“Just Different”: Anson Dorrance, Gender, and Athletic Coaching

Anna Gabrielle Goorevich

Thesis Submitted for Honors in American Studies

AMS 490: Independent Study

Graduation Date: 15 May 2021

Submission Date: 7 May 2021

Goorevich 2

Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………… 3

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………… 5

Part I: Scholarly Commentary on Gender Differences in Sport…………………………………11

Part II: Historical Background: AIAW, Title IX, and Continued Male Dominance in Sports…..17

Part III: The Vision of a Feminist Coach?: Analyzing Dorrance’s Coaching Ideology………... 38

Dorrance, Carol Gilligan, and Failed-Difference Feminism…………………………... 42

Dorrance and Inconsistent Liberal Feminism………………………………………….. 52

Players’ Resistance to and Qualifications of Dorrance’s Coaching Ideology…………. 61

Part IV: Dorrance and Coach-Athlete Sexual Harassment……………………………………... 73

Part V: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….... 99

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………103

Goorevich 3

Acknowledgements

This thesis is written in memory of Professor Matthew Hoffman, Professor David

Schuyler, and my grandmother Vivian Berkowitz. From having lengthy arguments over

Tottenham Hotspur’s tactics, allowing me to bend my research schedule around the 2019

Women’s World Cup games, and to sharing any New York Times clipping revolving around women’s soccer, all three of these figures nourished my passion for fighting for gender equity in athletics. They all serve as an inspiration to interrogate the world around me.

Thank you to my advisor Professor Alison Kibler. You challenged me to become a stronger researcher and writer. Embarking on this process with you as my mentor has been a highlight of my F&M experience. I will miss our weekly meetings!

I would also like to thank my panel for their support and feedback: Professor Maria

Mitchell, Professor Dennis Deslippe, and Professor Greg Kaliss. Since the beginning of my time here at F&M — and in Professor Mitchell’s case, even at an accepted students’ day months before I started classes — each of you have encouraged me to follow my passions. I am forever grateful for all of your mentorship throughout my academic and personal development.

Throughout this process, I have been privileged to speak with many different scholars;

Thank you to Dr. Eileen Narcotta-Welp, Dr. Diane Williams, Dr. Rachel Allison, and Dr. Nicole

LaVoi for sharing their expertise and resources with me. Special thanks to Dr. Anna Baeth, who generously dedicated so much time and energy supporting and reviewing this project.

Thank you to my F&M Women’s Soccer teammates, especially the class of 2021, whose strength, perseverance, and friendship in the face of so many challenges throughout the past four years have been a constant source of inspiration for me. Special shoutout to major/minor twin

Elena Robustelli, who kept me accountable and made the long days of writing and reading fun.

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Finally, I am most grateful to my parents and to my sister Emily. Thank you for providing me with the tools and opportunities to fully express myself and my passions. My life would be completely different if it weren’t for your acceptance of my soccer-obsession, which included buying me books like The Vision of a Champion, committing entire weekends to drive me up and down the East Coast for games, and tolerating any and all weather as you cheered from the sidelines. From soccer to school and everything in between, your love and support over the past four years and beyond has given me a foundation to excel here at F&M.

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Introduction

I was getting attacked [in the press] for basically saying that men and women are

different and should be treated differently and of course the reaction anyone has to that

statement is that it’s a form of sexism … I don’t think for a second that we are unequal,

but I think we are unequal in certain respects … Does that mean we are unequal, well,

yes, but, no. Just different. It is a very difficult position to defend, not because I’m wrong

— I’m not wrong — but because it’s mis-interpreted.1

In this passage, Anson Dorrance, Head Coach of the University of North Carolina (UNC) women’s soccer team, struggles to answer two core feminist questions: are men and women inherently different? If so, does difference form the basis of inequality? Perhaps the hesitancy of

Dorrance’s answers is rooted in the contradictions within the world of women’s soccer that he did so much to build. On one hand, he is the architect of feminist successes, such as the United

States’ victory at 1991 Women’s World Cup. In addition, Dorrance’s 42-year coaching career at

