EP 8 - Alicia Pelton - CoachingHER

Tera and Sarah sit down with Alicia Pelton, the Program Director for Coaching HER from the Tucker Center, a research center at the University of Minnesota that researches girls and women in sport.  Coaching HER is a coaching resource that helps sport coaches of girls challenge the status quo and the taken-for-granted assumptions of what it means to coach girls. We are helping coaches minimize gender inequalities and to coach differently. Coaching HER tackles central and unaddressed issues which negatively impact girls’ and women’s performance, self-perceptions, sport choices, and experiences: coaches’ unconscious gender biases and stereotypes. During this episode, Alicia shares with us the inequity she saw between her son’s hockey experience compared to her daughter’s and what she did about it.   We also discuss the fact that sports were created for men by men and continue to be coached by men and designed around men, i.e. sport equipment.  However, women are different. Our hormones are different, we injure differently, we hit puberty at different times, AND we are treated differently in society.  So instead of looking at the sport of hockey as a boys sport and the girls simply exist in it, we may need to rethink the design of the sport so we can meet the girls where they are at and appreciate what they bring to the game, rather than trying to fit them into the existing model.   The game of women’s hockey may look different than men’s hockey; however, it is a BEAUTIFUL game and embracing the differences can help to expand the sport for females. This is important because when girls play, they are more successful in life.  They are healthier, they have healthier families, they have less depression and anxiety, they’re healthier in every way and succeed occupationally.