News

First-Ever WCS Session for Student-Athletes!

Her Next Play
Audra Emerson & Sara Wegmann of CareerPrep and Her Next Play, a nonprofit that empowers female athletes to confidently launch successful careers, have designed a first-ever session specifically designed for current student-athletes, or those who have recently graduated. We are excited to add this new program component for WCS 2019! The female athletes of today are the women coaches of tomorrow!

 

In their session "Your Next Play:  Confidently Transition from Sport to Career" student-athletes will learn about how to leverage the incredible leadership skills they built through sport.  It can be challenging to translate and market those skills and experiences to employers. During this interactive session, you will learn how to identify and articulate the transferrable skills you learned as an athlete, and reflect on your “superpower” – what strength differentiates you and drives your success? Through engaging exercises, you’ll practice how to more confidently tell your story and market your skills to employers. Build confidence in your skills and leave empowered to take bold steps to launch your career.   

New Speaker Added = Rev. Dr. Rachel Wetzsteon

Weztsteon
Our latest speaker addition, Rev. Dr. Wetzsteon, will add to the "taking care of coaches" by addressing the spiritual component of coach wellbeing, an often overlooked component. As an ordained minister, her talk will center around “Spiritual Principles for Human Potential & Radiant Wellness.” Check our her website  and read her full bio here.

New Speaker Added = Kathy Flamino

Kathy Flamino Head Shot
Kathy Flamino, LGSW, MSW, E-RYT-200, is the founder of 1000 Petals LLC, a training and consulting company on the science and practice of mindfulness, movement and social/emotional learning. She is the creator of Move Mindfully® yoga based sequencing for self-regulation, focus and overall well-being. To read Kathy's bio, click here.

Kathy will address nearly all areas of wellbeing for coaches and lead us through her session "The Mind-Body Connection: Self-Care from the Inside Out." The work you do as coaches each day takes its toll, often with negative impact over time on your health and well-being. Yet, relief is possible with simple “mind body” self-care practices that will help you avoid stress, exhaustion, and ultimate burnout. The truth is “The more we support ourselves, the more we support our teams.” During this fun and engaging experiential presentation, you will learn and practice breathing exercises, mindfulness practices and yoga-based movement including the Five S's for Stress Reduction. The power of the brain-body connection will become clear through discussion of neuroscience and the stress response. Walk away with simple and effective self-care skills you can incorporate into your own life and share with your players.

 

2019 WCS Theme?: "Taking Care of Coaches"

holistic
We are putting together another great program for the 2019 Women Coaches Symposium around the theme of "self-care for coaches." Currently the mental health and well being of athletes is an important and hot topic in coaching circles. What gets overlooked is that coaches take care of their athletes and often many others, but who is taking care of coaches? Holistic health and well being of coaches will be addressed in multiple ways at the 2019 WCS with a variety of fantastic speakers!

Check back often as we are adding speakers weekly.

Early Bird Registration for WCS

early bird
Don't miss out on our Early Bird rate which is open until Feburary 1, 2019.

New speakers being added weekly.

Hope to see you April 19th.

If you are interested in speaker, vendor or sponsorship options please contact Anna Baeth [email protected]

Confirmed 2019 WCS Speaker List

We are putting together a great program for the 2019 Women Coaches Symposium around the theme of "self care for coaches." Coaches take care of their athletes, but who is taking care of coaches? Holistic health and wellbeing of coaches will be addressed in multiple ways with a variety of fantastic speakers!

Confirmed speaker list below as of 12.17.18 (check back for updates!)

  • Cheryl Reeve, General Manager and Head Coach, Minnesota Lynx
  • Nicole M. LaVoi, PhD, Director of The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport
  • Megan Kahn, Executive Director, WeCOACH
  • Faith Johnson Patterson, MN Hall of Fame Basketball Coach
  • Guylaine Demers, PhD, Professor at the Department of Physical Education of Laval University, Canada
  • Lynn Kachmarik, founder and CEO of True Brand Sports LLC, VP of  Equilibria in Sports
  • Kat Longshore, PhD, Mental Performance Coach, Founder MoniKat Coaching

New Documentary About Women Coaches

Game On
The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport with tptMN has produced, Game ON: Women Can Coach, a documentary that explores research, dispels false narratives, celebrates female coaching pioneers at all levels of competition, and highlights stories of success and hardship. Their stories are the universal stories of women coaches who fight battles to pursue their passion to coach.