UNC exemplifies the growth of women’s intercollegiate athletics after Title IX, which banned discrimination on the basis of sex in higher education. In both the World Cup and intercollegiate soccer, Dorrance championed women’s inclusion and excellence in a sports world that had previously excluded them. On the other hand, athletics remains sex segregated, affirms gender differences, and celebrates masculinity. Furthermore, the male-dominated and commercialized structure of college athletics creates a culture rife with athlete exploitation. Dorrance himself apologized when faced with sexual harassment allegations. As one of the most trusted voices in

American women’s soccer, Dorrance’s claims of difference and equality resonate across women’s sports and are a fitting introduction to feminist successes and the persistence of

1 Anson Dorrance, interview by Mary Jo Festle, June 11, 1991, interview L-0054, transcript, Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 37:33.

Goorevich 6 inequality in women’s sports today. This thesis focuses on Dorrance as a window into the larger world of gender and coaching and analyzes his advice for coaching girls as well as cases of coach-athlete sexual harassment and abuse to interrogate normative, male-constructed coaching practices and their implications for gender equality in sports.

Since 1979, Dorrance has been the Head Coach of the University of North Carolina

(UNC) women’s soccer program. Dorrance has led the team to 22 national championships, making him one of the winningest coaches in all of American intercollegiate athletics.2 In 1986,

Dorrance became the Head Coach of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team

(USWNT). He won the 1991 Women’s World Cup with the USWNT, beginning a legacy of world dominance that has resulted in the team winning four World Cup championships, with the most recent coming in 2019. Garnering over 1,000 wins, the National Coach of the Year title six times, and induction to the United Soccer Coaches’ Hall of Fame in 2018 are just a few of

Dorrance’s coaching accolades. By leading the nation’s most dominant college soccer program,

Dorrance has coached some of the most accomplished women’s soccer players in history: Mia

Hamm, Kristine Lilly, current U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) President Cindy Parlow, Heather

O’Reilly, Tobin Heath, Crystal Dunn, and Lucy Bronze are all internationally renowned players that developed their game while under Dorrance’s guidance. In fact, Dorrance has coached one- third of the players who have won the World Cup with the U.S. since 1991.3

With a long list of national championships, coaching accomplishments, and legacy of leading some of America’s best female athletes, Dorrance is one of the most prominent and

2 “Women’s Soccer: Anson Dorrance,” University of North Carolina Athletics, accessed March 18, 2021, https://goheels.com/sports/womens-soccer/roster/coaches/anson-dorrance/3544. 3 Suzanne Wrack, “Anson Dorrance: ‘We raise young women to not be competitive. What the heck is going on?,’” The Guardian, June 3, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/03/anson-dorrance-we-raise-young- women-to-not-be-competitive-what-the-heck-is-going-on.

Goorevich 7 trusted voices within American women’s sports. His famed “competitive cauldron,” a hyper- competitive coaching methodology, is considered to be the key to developing a winning mentality among his players. Although not having coached the USWNT since 1994, Dorrance’s methodologies are still credited with the USWNT’s success. For instance, after the USWNT

World Cup win in 2019 women’s soccer reporter Suzanne Wrack of English newspaper The

Guardian reported that “Dorrance is the brainchild of the winning mentality that sets apart the

U.S. women’s national team.”4 According to women’s soccer historian Eileen Narcotta-Welp,

Dorrance created the American psychological advantage that persists today by “carefully crafting his training sessions to develop a relentless, competitive atmosphere.”5 His coaching methodologies have had influence beyond the USWNT and UNC playing fields. Since 1996,

Dorrance has published two books espousing his coaching ideologies. Training Soccer

Champions, published in 1996, is aimed at current and aspiring coaches of women’s soccer to offer Dorrance’s insights, tactical advice, and philosophy on coaching women. The Vision of a

Champion, first published in 2002, is targeted towards young female players and gives advice and inspiration on how to succeed both on the soccer field and within life. Beginning in 2020,

Dorrance started the Vision of a Champion podcast where Dorrance speaks alongside his former players and other famed athletics figures to discuss his coaching philosophy.

