As I watched Penn State University’s head women’s volleyball coach, Katie Schumacher-Cawley, win an NCAA Volleyball Championship, I wasn’t surprised. As a suburban Chicago high school volleyball player in the late 1990s, I can remember Schumacher-Cawley well as both an opponent and a role model.
In high school, I was a freshman and sophomore at Lockport High School when Schumacher-Cawley dominated the scene as a varsity player at Mother McAuley. The Mighty Macs were one of our biggest rivals. I would watch our varsity team play against them, and although we had some stars of our own at the time, a phenomenal coach and a highly ranked team, everyone in the gym knew who to watch and who to try to block on McAuley’s side: Katie Schumacher. She was also everybody’s role model.
So, no — I wasn’t surprised that this amazing athlete from the South Side, a haven and a powerhouse for girls volleyball for decades, would win a national championship as both a player and a coach. What surprised me was that no other female coach had done it before.
As I watched the nail-biter of a semifinal, I heard the announcer make a statement that left me perplexed — the 2024 NCAA championship would be the first in the 42-year history of women’s Division I volleyball to feature two female coaches, and the first with a female coach at the helm of the team to win it all.
“Really? What?” I asked the television. Volleyball is, after all, a sport that women and girls dominate. When I think back on my playing days, the people who led my teams at grade school, in high school, and in clubs were all women. I would only encounter one male volleyball head coach, at the collegiate level.
This hasn’t changed for my children. My daughter and son have played for female coaches at female-owned club programs. A woman coaches the girls program at Lyons Township High School, where my children will attend. But once young women make it to Division I, just over half of the teams they play on will be coached by men.
According to the NCAA Demographics Database, in 2024, men were head coaches at 51% of women’s NCAA Division I volleyball programs. Some may say that the numbers tell a story of near equality. But compared to other female sports at the collegiate level, it is clear to me that sexism is in play when it comes to hiring coaches in women’s NCAA Division I volleyball.
Think about football, probably the equivalent in men’s sports to volleyball for women. In NCAA Division I football, male coaches lead 100% of teams. So imagine women being the majority of coaches for college D1 football, as men are for women’s volleyball
Think also of women’s NCAA basketball, which is on par with women’s volleyball in terms of popularity — filling stadiums and being broadcast to millions. Women serve as head coaches for 64% of Women’s Division I NCAA basketball programs. What makes this remarkable is that basketball was a male-dominated sport in the NCAA since 1939. Women’s basketball entered the NCAA much later, in 1981.
Another intriguing point: Among players at the NCAA Division I level, women outnumber men 10 to 1, as many colleges do not have men’s volleyball programs. In a 2019 article highlighting the systemic sexist hiring practices in women’s volleyball, The New York Times alluded to the fact that many male coaches, even at the highest levels, never even played the sport. Saying there aren’t enough women who are qualified just doesn’t ring true; the numbers don’t lie.
Title IX pushed women collegiate athletes onto the national stage, and requires fairness and equity in gender for roster spots for collegiate sports. But that does not extend that equity to coaching positions. That’s for the NCAA to mandate, and for individual university athletic directors — who are overwhelmingly male, to mandate.
Women may struggle to win coaching positions because they may be balancing families and career, the New York Times noted. It’s my hope that the 2024 championship puts that sexist notion aside, as both the Louisville and Penn State head coaches are mothers and former D1 NCAA volleyball champions as players.
When I saw coach Schumacher-Cawley breaking that glass ceiling in front of millions of viewers while fighting breast cancer, I once again had hope for the sport. Seeing a female coach as a champion should lead to more hiring of women as head coaches in a sport women have dominated since its inception.
Gina Caneva is the library media specialist for a public high school in the Chicago suburbs and holds a doctorate in education. She was awarded a full Division I NCAA scholarship to the University of Illinois at Chicago and played volleyball there from 1999-2003.
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