Coaching While Mothering in NCAA Division I Volleyball

NCAA Division I Volleyball is the most competitive level of volleyball in the United States outside of recent emerging professional leagues. The sport of volleyball has grown exponentially since the enactment of Title IX and NCAA DI membership has increased to 96% (DeBoer, 2021). While significant efforts in recruitment and retention have been made to increase opportunities for women coaches at the NCAA DI level, the percentage of women head coaches in women’s volleyball has seen declines and steady stagnation (LaVoi, 2020). Coaching while mothering is a unique and fraught process that remains unsupported due to a number of social, cultural, and structural factors. Women coaches who are mothers are embedded within individual, socio-cultural, and institutional contexts that can provide and rich and varied landscape of experience. Each individual woman coach experiences unique barriers that are compounded when intersected with additional marginalized identities and being a mother. For decades, women have been reporting higher rates of emotional exhaustion than their male counterparts in college coaching, while also reporting lower rates of feeling accomplished (Caccese & Mayerberg, 1984), and these dynamics only increase if women coaches who are also mothers (Bruening & Dixon, 2007). These experiences have largely remained unrecognized due to a gap in the research that is specific to NCAA Division I Volleyball. This presentation will summarize the current literature on the many factors that are leading to the decline in women coaches in volleyball, and argue that further research must be done in order to understand what coaches who are mothers need, both structurally and emotionally, in order to continue coaching. I argue that further research is crucial to keep more women coaches in coaching, in order to both support current women coaches and provide mentorship to female athletes who benefit from having a woman head coach.