Given that sport has historically been a masculine-dominated realm, women’s equality in athletics is a feminist goal.6 Because he has supported women’s participation in a previously

4 Wrack, “Anson Dorrance: ‘We raise young women to not be competitive. What the heck is going on?’” 5 Eileen Narcotta-Welp, “‘The Future is Feminine’: A Critical Cultural History of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team,” PhD diss., (University of Iowa, 2016), 35. 6 As feminist social activist Wilma Scott Heide states, women’s athletic participation is “a political statement of [women’s] humanity” that has strong potential to dismantle patriarchal holds on athletics as well as expand notions of what society deems as acceptable roles for women. See Wilma Scott Heide, “Feminism For a Sporting Future,” in Women and Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole A. Oglesby (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Lea & Febiger, 1978): 199.

Goorevich 8 male-dominated sphere, and because his women’s teams achieve such high levels of success, many, including Dorrance himself, consider him a feminist.7 Few scholars have examined

Dorrance’s feminist assertions and his seemingly feminist achievements. Dorrance has been the subject of sport psychology analyses, but these examples merely interview Dorrance on his leadership style.8 These studies do not question how Dorrance’s discourse may perpetuate sexist assumptions of women’s athletic capabilities and maintain women’s marginalization in athletics.

Women’s soccer historian Eileen Narcotta-Welp is the first scholar to interrogate how

Dorrance upholds sexism in soccer. Looking at media representations, not Dorrance’s publications, Narcotta-Welp argues that Dorrance is a “benevolent patriarch who imbued players with the knowledge to succeed in the international arena.”9 Being a benevolent patriarch maintains gender differences as well as assumptions of women’s athletic inferiority; the media frames Dorrance as a necessary guiding light to help the players obtain the skills for success.

Benevolent patriarchs are constructed as “grant[ing] young girls and women the right to play the masculine and foreign game of soccer.”10 When he was the Head Coach of the USWNT,

Dorrance upheld patriarchal power in athletics by reinforcing and endorsing “inequitable treatment of the women’s programs and its players.”11 Narcotta-Welp challenges “feminist” characterizations of Dorrance and exposes his maintenance of women’s subordination and gender biases. This thesis builds on Narcotta-Welp’s work by interrogating his coaching

7 Tim Crothers, The Man Watching: Anson Dorrance and the University of North Carolina Women’s Soccer Dynasty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010): 82. 8 Jin Wang and William F. Straub, “An Investigation into the Coaching Approach of a Successful World Class Soccer Coach: Anson Dorrance,” The Journal of Sports Science & Coaching 7, no. 3 (2012): 431-447 and John M. Silva, “Psychological Aspects of Competition: An Interview with Anson Dorrance Head Women’s Soccer Coach at The University of North Carolina,” Journal of Excellence, no. 11 (2006): 88-102. 9 Narcotta-Welp, “‘The Future is Feminine,’” 63. 10 Narcotta-Welp, “‘The Future is Feminine,’” 137. 11 Narcotta-Welp, “‘The Future is Feminine,’” 64.

Goorevich 9 ideologies, which have been widely influential on the growth and development of women’s soccer in America, and their consequences on perpetuating male hegemony in athletics.

Given Dorrance’s power and level of respect in women’s sports, it is alarming that he espouses disparaging viewpoints under the guise of “feminism.” This critical examination of the discourses within Dorrance’s trusted coaching principles reveals how normative, masculine- centered coaching ideologies perpetuate women’s subordination in athletics.12 Although many celebrate Dorrance’s unequivocal feminist successes, his writings reveal several contradictions; he fails to meet his proclaimed ideal of feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan’s “difference feminism,” and instead aligns with sport sociologist Michael Messner’s “soft essentialism.”

While at times expressing a liberal feminist viewpoint, which emphasizes removing barriers to women’s participation in public life, he also reinscribes stereotypical femininity and heteronormativity once women are outside of the athletic realm.13 Dorrance’s firm belief in women’s natural athletic inferiority and perpetuation of heteronormativity undermine his feminist claims. Dorrance maintains male hegemony in athletics by constructing the athletic field as a space where women should learn to become more like men by adopting a hyper-competitive perspective and relinquishing “natural” relationality which he sees as a detriment to athletic success. Dorrance’s players, however, interpret his coaching ideology in a more nuanced way and often resist Dorrance’s simplistic belief in women’s “natural” relationality and in the superiority of masculinity in athletics. Additionally, Dorrance’s settlement of a 1998 sexual

