As a follow to ESPN The Magazine's fascinating examination of homophobia in women's college basketball recruiting, espnW spoke with two women who are actually taking action to help change negative recruiting (homophobic or otherwise) throughout women's collegiate sports. Beth Bass, CEO of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, has set up an ethics committee that is working on establishing "best practices" in the hopes that coaches will halt these tactics in the highest-profile women's collegiate sport. Celia Slater is the executive director of the NCAA Women Coaches Academy, an organization started in 2003 that works to keep female college coaches on the field and on the court through courses focusing on philosophy development, management strategies, communication, conflict resolution and other issues.
Both Bass, who was quoted in the original magazine story, and Slater affirmed that negative recruiting, including homophobic practices, is unfortunately alive and well at the collegiate level, particularly in basketball.
"As far as negative recruiting, I can tell you, [from] working with coaches, that it very much does exist, and it's very harsh," Slater says. "It is probably more prevalent in some sports than others, but it's there, regardless of sport."
Both Slater and Bass are committed to education and policy change to help reduce, if not eliminate, negative recruiting. Slater hopes to continue to challenge negative recruiting through the Alliance of Women's Coaches, an organization she has co-founded and which will launch this year.
Bass says that for the past two-and-a-half years, as women's basketball has become more visible and lucrative, the WBCA had been putting together an ethics committee and discussing a revamped code of ethics for coaches. The goal of the revamped code, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2010, is not to turn the WBCA into an enforcer but instead to "help facilitate and enhance communications between our coaches, their institutions, their conferences and the NCAA system." The co-chairs of the ethics committee are retired University of Texas basketball coach and Naismith Hall of Fame member Jody Conradt and current Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer. Bass did not get into specifics regarding the new code of ethics but said it does address negative recruiting.
The WBCA also planned a new leadership academy for 60 coaches this May and June at Columbia University. These two-and-a-half-day sessions will focus on "reflection, perspective, your leadership philosophy, your ethics, your ethical practices talking about best recruiting practices, what is a violation, what is your tipping point of doing that dance." If the WBCA can continue to secure funding, the goal is to have all NCAA women's Division I basketball coaches attend these leadership academies in the next three to five years. Bass says that when it looked like the WBCA might be short on funds for this year's inaugural academy, Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma personally wrote a check for "well over six figures" to ensure it would take place as planned.
Slater addresses the issue of negative recruiting directly in several aspects of the coaches' academy curriculum. For starters, every coach who attends the academy signs a document pledging that he or she won't engage in such tactics.
"I ask the academy graduates to make a commitment to not participate in negative recruiting in any of its forms," Slater says. With respect to homophobic negative recruiting tactics specifically, Slater said, "I feel very passionate about this because I've seen how harsh it can be to be attacked personally, and how it can break a coach's spirit, so they get out of the profession." Slater has addressed homophobic recruiting tactics by incorporating the issue into the curriculum for at least one of the academy's courses.
In "Finding Your Voice," a public speaking class that Slater teaches, here is one of the questions posed to the class: "A parent on a recruiting visit asks you, Do you allow lesbians on your team? If you do, how do you feel about that?" Slater says coaches have confirmed that this does happen, and they do get asked this question. Many coaches have shared that "they disagree with being asked this question ... and how much they look forward to the day when this is not an issue." Slater also said that sometimes "coaches are asked this question more and more because [the questioner's] child is gay, and they want to make sure it's a safe environment for the child. So it goes both ways. It's not always antagonistic."
Slater is particularly concerned with how all of this affects the players themselves. "The part that's missing in this whole dialogue is the student-athletes," Slater says. "I've heard coaches tell me, 'I feel badly that I want to be a positive role model for my gay student-athletes.' We forget a lot of this. We're forgetting about a lot of the student-athletes that are kind of in the mix here. What about them? How does this feel to them? How does this affect their world on a day-to-day basis? Because supposedly we're in the business because we care about student-athletes -- all student-athletes."
Despite negative recruiting's continued existence, both women also expressed optimism that with changes being made institutionally and in society generally, these tactics will start to wane. "Moving forward, negative recruiting will, I think, take care of itself," Bass says. "You've got to be careful about negative recruiting because it will go against you. I think that's what people will find out. [A student-athlete might say] 'It turned me off that they were saying that we have this kind of atmosphere or that coach is this way or that coach is that way' ... Do we have empirical data? No. But anecdotal, that's my gut."
Slater agrees. "I really do believe that as the society changes and our younger generation continues to move into the athletic world, it's less of an issue for them. More and more student-athletes don't have a problem with it."
Slater believes that the coaches' academy is making a difference by addressing the issue head-on and fostering open and honest dialogue.
"A coach stands in front of her class and starts bawling because she really wants to have children, but she's afraid to have children because she's afraid she'll lose her job when her partner becomes pregnant," Slater said. "When a coach does that in front of a class, things change. More and more coaches are sharing their personal stories, and when people hear those stories, it helps change things. I can see the shift happening. The momentum is shifting to where it's getting better. But there's a long way to go for sure."