 

2019 WCS Keynote Speaker Announced

Reeve & Whalen
Planning is underway for the 6th annual Women Coaches Symposium! Friday, April 19, 2019

We are excited to announce that Cheryl Reeve, Head Coach for the Minnesota Lynx, will be the 2019 Jean K. Freeman Keynote Speaker! 

Cheryl Reeve is head coach and general manager for the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA. She has coached the Lynx to four league championships in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017, has the highest winning percentage in the WNBA, won the most games of any WNBA female coach, and has won the most WNBA postseason games of any coach. Reeve was named the WNBA Coach of the Year in 2011 and 2016. She returns to USA Basketball as a 2018 USA National Team assistant coach and previously served as an assistant coach for the 2014-16 USA National Team that claimed gold medals at the 2014 FIBA World Cup Team and 2016 Olympic Games.

The Jean K. Freeman keynote honors Jean’s legacy as a pioneer in coaching and women’s sport and her commitment to giving back, hard work, honesty, team, caring for the whole person and excellence in every way. We invite a high profile, successful female coach to keynote the WCS each year to reflect Jean’s values. 

Registration for the 2019 WCS will open on December 17! Stay tuned for more program announcements and plan to join us.

Save the date: WCS 2019!

Mark your calendars for next year's Women Coaches Symposium, which is scheduled for April 19, 2019. Check back for updates on sessions and speakers! We'll see you in 2019!

WCS 2018 Final Report & Evaluation

Each year we send out a post WCS survey to get feedback. To read this year's report see below.

 Report and Evaluation: 2018 Women Coaches Symposium

Organized by the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota,
in partnership with Gopher Athletics & The Alliance of Women Coaches

Friday, April 20, 2018

TCF Bank Stadium, DQ Club Room, University of Minnesota

The purpose of the Women Coaches Symposium (WCS) is to provide high quality educational programming and professional development, an avenue for networking for women, a space to build community among women coaches, and a way to increase and retain women in the coaching profession. To help promote the WCS we launched a new website WCS.UMN.EDU.

The fifth annual Women Coaches Symposium was an overwhelming success with 94% of attendees reporting that they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they enjoyed the symposium. Symposium attendance held strong at 350 women and this year we welcomed 52 student-athletes, a handful of male allies, 14 vendors, and over 30 sport administrators including conference commissioners, athletics directors and club/camp directors from all sports and all levels of competition.

 

meet people

WCS Attendees during Networking

& Speed Meet

Almost all participants (96%) would recommend that a colleague attend, nearly everyone (98%) indicated that the WCS is a unique professional development opportunity and over 95% of participants stated they would attend the WCS in future. The size, value of the event, quality of our speakers (all of whom are women), relevancy of topics, high-level partnerships, sponsorships, and women-centered focus of the WCS distinguishes it from other events in current coach education programming. To our knowledge, it is the largest event of its kind in the United States, and perhaps the world.

Strong support and collaborative partnerships helps the WCS grow in scope and strength each year. This year the WCS boasted our strongest support of vendors and partners.


The symposium opened with a welcome from Directors from each of the events’ main sponsors― Julie Manning of Gopher Athletics, Megan Kahn from the Alliance of Women Coaches, and Nicole M. LaVoi Co-Director of the Tucker Center. The morning included a breakout presentation on “Mindful Coaching: Tools you can use right now!” with Dr. Missy Price, as well as two panel sessions: “History in the Making: Championship Women Hockey Coaches” with Ronda Engelhardt, Gabby Billing, Sami Reber, and Kristi King, and The Art of Negotiation” with Lori Kerans, Julie Manning, and M. Dianne Murphy.