12 As sport and gender scholars Nicole LaVoi et al. state, exploring coaching discourse “helps develop a compelling picture that backlash, power relations, and resistance to females’ challenge of the existing gendered power order in sports might be at work.” Nicole M. LaVoi, Erin Becker, and Heather D. Maxwell, “‘Coaching Girls’: A Content Analysis of Best-Selling Popular Press Coaching Books,” Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal 15, no. 4 (2007): 9. 13 Liberal feminism is one of the mainstream strands of feminism. Broadly, liberal feminists believe that providing women with the same opportunities and rights as men will be enough to eliminate gender inequity. See Rosmarie Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” in Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2014), 58.

Goorevich 10 harassment lawsuit brought by two former players points to flaws in institutional responses to coaches’ abuses of power, particularly sexual harassment. In these ways, this case study of

Anson Dorrance exposes the successes and failures of Title IX more broadly; women have greater opportunities as athletes, but still face challenges in athletics such as gender discrimination in the coaching ranks, the belief that women are inferior athletes, sexual harassment and abuse, and the solidification of the idea that there is only one way to do sports — the masculine way.

Part I will explore scholarly commentary on gender differences in sport. This section will incorporate the views of scholars both in and out of athletics and will pay particular attention to feminist critiques of male-centric athletic models as well as highlight the dangers that assumptions of gender differences in athletics play in maintaining masculine hegemony. Part II will provide historical background on women’s athletics in America, especially the contributions of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) as well as the achievements and failures of Title IX. Part II will also describe how and why athletic leadership remains male- dominated. Part III begins the analysis of Dorrance’s coaching ideology. Using interviews and his coaching texts, Part III explains how Dorrance fails to live up to the ideals of feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan’s “difference feminism,” but instead aligns with sport sociologist

Michael Messner’s “soft essentialism.” At times, Dorrance espouses a liberal feminist perspective, but with strong inconsistencies. Dorrance’s players, however, often challenge and qualify his ideology, preferring to distance themselves from Dorrance’s belief in natural gender differences between men and women and expressing a more solidified liberal feminist stance.

Part IV uses Dorrance’s 1998 sexual harassment case as a window to analyzing institutional responses to coach-athlete abuse. Coach-athlete harassment protocols by American athletic

Goorevich 11 institutions do not recognize gendered power imbalances as a risk factor for abuse. Part V concludes this study by summarizing Dorrance’s mixed legacy; he is a storied coach who often receives high praise from many feminist female athletes for his immense influence on the success of American women’s soccer, yet ultimately protects masculine hegemony in athletics.

Dorrance’s example can help us reimagine an alternative model of coaching that does not subordinate women and instead prioritizes the complete, human development of all athletes.

Scholarly Commentary on Gender Differences in Sport

Should there be a special coaching philosophy for girls and women? Dorrance says yes, but many scholars disagree. Some scholars argue that claims of gender differences are false and damaging; they argue instead that men and women share common psychological traits. Drawing on this understanding of men’s and women’s overlapping skills, feminist sport scholars like

Carole Oglesby have argued that sport is best conceptualized as androgynous, not masculine.

According to sport historian Susan Cahn, the current athletic model is historically entrenched in attitudes that “naturalize the superiority of men and inferiority of women.”14 Sport and gender scholar Helen Jefferson Lenskyj argues that this male-constructed sport system has created a “chilly climate” for women in sports that is rife with homophobic, sexual, and racial harassment and presents female differences in sport socialization, such as a preference for de- emphasizing competition, as “female deficiencies.”15 Throughout his coaching philosophy,

14 Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Sport (Urbana, Chicago, Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 281. 15 Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, “Girl-friendly Sport and Female Values,” Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal 3, no. 1 (1994): 36.

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Dorrance aligns with this dominant view that women’s relational tendencies impede athletic success.

