Opposite sex coaches and athletes

As a parent myself, I can tell you that's a perfectly legitimate angle. And it would add some color, depth and dimension to your story if you can quote a parent or two.

Just an aside, but it would also add some color, depth and dimension to your story if you had a descriptive anecdote to use somewhere in your story, perhaps even as your lede, depending on your story's direction. You might have to go watch a swim meet, God forbid, but you might get something useful. Maybe you'll see a male coach hugging a female athlete ... does he do that to his male swimmers? (If the answer is yes, then include that, too.) Maybe you'll see a female coach acting in some maternal manner to a male athlete ... whatever.

 

And that's a very compelling detail as well. If I were writing this story, I think I'd ask coaches if they have this self-imposed policy in place ... and why.

 

See if you can find some ex-coaches. They might be more willing to talk on the record.

 

There was one high-profile recruit to the UCLA basketball team 15-20 years ago named Mitchell Butler who had a female coach in high school.
As has been said, it is rare for females to coach male teams. There are several in local volleyball circles. At my daughter's high school, a man coaches the girls team and a woman coaches the boys team. At the high school I attended, a woman (former Olympian) coaches both the girls and boys volleyball teams.

 

The ME is a moron if he'd order such a story and not have first bothered to find out that no women are coaching only boys in your area. It means he picked the idea out of his ass without any kind of news hook having prompted the idea. "Oh, let's do a story on locals who have bubonic plague! Whattaya mean we don't have any locals who have bubonic plague?" This whole process of starting with a generic idea and then seeing if we can find a way to make it local is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest and a good reason why newspapers have become increasingly irrelevant. I believe you start by covering your area, notice trends as they develop and then try to place them in a broader context. Not the other way around. If you begin with the generic idea and then have to strain to try to support it, you wind up with, as someone here mentioned, a story that's been done before.

But the moron is your boss and you must do as he says. I understand that much.

I suppose I would try to approach this in one of two ways. The easy way is to just focus on the psychology of coaching the opposite sex. It shouldn't be difficult to find people willing to talk about that. Even when I covered women's and girls sports 30 years ago, male coaches were willing to talk openly about the different approaches to covering girls and boys.

The harder approach would be to look at the local schools' hiring practices. Is there an unusually high percentage of men coaching girls teams? Are female assistants routinely passed over for the head coaching job in girls soccer in favor of the boys' freshman coach? Assuming your paper actually covers the school board, maybe you can try to find the applicants' gender breakdown for recent coaching vacancies.

At least off the record, some college and pro female coaches are rather bitter about men coaching women because it decreases their potential to move around. As Double Down says, this is not a story you can expect to parachute into. If you don't regularly cover girls sports in your area, you may need to enlist the aid of the writer who does. I guess I would start by trying to win the trust of some veteran (or as Joe King suggests, retired) female coaches in the area. I would ask them, even on background and not for attribution, if they had ever heard of any women locally who tried to "cross over" and switch to coaching boys when such an opening came up and were denied the chance. Then I'd pursue from there.

 

MEs are the king of bad story ideas. We had a new ME move into the neighborhood and immediately declare that we need fresh enterprise ideas, something cutting-edge that stands us out from the rest of the local media.

His two ideas, which I had to do: Gambling. And Steroids.

I'm not sure, but I bet I'm not the first to do a story about gambling, nor was I a groundbreaker in steroids discussions.

 

MEs are not the kings of bad story ideas. Bad MEs are the kings of bad story ideas. And before the snark begins, yes, there are some good MEs out there, but there are fewer and fewer of them as time passes.

 

Most have.

 

I coach a girls track team. I've been coaching the team for three years as an assistant. Former head coach was a guy, current head coach is a guy, current throwing coach is a guy. Makes things very difficult, especially when we have to do overnight trips for state finals and such. Nothing like finding a responsible girl who will give up a weekend to chaperon high school girls who, by the way, needs to be there just so we can cover our own asses against any sort of potential law suits.


Other things that aren't fun. Girls like to cry a lot when they screw up, or hug people when they do well.

Things I don't like doing include, consoling crying high schools, and being hugged by high school girls.

There is no crying in track, fyi.

 

Jaberwocky!

 

This project isn't complete until you've run a background check on the coaches you'll be writing about.