The fifth annual Jean K. Freeman keynote in honor of Jean, who served for 31 years as the women’s swimming and diving head coach for the Gophers from 1973-2004, before passing away in 2010 from cancer. Freeman was a highly successful coach, cared deeply about her athletes, and was beloved by all. The goal of the Jean K. Freeman keynote is to bring in a highly successful, high profile female coach who reflects the same values and commitment to striving for excellence while maintaining good sportsmanship. This keynote increases the visibility, marketability and national reputation of the WCS. Head Women’s Swimming Coach for the Gophers and Hall of Fame Gopher swimmer, Terry Ganley made remarks about the impact Jean made on athletes, the swimming world, and coaches.

 

 

Teeter

Susan Teeter

The Jean K. Freeman Keynote Speaker this year was Susan Teeter. Teeter is the former head coach of the Princeton women’s swim team. In her 33 years there, Teeter established herself as one of the most decorated swim coaches in the country. Princeton’s all-time leader in wins, Teeter tallied over 220 team victories and guided her program to 17 Ivy League titles. Her legacy earned her an American Swimming Coaches Award of Excellence for four straight years, from 2006 through 2009. In 2011, she was awarded the prestigious College Swim Coaches Association “Lifetime Achievement Award”. Most recently, Teeter was elected President of the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association by her colleagues. She was also named USA Aquatics Sports’ Most Outstanding Woman for 2015. Her keynote address, “Are you willing to ask for H.E.L.P.?” was a hit at the WCS.

After lunch, a series of breakout sessions including “Tackling the Tough Issues Together”, “Experiential Learning: More than Fun & Games” with Molly Grisham, and “Strategies to Improve the Confidence in your Athletes” with Dr. Cindra Kamphoff convened. Dr. LaVoi rounded out the day with her newest talk on “Changing our Narrative Together: #SHECANCOACH”.

The day ended with our highly popular raffle and a few words from Beth Bass of adidas.

After the event, coaches convened at across the street for a happy hour sponsored by adidas and Buffalo Wild Wings. Happy Hour was a resounding success!

 

In our post-event evaluation, we asked coaches what they liked best. Feedback included:

  • Very organized, well attended, good energy throughout the day.
  • The chance to meet so many awesome women coaches!
  • The visibility to other female coaches. So often we feel like we're alone or the "only ones" because we get so dispersed throughout the community and different sports, but it was so fun to be in a place where we could network and acknowledge that there are many of us working with athletes as a female.
  • The multiple networking opportunities, as well as a plethora of coaches from many different levels. The vendors were amazing too!
  • The information that was shared was relevant and there are many things that I can take back to my school and incorporate in the programs I coach. I thought the breakout activity was great to meet other coaches in the same sport you coach.
  • Love the networking opportunities!
  • The 5 min talks were a nice addition and change of pace.Good balance between breakouts and keynotes.
  • That the focus was on women, how to stay strong in a male-dominated environment. Just being there made me feel better about my choice to become a coach and keep on coaching.
  • My favorite part about the Symposium was talking with other coaches.
  • Loved the negotiations session, the partner tables and the ability to connect with new people.Information was great and it was energizing being around other likeminded women.
  • Great speakers... enjoy seeing other women in our shoes and hearing their story.I like the one day event... short and sweet but lots of good information and connecting with others.
  • 1. The organization: super well organized, everything ran smoothly.2. The climate: welcoming, open, fun. 3. The content: diverse, room to exchange ideas in a safe environment.

 

Attendees also told us their top-3 “take-aways” from the Symposium. Feedback included:

 

  • Schools and athletic directors need to be intentional about hiring women coaches. Coaches play a significant role in building confidence in their athletes. Coaches need to be intentional about building team culture through activities as well as "talk".
  • Change the narrative. Get women leaders in a room and watch them lead! Ask for help.
  • Loved the keynote about the Summit. I have a similar group of women who I am connected to and appreciate the encouragement of women to join together to make change in areas they are passionate about. - We need to continue to find ways to change the narrative about women coaches in our conference. Research from the Tucker Center has been very helpful in assisting us and making important conversations happen. - Women need to have opportunities to connect with and learn from other women in coaching. We will have plenty of ideas from WCS to take away and implement into potential programming for our conference.