Dorrance’s coaching ideology is built on assumed psychological gender differences. Yet psychologist Janet Hyde argues that “males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables … men and women … are more alike than they are different.”16

Although there is evidence for physical differences between men and women, any claims of gender difference in psychological abilities comes not from evidence-based research, but

“experience and gender stereotypes.”17 According to Hyde, inflating psychological gender differences runs the risk of reifying gender hierarchies in society that maintain women’s subordination and discrimination throughout, including in athletics. As psychologist Susan Fiske argues, ideas of differences are determined by gendered stigmas that result in essentialism, or the idea that there is a singular, innate way of being a man or a woman. The presumption that female traits are inferior to men’s traits leads to discrimination against women in sports, but essentialism is even dangerous when assigned positive attributes, like the idea that all women are caring.

When a person falls short of their prescribed gender characteristics, it can lead to a sense of ambivalence and resentment.18

Although Hyde’s study does not focus specifically on the sport environment, feminist sport scholars have affirmed her argument that male and female athletes do not hold vastly different psychological or moral reasoning processes that would demand different treatment in coaching methodologies.19 For instance, exercise psychologist Jennifer Etnier asserts that there is

16 Janet Shibley Hyde, “The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,” American Psychologist 60, no. 6 (2005): 581. 17 Etnier, “Considerations in Coaching Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity,” 98. 18 Susan T. Fiske, “Venus and Mars or Down to Earth: Stereotypes and Realities of Gender Differences,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 5, no. 6 (2010): 689. 19 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 16 and Diane L. Gill, “History of Feminist Sport Psychology,” in Feminist Applied Sport Psychology: From Theory to Practice, ed. Leeja Carter (New York: Routledge, 2020): 25.

Goorevich 13

“very limited empirical evidence ... for gender differences in psychological factors related to sport performance.”20 To avoid perpetuating falsehoods and women’s marginalization that come with gender essentialism, many feminist sport theorists advocate against any ideologies of gender differences. According to feminist sport scholar Carole Oglesby, who was the president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), a sport model based on assumed gender differences does not challenge male hegemony in athletics and solidifies women’s subordination.21 Oglesby states that gender stereotypes in athletics need to be rejected because they are not supported by research. Like Hyde, Oglesby finds that men and women have more psychological overlap than clear and consistent differences.22 Stereotypes also have damaging potential to cause the “alienation of self, from self” for both men and women.23 As both men and women are inevitably unable to fulfill the prescribed masculine and feminine ideal, it leads to internal feelings of denial and anxiety as well as the potential to experience overt sexism and discrimination within society to those who transgress traditional masculine/feminine roles.24

Oglesby and other feminist sport scholars envision a structure of “androgynous sport” to break down harmful gender stereotypes and male dominance in sports. Androgynous sport is an alternative to sports’ ongoing celebration of hegemonic masculinity and a repudiation of anything associated with femininity.25 An androgynous sport model emphasizes that sport is not

20 Jennifer L. Etnier, “Considerations in Coaching Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity,” Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal 20, no. 1 (2011): 98. 21 Judith R. Holland and Carole Oglesby, “Women in Sport: The Synthesis Begins,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 445 (1979): 80. 22 Carole A. Oglesby, “The Masculinity/Femininity Game: Called On Account Of…” in Women and Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole A. Oglesby (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1978): 78. 23 Oglesby, “The Masculinity/Femininity Game,” 80. 24 Oglesby, “The Masculinity/Femininity Game,” 80-82. 25 Carole Oglesby, “Epilogue,” in Sport, Men, and the Gender Order, eds. Michael A. Messner and Donald F. Sabo (Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics Books, 1990): 244.

Goorevich 14 just training for stereotypically masculine characteristics; the reality of success in athletics is dependent on both men and women experiencing “the full complement of human qualities in athletic competition” such as independence and dominance as well as dependence and subordination.26 Sports, thus, should not only prioritize the development of so-called masculine characteristics like aggression and assertiveness, but also so-called feminine characteristics like expressiveness and obedience.27 Seeing sport as a realm to develop all human qualities negates the need to delineate between “male” and “female” values, creating an androgynous ideal. In androgynous sport, also sometimes called gynandrous sport, participants “are aware of choosing vulnerability out of hard-earned strength … [and] persist in a sport journey towards the ultimate experience of freedom and ecstasy through processes of mastery, control, and intense concentration.”28

