Sex bias case raises coaches' gender issues

A recent case raises the touchy issue of whether only women should coach women's teams. Do women athletes need "strong female role models" as coaches? This is the question many in the University community are asking in light of a male assistant crew coach's recent allegation that he was passed over for a promotion because of his sex. On one side is the argument that women are naturally better-suited to coach women's teams than men. On the other is the contention that such a mindset might lead to the hiring of underqualified candidates. "As long as they're the best person for the job, I don't see why it matters if they're male or female," said Andy Medcalf, 47, who recently filed a complaint against the University with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "If a person's good, a person's good." Without commenting specifically on Medcalf's charges, many athletes and coaches seemed to agree that a coach's sex is largely irrelevant as long as the person is qualified. College sophomore Leah Bills, a midfielder on the women's field hockey team, said a coach's knowledge "is the most important part" of the game, more so "than being male or female." "My main concern is, do they know the game? Do they understand their players? Do they love the sport?" she said. Seven of Penn's 10 all-women teams have female head coaches. The three teams with a male head coach -- gymnastics, soccer and tennis -- have a woman as an assistant coach. These kinds of numbers are similar to those at other Ivy League schools. Every all-male Quakers squad, by contrast, has a man as a head coach. In fact, only one team, tennis, even has a woman as an assistant coach. Across the Ivy League as a whole, three of the eight schools have a man as head of women's crew. One such coach, Cornell University's John Dunn, said that "women [athletes] should have an opportunity, like the men, to have the best possible coaching." But he added that he could see the reasoning behind trying to hire women for women's teams. "I think that if you have two equal people, one male and one female, then I can see the reason to hire the female," Dunn said. "But to go the next step, to say even if we can't find qualified females for the position, we're not going to hire [the man], I think that's unfair." Princeton University women's crew coach Lori Dauphiny echoed most of Dunn's sentiments. "I think [an] athletic department should hire the best coach qualified for the position, and that's the bottom line," the 8-year Tigers veteran said. Penn Athletic Department officials declined to comment. Medcalf applied for the women's head crew coach position last May. Despite a recommendation from Penn's crew director, the Athletic Department denied him the position, which ultimately went to Dartmouth College head women's coach Barbara Kirch, a Penn graduate. Medcalf, who was an assistant coach in the women's crew program when he applied for the job, filed a complaint in October. He alleged that Athletic Department officials told him that even though he was the most qualified candidate, the department intended to hire a woman. University officials have denied the charges, and the complaint is pending. When members of the team asked Senior Associate Athletic Director Carolyn Schlie Femovich to hire Medcalf, she told them she wanted to hire a "strong female role model" for the position, according to Medcalf. Medcalf, now an assistant coach in the men's crew program, said last week that officials didn't just discriminate against him, but also hurt the female athletes by failing to find them the most qualified coach. Medcalf has coached at Michigan State University, the University of London and the University of Rochester, and has been an assistant coach at Penn since 1990. His teams have won national championships in the United States and England. Kirch coached at Dartmouth for nine years, and competed as a rower in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, and recently published a book about rowing.