Pat Jensen taught her boy Luke how to treat women as a child. All Luke had to do was watch his mom coach her high school gymnastics team practice, 30 to 40 girls tumbling in the Ludington High gym with no ice machines in sight.

‘In the middle of the winter,’ said Luke, now coach of the Syracuse tennis team, ‘if a gymnast twisted her ankle, this is no lie, in a leotard, she put her outside in a snow bank, shove her foot in the snow for 20 minutes. In a leotard in the middle of winter.

‘I mean, she wasn’t too worried that (the gymnast) was a little girl in high school. She was an athlete. You got to ice that ankle.’

The lesson stuck.

Jensen observed that epoch of women’s athletics through his family, listening to his mother and watching his sisters as they rose through the tennis ranks.

He carts around that education today, in which he again has firsthand knowledge of the latest trend in women’s athletics: men coaching women’s teams. Men currently coach 10 of 13 women’s squads at Syracuse.

Women coached more than 90 percent of women’s team in 1972, the year Title IX took effect. The federal law prohibits sex discrimination in all education programs but applies most often to sports. It ensures institutions provide the same number of men’s and women’s athletic scholarships.

Title IX meant equal opportunity. It meant more exposure: ESPN, for example, televises the women’s basketball tournament. It meant more money: the average salary for the head coach of a women’s collegiate team is $131,037 a year, according to the 2006-07 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.

It also meant more men.

Women now coach just less than 43 percent of women’s collegiate teams, according to the 2008 edition of R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter’s annual study ‘Women in Intercollegiate Sport.’ The two women, both professor emeriti at Brooklyn College, have put out the study since 1978. That year was also the cut-off for mandatory compliance with Title IX: 58.2 percent of team’s then were coached by women.

The number has steadily decreased since.

The Orange coaching roster is a snapshot of that trend: Quentin Hillsman pacing the sideline during women’s basketball games, Gary Gait doing likewise during women’s lacrosse, Jing Pu’s quiet presence during volleyball season.

‘When you look at the big picture of things, when the statistics show 42 percent,’ said Celia Slater, executive director of the NCAA Women’s Coaches Academy, ‘that’s when it gets your attention.’

Part of the reason for the shift is a surplus of male candidates and a dearth of female ones.

‘I think there are certainly more men probably out there looking for coaching jobs as well,’ said Jim Livengood, athletic director at Arizona, where eight of 11 women’s teams are coached by men. ‘One of things, I know we’re always looking in the profession trying to get more females to become interested in coaching.’

Slater is trying to rectify that through the coaches academy, to recruit future coaches – and keep current ones in the profession. For her part, she is fine with men coaching women’s teams – as long as the hiring process is evenhanded.

‘For me, it’s really just that women be given an equal opportunity in athletics, in every aspect,’ Slater said. ‘That they have equal opportunity to apply for jobs and be given an interview, an opportunity to get the job. To me, it’s about the fairness of it all.’

Since Director of athletics Daryl Gross arrived at Syracuse in December 2004, there have been nine coaching vacancies on women’s teams. He filled seven with men. Chris Fox took up two of those spots, part of his role as head coach of four teams: men’s track and field, women’s track and field, men’s cross country and women’s cross country.

A man replaced a woman in only Gait’s case.

It’s not about gender, Gross said. It’s about talent.

‘We want to give our student-athletes the best coaching and teaching available,’ Gross said via e-mail. ‘ . . . It doesn’t matter as long as they are the best we can get.’

In the past year, the best Syracuse can get means:

BULLET Paul Flanagan leaving St. Lawrence, a school he guided to five women’s Frozen Fours in eight years, to coach Syracuse’s inaugural women’s hockey season.

BULLET Phil Wheddon leaving his spot as goalie coach on the U.S. women’s national team to take over a stagnant women’s soccer program.

BULLET Gait, considered the greatest lacrosse player of all time, leaving his head coaching job in the National Lacrosse League to run his alma mater’s women’s team.

And it also means Jensen, 1993 French Open doubles champion and ESPN tennis analyst, dragging himself and his team out of bed before dawn to practice at Drumlins Country Club.

Pat Jensen taught Luke equality. His team bears the brunt of that now: five-mile runs, sets of pushups (‘guys’ pushups,’ he said) and a Spring Break conditioning trip to ‘Camp Hell’ in Tampa, Fla.

They study men’s tennis – the women’s game is 10 years behind the men’s, Jensen said. He wants his players to be ahead of the curve.

And the women on the team – the ones who’ve stayed since Jensen arrived in 2006, at least – don’t complain to him, Jensen said.

‘The gender issue, once again, really never plays a part,’ he said. ‘They never say, ‘Well, I can’t do this because I’m a girl.’ There’s no ‘I can’t’ on this program, or on this team.’

So is there a difference between coaching men and women? Sure. Little things.

They’re close-knit, Jensen said, more so than any teams he had been a part of. He never remembers hugging a teammate after a [ITALICS]loss[/ITALICS].

Still, it’s mostly the same as working with men.

Quentin Hillsman has experience with both sides – he started out as a men’s coach. But he said he has no plans to go back.

Hillsman fell into the women’s game by accident. He filled in when the girl’s coach at Maryland’s prestigious Newport School left the team less than a decade ago. He’s run with the ladies ever since.

Women are more ‘detail-oriented,’ Hillsman said

‘I think that you really have to game plan a lot harder,’ he said. ‘Because I don’t know if at all times if purely their athleticism gets them out of as a many jams as it does on the men’s side.’

Not much difference besides that, he said. It’s all basketball.

Gary Gait had a similar perspective. He too had experience with women before coming to SU. After winning three national titles at Syracuse and beginning a pro lacrosse career, Gait spent nine years as an assistant on the Maryland women’s team.

So he’s picked up a few things. He emphasizes the positive and runs more drills and fewer scrimmages for his players – a different type of practice than those he runs as a head coach of the Canadian men’s Under-19 team.

But Gait brushed off the idea of having difficulty adjusting to the women’s lacrosse game. It’s just another set of rules, he said. No different than segueing from indoor to outdoor lacrosse. The rules change, the game stays the same

Gait also hired Maggie Koch and Shannon Burke, both a year out of college, as assistants – a dash of female youth to counteract himself and assistant coach John Battaglino.

‘Well, there’s a reason for everything, right?’ he said. ‘I looked at myself and John and said, I need a goalie coach, and I’d like to have a couple young coaches who can relate to these players and really get an understanding of where they’re at.’

The players get that. Katie Rowan, the junior attack and the nation’s leading scorer, said it was helpful having Burke and Koch around.

‘Since we are more on their level, (for) more personal issues, if you ever needed help, I think I would personally feel more comfortable going to them,’ Rowan said.

For Jensen, that’s what coaching is all about. Building relationships, getting to know players. He’s still learning that after just a year on the job.

‘It’s not a gender issue, but a communication issue,’ Jensen said. ‘If you’re a good teacher, you can get through to anybody.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on April 14, 2008 at 12:00 pm