Additionally, androgynous sport will reinscribe value into “feminine” characteristics that male-centric athletics typically resists. Psychologist Carol Gilligan argues that society should adopt a “nonhierarchical vision of human connection” where both men and women can engage in and benefit from ethics of attachment as well as individualism.29 As Oglesby puts it, androgynous sport “create[s] a sport environment wherein the values which have been associated with the ‘feminine principle’ are recognized and honored in balance with the celebrated values of achievement, assertiveness, and dominance.”30 Androgynous sport offers a way to move beyond gender differences as well as the potential to deconstruct male hegemony that keeps women subordinated in athletics. Sport psychologist Leslee Fisher builds on Gilligan and Oglesby’s

26 Oglesby, “The Masculinity/Femininity Game,” 84. 27 Oglesby, “The Masculinity/Femininity Game,” 84. 28 Holland and Oglesby, “Women in Sport: The Synthesis Begins,” 86. 29 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 62 and 156. 30 Oglesby, “Epilogue: The Reality,” 256.

Goorevich 15 theories in order to assert the equal importance of an ethic of care and an ethic of justice in competitive athletics.31 Valuing an ethic of care in athletics has the potential to deconstruct hegemonic masculinity as the premier objective for athletic success, to create safer environments for athletes where they are free from psychological and physical abuse, and to prioritize athletes’ moral development rather than competitive success.32

Achieving the vision of androgynous sport could dismantle systems of sex-segregated athletics that inherently marginalize women and maintain gendered dichotomies. When society is rid of gender stereotypes of the abilities of male and female athletes, any athlete will be able to

“move into sports which suit them, rather than having to fit themselves into the demands of narrowly defined ‘sport types’” or abilities.33 In reality, physical athleticism lies on a continuum where many women “routinely outperform men.”34 As gender and sports scholar Mary Jo Kane asserts, there is “empirical evidence that many women can outperform many men … and that

[women] can possess physical attributes such as strength and speed in greater capacities than do many men.”35 Gender scholar Jackie Hudson argues that women’s perceived physical inferiority can be attributed to historical disparities in athletic opportunities and resources compared to men.

Women can close athleticism gaps with men once training and coaching opportunities become equal.36 Additionally, an androgynous sport model will find value not just in size in strength, but in the ability to “innovate techniques and styles from a storehouse of knowledge and

31 Leslee Fisher, “‘Where are Your Women?’ The Challenge to Care in the Future of Sport,” Sex Roles 74 (2016): 379. 32 Fisher, “‘Where are Your Women,’” 378-9. 33 Carole A. Oglesby, “Epilogue: The Reality,” in Women’s Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole A. Oglesby (Philadelphia; Lea & Febiger, 1978): 256. 34 Mary Jo Kane, “Resistance/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary: Exposing Sport as a Continuum,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 19, no. 2 (1995): 193. 35 Kane, “Resistance/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary,” 197. 36 Jackie Hudson, “Physical Parameters Used For Female Exclusion From Law Enforcement and Athletics,” in Women’s Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole A. Oglesby (Philadelphia; Lea & Febiger, 1978): 52.

Goorevich 16 skillfulness” in order to reach competitive success.37 The vision of androgynous sport, thus, will be an environment where all athletes find value in their respective strengths, regardless of their gender. In this way, by challenging the gender binary, an androgynous model will ideally provide an inclusive arena for transgender and non-binary athletes.38 Ultimately, androgynous sport challenges the male-centric model of athletics that will always maintain gender essentialism and assumptions of women’s inferiority in athletics.

Depending on gender differences is a weak argument for pursuing gender equality in any male-dominated realm, including sport. In her study on gender equality in judicial selections, political scientist Sally Kenney states that basing an argument for increasing the number of women judges on gender differences, such as asserting that all women are morally different than men, is not only empirically weak and unfounded, but also runs the risk of maintaining

“stereotypical differences [that were] exactly what feminists were fighting to eradicate.”39

Highlighting differences “often leads to women’s disadvantage and exclusion.”40 Rather than depend on assumptions of gender differences that perpetuate stereotypes, Kenney suggests that the argument for more women judges should be experience-based; women who experience the world as women have a better understanding of the specific challenges and situations facing

