Jess Taylor: A Lack of Female Coaches

This is the second part of what I hope to be a regular series on this blog. These articles will feature a guest writer, who will provide slightly different, or even alternate, perspective on soccer in America. Each writer will have at least one thing in common - a shared involvement in soccer at the grassroots and developmental level in this country. 

I first met Jess Taylor in Milwaukee, WI after a futsal game I had just coached last winter during the 2012-13 season. She struck me as a very outspoken and confident person, who is not afraid to speak her mind in a male-dominated field. As it turns out, she and her family also live not too far from my family in the same community and she joined my club right around the time I met her. The following is an account of Jess' thoughts on a lack, or rarity, of female coaches in the women's game.

Parent Coaches

The last couple of months, I have been thinking a lot about youth soccer coaches who also happen to coach their own children.

For the record, I have never coached one of my own children, as my only child is just shy of six months old. The closest I have come to being a parent coach is when I coached my younger brother, who is three years younger than me, from when he was sixteen until he was nineteen. This, by the way, was my first real coaching experience.

Among topics of nepotism and favoritism, I am really just curious about the thought process parent-coaches go through that results in a decision to coach their own child in addition to a dozen or so of his or her athletic peers. What is the driving reason that coerces people to undertake what could become a very controversial position within the athletic development of their own child?

In my experience, there are a couple of types of parent coaches that exist within youth soccer.