The day before the 2018 WCS the Alliance of Women Coaches held its annual Board of Directors meeting in the Gopher Athletics new Athlete Village. Many board members attended and/or presented at the WCS, making the programming even stronger!

Board members (L to R) pictured below: Lori Kerans, Dr. Cecile Reynaud, Dr M. Dianne Murphy, Megan Kahn.

AWC board

2018 WCS a Success!

wcs 2
Thank you to the 350+ women coaches and a few male ally attendees, vendors, and sponsors who helped make the WCS another success.

To see the Facebook photo album of the 2018 WCS, click here.

wcs

We hope to see you in 2019!

Save April 26, 2019 to join us next year.

WCS 2018 Registration is closed ! See you Friday!

The good news is WCS is sold out and registration is closed.

We will taking limited walk-up registants the day of the WCS.

It is going to be a great day! 

SHECANCOACH 2
All logistical info of where to park and what entrance to go to at TCF Bank Stadium is under the "logistics" Tab.

See you soon & don't forget to bring your new sports bra donation for the Sports Bra Project and extra cash for additional raffle tickets & WCS & #SHECANCOACH!swag (if you so choose)!

Raffle Items for WCS are Awesome!

raffle tix
Each year at the conclusion of the WCS we hold a raffle. You must be present to win! Each attendee gets one raffle ticket with registration. Additional tickets can be purchased for $1/ea and for every new sports bra donated on site to our philanthropic partner, the Sports Bra Project, you get five additional raffle tickets. All money from the raffle supports research for and about women coaches.

Raffle item donators include:

adidas, Applebee's, Alliance of Women Coaches, Buffalo Wild Wings, Cafe Latte, Chipotle, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff’s signed book Beyond Grit: 10 Powerful Practices to Gain The High-Performance Edge, Corepower Yoga, Corner Coffee, Dunn Brothers, Gopher Sports, Miguel Ibarra, Mackenzie L. Havey’s book Mindful Running, Ivviva, Lole Twin Cities, Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi's book Women in Sports Coaching, and workshop, Mill City Running, Minnesota Lynx, Minnesota Timberwolves, Minnesota Twins, Minnesota United, Minnesota Wild, NorthLoop ArtSmiths, Powerhouse Performance, Punch Pizza, Sally’s Bar and Saloon, Shelly Bean the Sports Queen books, Starbucks, SunScreen Basket, Surly Brewing Co., the Tucker Center...and more!

Beth Bass to address WCS attendees

Beth Bass the US Director of Women's Sport Marketing/NCAA for adidas will provide closing remarks for WCS att

Beth Bass
endees. Bass brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and insight pertaining to women's sport to the WCS. Immediately following the WCS, adidas will sponsor an attendees happy hour.

Championship Girls' Hockey Coach Panel added to WCS

History in the Making: Championship Women Hockey Coaches

During the 2018 Minnesota State Girls' High School Hockey Tournament history was made. Three of the four head coaches in the Class A and AA finals were women! Both championship teams, Breck and Edina, were coached by women. Given that less than 25% of college hockey teams are coached by women, these accomplishments are historic. In this panel, these women and their athletes will talk about what this means to them and the game.

  • Ronda Engelhardt (Breck, Head Coach)
  • Sami Reber (Edina, Head Coach)
  • Kristi King (Centennial, Head Coach

Join our Sports Bra Drive!

sports bra project
Encourage your own group, staff or team to sponsor a sports bra drive in advance of the Women Coaches Symposium! The Sports Bra Project is our philanthropic partner this year and we'd like to send them home with a suitcase (or more) of sports bras. Receive FIVE raffle tickets for each sports bra donated!

WCS swag!

SHECANCOACH
A limited amount of custom swag will be available for sale on site! [cash or check]

Get one of #SHECANCOACH motivate wrist wraps by Momentum Jewelry. All money from sales goes to support research about and for women coaches.

SHECANCOACH 2