Following USA Swimming’s announcement last week that Cal’s Dave Durden and Stanford’s Greg Meehan would serve as the 2020 US Olympic Team head coaches, continuing the States’ trend of rarely placing a woman in either role, the question naturally arose: should a woman have been appointed, and who might be the next woman in line to land the prestigious gig?
Of the 12 coaches who met qualifying criteria to be named the Olympic head coach for 2020, two are female: Texas’ Carol Capitani and Cal’s Teri McKeever. Among other more administrative and interpersonal criteria, to qualify for the head Olympic job, an individual needed to have served as head coach at one of the following meets: 2014 Pan Pacs, 2015 Worlds, 2015 World University Games, 2015 Pan American Games, 2016 Olympic Games, 2017 World Championships, 2017 World University Games, or 2018 Pan Pacs.
Anyone not selected as head coach remains eligible to be appointed as an assistant, likely pending the outcome of the 2020 Olympic Trials.
In conjunction with USA Swimming naming an all-male staff for the 2017 FINA World Championships, the assertions of inequality are understandable; but this feels likes a top-of-the-ladder symptom of a system-wide problem. This imbalance, as explained by Capitani, is created by a lack of “backfill in the pipeline.”
Capitani lamented the intricacy of the situation when SwimSwam spoke with her in 2017.
“I wish I had a great answer – it’s complicated and it’s messy,” she said. “There aren’t as many female coaches there, so you can’t put all of us in roles over people that have maybe put more people on a team. But I think it’s equivocally even – I didn’t put anybody on an Olympic team [in 2016] so I wasn’t upset that I wasn’t a coach.”
“I do think there is a systemic inequality – I wish I was smart enough to fix it,” she continued. “I do think there’s inequality, but there’s not enough backfill in the pipeline at this moment, I don’t think, or maybe the opportunities are less.”
Essentially, the inequality begins early-on in swim coaching but most obviously manifests in high-level appointments. The bottle-neck begins well before ‘US Olympic Team head coach,’ arguably the most prestigious swimming appointment in the world, and instead needs to be attacked much earlier in the hiring tree. Specifically, our research shows that there’s a growing number of top-25 NCAA Division I ‘associate head coaches’ that are women, but that these roles aren’t translating into head coaching jobs that lend themselves more obviously to international appointments.
So, let’s take a look at who is currently in the pipeline, and could perhaps climb the coaching ladder to break this trend. We’ve sorted through teams at the highest level in the United States; our list begins with women who are currently head coaches at Division I top-25 schools, then moves on to those at Power 5 schools. From there, we circle back to associate head coaches at top-25 schools, then to head coaches at DI mid-major schools, then to head coaches at top-10 Division II and III schools. We’ve also included female head coaches at USA Swimming Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medal clubs. Each level of coach is sorted alphabetically.
Note that this is not a ranking of SwimSwam’s top 50 female coaches in the US, or our favorite female coaches; rather, it’s a ranking of where coaches fall on the ‘ladder’ of progression; a cheat-sheet of sorts for any athletics directors or club presidents looking to make hires of qualified female candidates for their next big-time open position. There is a certain order that these hires usually go in, and the easiest fix, politically, is to start pulling coaches up this ladder, one at a time.
Editor’s Note: This table was compiled manually by hours of work. If we missed one, please leave it in the comments section and if it fits the criteria, we’ll add it to the list.
Level | Name | Team | Position |
DI Top-25 Head Coaches | Carol Capitani | Texas (W) | Head Coach |
Cyndi Gallagher | UCLA (W) | Head Coach | |
Teri McKeever | Cal (W) | Head Coach | |
Power 5 Head Coaches | Courtney Hart | Georgia Tech | Head Coach |
Jennifer Buffin | Oregon State (W) | Head Coach | |
Sue Novitsky | Illinois | Head Coach | |
D1 Top-25 Associate Head Coaches | Alicia Hicken-Franklin | Minnesota |
Associate Head Coach
|
April Jensen | Notre Dame |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Ashley Jahn | Tennesse (W) |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Beth Botsford | Arizona | Assistant | |
Casmera Wick | Villanova |
Assistant (Former co-head at Pitt)
|
|
Catherine Kase | USC |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Dawn Kane | Duke |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Jordan Wolfrum | Ohio State |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Kathleen Milloy | Michigan State |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Katie Robinson | Northwestern |
