Youth coaching creating new generation of female leaders

As a former athlete and a longtime coach, the lack of female coaches has concerned me for years. While so many of my male colleagues do an excellent job coaching young women, I believe representation is important and that both boys and girls need to see women in coaching and leadership roles. I work as a high school athletic director, another area largely dominated by men. Many years into my career, I still find myself, more often than I should, facing interactions with colleagues who are not used to or comfortable with women leading in this space.

My experience as a female leader is not unique to the world of sports. When I learned about WCA, I was eager to get involved to see if I could help support and develop young, female coaches in the program. This fall, I get to help mentor four amazing young women coaching youth soccer with AYSO in Burlingame.

While I serve as the coaching mentor for these young women, Rick Fair, a biotech CEO, is offering his time to serve as a leadership mentor for them.

WCA aims to help its members connect the lessons learned through coaching to broader leadership lessons. Leadership mentors like Rick are helping connect those dots as we help our mentees work through successes and challenges in their coaching roles. Volunteer mentors like Rick and I believe in the mission of WCA and think it makes perfect sense to engage young women in coaching youth sports, give them a leadership role at a formative time, and support them to build a strong foundation of leadership skills and confidence.

“I knew from my own experience coaching youth sports that it translates; it made me a better leader and people manager,” Fair said.

Tilly Haskell is in her second year coaching through WCA. Haskell and her co-coach Emmi Cate both had mostly men as coaches but highlight the impact of the few female coaches they saw: “They helped me feel empowered to see myself as a leader and to never feel ashamed of trying, which was more difficult in other male-dominated activities,” Haskell said.

Visibility is a crucial step in achieving equity and equality, she added.

“Having the confidence to put yourself out there and thrive in fields that are typically over-represented by men helps other women, young and old, to see that ability within themselves,” Haskell said.

Besides, both said, female role models are important.

“I believe the young girls will see themselves in us and feel empowered to someday be leaders, too,” Cate said.

That would make the world better overall, whether in business, sports or the arts, Fair said.

“There are many barriers to address, but the confidence gap between men and women is clearly one,” Fair said. “I’ve seen evidence of this gap and it has been a focus of my mentorship of women throughout my career in biotech. I believe the WCA affords young women an opportunity to build leadership skills and confidence early in life to help close this gap.”

Youth sports are offered all over the country, and Fair and I agree the model WCA built is one that can and should be scaled and replicated anywhere. As a team, we aim to support and help grow the WCA program and mission — maybe even nationally.

The inaugural Women’s Coaching Alliance benefit Oct. 6 at the Burlingame Community Center is bringing people together to support exactly that: its growth and expansion into new communities.

We hope the WCA becomes a well-known center for amplifying female voices and aiming for equality in leadership. Perhaps in the future, when we visit sports fields on Saturday mornings, we will see coaches who look more like the players they are coaching — all over the United States.

Melissa Schmidt is the athletic director and girls’ varsity soccer coach at Sequoia High School in Redwood City. Go to

womenscoachingalliance.org to learn more.