37 Holland and Oglesby, “Women in Sport: The Synthesis Begins,” 86. 38 At the time of writing, five states have banned transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams and 34 more states have similar bills under consideration. Supporters of anti-trans policies argue that transgender girls, due to having higher levels of testosterone, will have a competitive advantage over cis-gender girls. There is no scientific evidence, however, that proves that transgender women have athletic advantages. Anti-trans policies discriminate against trans-athletes and women by reinforcing sex-segregated systems that uphold male hegemony. See Elizabeth Sharrow, “Five states ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports. But segregating sports by sex hurts all girls,” The Washington Post, April 16, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/16/five-states-ban- transgender-girls-girls-school-sports-segregating-sports-by-sex-hurts-all-girls/, Elizabeth Sharrow, “‘Female Athlete’ Politic: Title IX and the Neutralization of Sex Difference in Public Policy,” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5, no. 1 (2017): 46-66 and Bethany Alice Jones et al., “Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies,” Sports Medicine 47 (2017): 701-716. 39 Sally Kenney, Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter (New York: Routledge, 2012): 8. 40 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 12.

Goorevich 17 women compared to men.41 Additionally, arguments for more women judges should be based on fairness and representation; a diverse bench strengthens the legitimacy of the judiciary by having a bench that more accurately represents the entire population.42 Kenney also asserts that despite assumptions of all women judges being feminists and deciding cases differently than men being factually incorrect, the presence of women judges is radical in and of itself:

The presence of women disrupts the normal assumption that heterosexual white men are

the only citizens capable of performing the core ritual of rendering objective judgment,

that only privileged men are naturally suited to assume authority on behalf of the state

and to exercise their patriarchal care on behalf of all of society.43

Although Kenney focuses on women in the judiciary, her non-essentialist argument provides a model for how we can argue for the value of gender equality in sports, particularly in leadership positions, without depending on gender differences.

Historical Background: AIAW, Title IX, and Continued Male Dominance in Sports

Title IX is not the beginning of women’s sports history. As historian Susan Cahn explains, women have been present in organized athletics since the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the nineteenth century, athletics has been associated with masculinity.

The growth of athletic opportunities for men came from the rise of industrialization, the expansion of leisure time, and the growing belief that healthy and athletic citizens formed a stronger nation.44 Although having marginal opportunities to participate in sports, women —

41 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 16. 42 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 178-9. 43 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 176. 44 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 11 and Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice: Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

Goorevich 18 mostly those who were white and upper class — have engaged in intercollegiate athletic competition and physical education programs since the late nineteenth century.45 Their opportunities were in a separate sphere, guided by different principles than men’s athletics, such as a focus on education and cooperation.

By the 1970s, women’s presence in athletics grew to include control over the national association governing women’s intercollegiate athletics, The Association for Intercollegiate

Athletics for Women (AIAW), founded in 1971. It is important to focus on the AIAW because when the NCAA overtook the AIAW after Title IX, women lost status as coaches and administrators, even though NCAA athletics remained sex segregated. AIAW was an alternative to the NCAA’s athletic governance structure and included an athlete-centered model and feminist approach to college athletics. The AIAW is subsumed by the NCAA but its feminist ideas about sport remain relevant today. Their radical model provides an example where we can reimagine athletics to be more inclusive, less abusive, and more beneficial to all athletes. As we begin to analyze Anson Dorrance and his expression of the normative, male-centric coaching ideology, remembering the theories and ideas posited by the AIAW can inspire a new way forward that prioritizes athletes, their identities, and experiences instead of winning at all costs.

The AIAW arose out of a long-standing debate on who would have the right to control the development of women’s sport. Women’s physical educators were averse to the male- constructed intercollegiate athletic system that prioritized commercial gain rather than athletes’ educational commitments and moral development.46 The AIAW created an alternative sport model that still maintained competitiveness, but was “less commercialized, less exploitative,

45 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 16. 46 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 56.