Associate Head Coach (former head at Tulane)
|
|
Michele Lowry | Utah |
Head Distance Coach
|
|
Naya Higashijima | UCLA (W) |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Rachel Stratton-Mills | ASU | Sr. Assistant | |
Stefanie Williams Moreno | Georgia |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Tanica Jameson | Texas A&M (W) |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
Terry Ganley | Minnesota |
Sr. Associate Head Coach
|
|
Tracy Slusser | Stanford (W) |
Associate Head Coach
|
|
DI Mid-Major Head Coaches | Amanda Caldwell | Georgia Southern | Head Coach |
Barbara Jahn | UC Davis (W) | Head Coach | |
Brittany Roth | North Texas | Head Coach | |
Carol Withus | Old Dominion | Head Coach | |
Christine Mabile | Boise State | Head Coach | |
Colleen Murphy | Air Force | Head Coach | |
Diana Caskey | Columbia | Head Coach | |
Dorsey Tierney-Walker | New Mexico | Head Coach | |
Elizabeth Lykens | UNC Asheville (W) | Head Coach | |
Hollie Bonewit-Cron | Miami University | Head Coach | |
Jacqueline Michalski | Eastern Illinois | Head Coach | |
Jeanne Fleck | Fresno State | Head Coach | |
Kate Kovenock | Brown (W) | Head Coach | |
Katie Cameron | Bryant | Head Coach | |
Kerry Smith | Stony Brook (W) | Head Coach | |
Laura Preacco | Florida Atlantic | Head Coach | |
Leah Stancil | Tulane | Head Coach | |
Lisa Ebeling | Northern Colorado (W) | Head Coach | |
Mandy Commons-Disalle | Cincinnati | Head Coach | |
Miriam McGeath | Valparaiso | Head Coach | |
Stephanie Wriede Morawksi | Harvard (W) | Head Coach | |
D2 Top-10 Head Coaches | Katelyne Herrington | Fresno Pacific | Head Coach |
D3 Top-10 Head Coaches | Dani Korman | MIT | Head Coach |
Gold Medal Club Head Coaches | Erin Pitman | Swim Atlanta |
Hamilton Mill Head Site Coach
|
Ginny Nussbaum | Long Island Aquatics |
Founder/Head High Performance Coach
|
|
Jessica Fry | NCAP |
Claude Moore Head Coach
|
|
Silver Medal Club Head Coaches | Alexis Keto | New Trier Aquatics | Head Coach |
Allison Beebe | Santa Clara | Head Coach | |
Amy Albiero | Cardinal Aquatics | Head Coach | |
Audrey Cormack | North Texas Nadadores | Head Coach | |
Christina Batchelor | Bluefish Swim Club |
Cumberland/Attleboro Head Coach
|
|
Dana Kirk | PASA |
Fremont Hills Head Coach
|
|
Kate Lundsten | Aquajets | Head Coach | |
Megan Oestingq | Eastern Iowa Swim Federation |
Head Coach/Owner
|
|
Monique Shelton | Beach Cities Swimming | Head Coach | |
Bronze Medal Club Head Coaches | Abi Liu | Peak Swimming | Head Coach |
Alison Pick | Wichita Swim Club | Head Coach | |
Anna Heidinger | Pike Peak Athletics | Director/Owner | |
Cindy Dial | Firestone Akron Swim Team | Head Coach | |
Ellen Johnston | Westport Weston Y | Head Coach | |
Emily Melina | Lake Oswego Swim Club | Head Coach | |
Hilary Yager | Naval Academy Aquatic Club | Head Coach | |
Jane Rixe | Penguin Aquatics | Head Coach | |
Leigh Ann Fetter-Witt | Greater Nebraska Swim Team | Head Coach | |
Marjorie Sherard | Empire KC Swim Club | Head Coach | |
Meredith David | South Carolina Swim Club | Head Coach | |
Morgan Cordle | 757 Swim | Head Coach | |
Olga Splichalova Espinosa | St. Croix Swim Club | Head Coach | |
Susan Trainor | Crimson Aquatic Wellesley | Head Coach | |
Tricia Butcher | Flatiron Swimming | Co-Head Coach |
The NCAA has a female coach retention and promotion problem. Inherent biases within the system, highlighted not too long ago on here by the Tucker Center’s report. 5 good female coaches summarily dismissed from D1 swimming last season…..its no surprise there’s no representation at the top when the deck (no pun intended) is stacked against them.
Please be specific. What evidence do you have regarding a systemic bias against women? Not stating it isn’t there…but from what you wrote it could simply be what happened based on coaching specific reasons.
Braden beat me to it in his post, below: https://swimswam.com/ncaa-swimming-lands-f-grade-for-lack-of-women-coaching-female-teams/
Great article, Torrey. Thank you. I’d be curious to see what other sports percentages of female coaches are (Womens T&F, XC, Tennis, Soccer, Volleyball, etc) as well.
The Tucker Center study has that data at least for the NCAA level. All of the sports you named have a higher percentage of female head coaches than does swimming, though as many pointed out, there’s a bit of a structural difference in swimming with combined-gender programs. Cross country has similarly-combined programs, though, and they do slightly better than swimming; Track does about the same.
https://swimswam.com/ncaa-swimming-lands-f-grade-for-lack-of-women-coaching-female-teams/
Please kindly add to mid-major head coaches:
Hollie Bonewit-Cron – Miami University
Amanda Caldwell – Georgia Southern
Elizabeth Lykens – UNC Asheville
Laura Preacco – FAU
Brittany Roth – Univ of North Texas