To celebrate Female Football Week, Football Australia is hosting a series of three webinars in order to highlight and platform women who work in different aspects of the game.
Western United coach Kat Smith, CommBank Young Matildas assistant coach Helen Winterburn, and Bulleen Lions coach Caitlin Friend spoke on Monday night as part of the webinar, ‘Developing Female Football Coaches for the Future.’
The panellists began by sharing their insights as to how they began their coaching journeys. All three started off as players before the passion for coaching took over.
“From a player, that natural curiosity and that empathy and consideration for collaborative learning and growth and leadership, was a bit of a seamless transition into coaching,” Smith explained, “to continue to use football as a vehicle to make a change in and provide guidance.”
Former CommBank Young Matilda and Melbourne Victory player Friend agreed, adding, “I read the game really well, and I was a pretty honest person. I think that translates into my coaching.”
The panellists were asked about misconceptions that people have about coaching. Smith stressed that it was important to judge female coaches by their own standards, and not against the benchmarks set by men in the men’s game.
Winterburn agreed, explaining that there was a great deal more to coaching than just whiteboards and drills, particularly when coaches are just starting out at the grassroots level.
“I think there’s a lot of hesitation for females especially to come into the game because it’s ‘well, I don’t know enough,’” Winterburn said.
“But I think when you get into that environment and you start coaching, you pick something up every day, you learn something every day whether it’s a technical skill or something tactical, something you’d maybe not considered.
“As a coach, if you’re trying to inspire, you’re trying to influence this group of players that’s in front of you, I think sometimes we can get caught up in ‘well, I don’t really know that much about football,’ but that’s okay. You can learn that.
“If you’ve got really good soft skills, you’re quite personable, you’re able to connect with people… [they’re the] kind of skills that some people have as coaches that sometimes get held back because they don’t have, or don’t think they have, the football knowledge to do it.”
“Everyone thinks we’re coaching drills on a soccer field,” Friend added, “whereas for me right now, that’s maybe 15% of the job.”
The coaches discussed the different ways that girls and boys, as well as women and men, learn and train. All agreed that it was valuable to mix up the training environment so that youngsters trained together and could lift the intensity for each other.
In the same vein, it is important that players have different kinds of coaches to look up to as well, regardless of gender.
“Every human has different ways of learning and hearing and adapting to messages or styles of learning,” Smith said. “If there’s diversity across their development pathway, I think that’s advantageous for the player and the human.”
Unfortunately, there are still numerous challenges facing women who step into the coaching world for the first time. While the panellists stressed the positive influence of male mentors and role models in their careers so far, on the flip side, all had been dismissed or ignored due to their gender.
“It’s as simple as when I’m on the sideline and the referee comes over, they’ll automatically go to my S&C [Strength & Conditioning] coach who is a man instead of me to shake their hand, thinking they’re the head coach,” Friend explained. “It’s the smallest little detail.”
“I’ve always had to have my guard up quite a lot, and be quite confrontational, and fight for every little thing. Whereas I don’t believe a male that’s the exact same age as me with the exact same experience would ever have to do that.”
The world is slowly changing, and in football is doing so largely thanks to the growth of the women’s game and women’s coaches. As #WeRise is the theme of this year’s Female Football Week, the panellists shared their advice on how to take your first steps into coaching.
“The quickest way I’ve learnt is just jumping into a situation, and getting hands-on,” Friend said. “Of course, there’s the courses… but there’s so many spots available in the women’s game. We need coaches, we need people to support.”
“If you want the experience just volunteer yourself to start off, get your coaching licences, and try to get on as hands-on as possible.”
“It’s about learning on the job and being in an environment where it’s safe to fail – that’s where you learn the quickest,” Smith added.
“I can’t stress this enough – build your board room. Have your critical friends, have your cheerleader, have your mentor. I think the biggest thing… is that you can do that through a format, through a pathway, but you can also do that through generating conversations or cold calling or emailing people. Just reaching out to those that feel that have something of value that will share with you.”
Winterburn agreed and added openness and willingness to learn are key.
“[It’s about] Making your own mistakes, trying your own things, and also connecting with so many different people,” she explained. “Until you do it, you don’t actually know what you’re like, and what you’re good at, and you can reflect.”
This webinar was part of a series hosted by Football Australia for Female Football Week. You can get more details, and register for the remaining webinars, on Wednesday, 8 May and Sunday, 12 May, via Our Game’s Female Football Week page.