps) realize are not working and look to reverse
Sometimes the numbers actually tell you something deeper. The sport has historically been discriminatory towards minorities. Publicly funded pools built in all white communities with local ordinances prohibiting minority access over decades led to the current status of 70% of blacks, 60% of Hispanics/Asians unable to swim. Result is seen at conference and NCAAs with almost no minority representation except international student athletes. Effect trickles up with few minority swim coaches. Structural, institutional, imbued problem is confirmed by larger swim community with multiple down votes every time topic is broached on Swimswam.
Similar argument can be applied to under-representation of women coaches. Our country doesn’t exactly have a clean record with regards to female empowerment and equal access to opportunity.… Read more »
I agree with that analysis but I,ve never really understood the term minority in the non white context as if you look at the global population whites are a minority. Actually they,ve always been a minority and their percentage of the global population is even smaller now than 100 years ago. They also inhabit the smallest continent, Europe which kids of limits their population size.
*kinds of limits*
So there always minorities within minorities. Like the amish are white and a minority. Red heads are white and they are a minority. Take the whole American continent ( north,central and south ) and Hispanics (spanish speakers) are a majority. There are white hispanics as Hispanic is not a race. In fact a white person in the US who has no past Hispanic background can be Hispanic if he/she just speaks Spanish. Hispanic is all about spanish speaking culture and language.
Didn’t Stanford women swim team have two female head coaches? Lea Maurer and Claudia Kolb (a long time ago).
The weirdest sentence in this verbose article is ” Slusser coaches in her own style and doesn’t try to overly masculinize her demeanor to fit into the male coaching stereotype (as many female coaches are pressured into from both their superiors and athletes).
Really? I don’t think a women’s coach is going to try to “overmasculinize” herself because she’s “pressured.”
Stanford had a great meet because they have great talented swimmers and a a very good coaching staff.
Enough said.
Agree. Could’ve we had such discussion if there were no Katie Ledecky and Simone Manuel on the team? I think in order to understand better the Tracy Slusser’s role and contribution we have to listen to the opinions of these two women. We’ve read about coach Meehan’s desire to keep Tracy Slusser on coaching staff regardless the fact that for some period of time she couldn’t devote herself for 100% to this job. He believed that in long run her contribution would be valuable to the plans he had. But what about swimmers at particular seasons. What would they prefer?
Are we actually making progress? Have we added more women as head coaches? Why is it when you look on deck at NCAAS you see quite a few women assistants in their 20’s, a handful in their 30’s, and few in their 40’s and above. What happens to all of those women in their 20’s? Why aren’t we retaining them? Where are they going? If it is to raise a family, why can’t they do it and coach? What environment and culture needs to be established in college swimming to keep women around doing a GREAT job coaching and still feel like they can do a GREAT job as a mom, not just make it work?
Why do we assume that the lack of women at certain levels is because of institutional discrimination or some sort of bad environment? Why isn’t it simply the choice of the women — you CANNOT be all things to all people. Some women choose to be a certain kind of mother. Some women choose to have a career. Some choose to try and be both a mother and a career woman, and try to split the difference. Not everything boils down to some nefarious scenario. Sometimes, it actually is personal choice.
I think part of the point of the article was bringing to light the fact that society still sees women as having the primary caretaker role. If we can create a society where it’s acceptable for men to take time off to spend with their children, I think hiring would even out. If a female coach has a husband who has a flexible work schedule and can help care for their children, she may stay in coaching longer.
I’m not sure who down-voted you, DMSWIM, but you nailed it – that society still sees women as the primary caretaker. Why do these antiquated gender roles continued to be perpetuated? We need to create a culture of equal expectations – that we would equally expect a man to cut back from his career as we would a woman. That we would equally expect a woman to continue working full time as a man. I understand that every family’s needs are different, in terms of salaries, schedules, etc., and at the end of the day it’s up to the family to decide what is best for them, but a woman should not be expected to be the primary caretaker solely… Read more »
If everyone just thought the same way, all problems would go away. Why can’t everyone just think the same as ALLI? I do have to give you kudos, though, for one of your initial assumptions being that at least ONE parent caretaking the children in the early years is important. However, I’m not sure that “society” exerts as much influence on an individual couple’s choices when it comes to deciding on work vs. child-rearing as the social activist mindset presumes. I’m not sure that couples decide things based solely on traditional roles – but, if they do, isn’t that their right? You seem to decry that “society still sees women as the primary caretaker” and want to devalue individual couples’… Read more »
“We need to create a culture …” Who are “we”? You recognize, I hope, that regardless the “culture we create” there are and still will be biological differences between woman and man that explain different emotional reaction and different type of care they are capable to provide. The law recognizes women’s right to be a primary caretaker. But it is of course up to each family to decide how to share responsibilities. The new born doesn’t need father and not only because he is not capable of breastfeeding. Are children in the family an obstacle for career oriented family? Yes. For both man and woman and again it is up to them to decide how to proceed. Children are a… Read more »
This is a very good read. Kudos, Toni.
Let us also not forget how Stanford handled misbehavior by a member of the men’s team. Stanford’s response did a good job showing they will shut down sexual assault perpetrators.
I would like to know what Tracy’s schedule is like on a weekly basis. Do her and Greg work out a schedule where they trade off workouts to let the other spend time with family? Is there meets that either dont attend or training trips?