Goorevich 19 less expensive, and more student-centered.”47 The AIAW’s primary goal was to foster women’s athletic excellence by helping “schools extend their sports programs for women,” without compromising the athletes’ education.48 As a sports governing body, the AIAW was responsible for publishing rules and regulations for sports, scheduling competition, representing women’s intercollegiate athletics, and conducting the annual women’s national athletic championships.49

The development of the AIAW aligned with feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s and

Title IX’s 1972 passage. Due to Title IX, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of sex in higher education, more institutions increased their funding of women’s sports programs and the

AIAW grew quickly. In 1971 the AIAW’s first national women’s athletic championships had just 100 participants. In the 1972-1973 athletic season, 386 colleges were members of the AIAW and could participate in national championships in eight sports.50 By 1978, the AIAW had 659 member colleges and 60,000 athletes.51 Into the 1980s, the AIAW reached its peak membership of around 1,000 institutions, sponsoring national championships in 19 different sports.52

The AIAW constructed a radical alternative to the male-constructed and male-privileged collegiate sport model. Although not explicitly feminist, the AIAW had a “practical dedication to the principles of feminism.53 For instance, paramount to the AIAW was the protection of women’s control and leadership of women’s sports. The AIAW feared that merging men’s and women’s sports under a single athletic department or organizational body would lead to the demise of women in coaching and leadership positions as well as unequal resource allocation

47 Festle, Playing Nice, 225. 48 Festle, Playing Nice, 110. 49 Festle, Playing Nice, 111. 50 Festle, Playing Nice, 122. 51 Festle, Playing Nice, 178. 52 Ann Uhlir, “Political Victim: The Dream That Was The A.I.A.W.,” New York Times, July 11, 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/11/sports/political-victim-the-dream-that-was-the-aiaw.html. 53 Festle, Playing Nice, 137.

Goorevich 20 between male and female programs.54 Former president of the AIAW Donna Lopiano wrote in

1982, when addressing the organization’s demise, that losing the AIAW also meant the loss of women students, coaches, and administrators as independent voices in the conduct of their own programs.”55

Additionally, the AIAW revolutionized athletics through its educational model. The

AIAW criticized the NCAA’s hyper-commercialized practices of caring more about winning competitions instead of the educational and moral development of its athletes: “schools that focused on winning wrongly put the well-being of their athletic program before that of the student.”56 To implement an educational model, the AIAW discouraged recruitment and banned athletic scholarships. This decision stirred controversy for not allowing women to experience the same benefits that male NCAA athletes enjoyed.57 AIAW leaders believed that when an athletic program depends on revenue and attempts to lure athletes through scholarships and recruiting, it would ultimately lead to abuse and exploitation of the athlete’s education.58 In 1973, the AIAW allowed the use of athletic scholarships, failing to challenge what leaders viewed as exploitation from recruiting.59 The AIAW implemented other structural measures to establish their educational model; Lopiano wrote that the AIAW intentionally avoided “excesses” and was

“more financially sane in keeping the cost of providing equal opportunity women’s athletic programs at lower levels than the escalating budgets of men’s programs.”60

54 Festle, Playing Nice, 167. 55 Donna Lopiano, “What NCAA Control Could Mean to Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics,” Box 10, Folder “AIAW dissolution proposal, 1982,” N. Peggy Burke Papers, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 3. 56 Festle, Playing Nice, 116. 57 Festle, Playing Nice, 116. 58 Judith Miller, “AIAW Champions Women’s Athletics,” Change 7, no. 4 (1975): 18. 59 Festle, Playing Nice, 123. 60 Lopiano, “What NCAA Control Could Mean to Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics,” 2-3.

Goorevich 21

A democratic leadership structure that included athlete representation was key to the

AIAW’s educational, athlete-centered model. The AIAW “wanted to be democratic from top to bottom.”61 In contrast to the NCAA meetings, the AIAW’s delegate assemblies prioritized fair and open discussion of every aspect of the regulations and philosophy; as historian Mary Jo

Festle describes, “presidents bent over backward to make sure opposing viewpoints were heard.”62 Other radical changes implemented by the AIAW included student-athlete representation in decision-making and the creation of a Student-Athletes’ Bill of Rights. This document emphasized the importance of the athletes’ education, established expectations for equal opportunity and treatment among athletes, and guaranteed that athletes have “peer representation on appropriate institutional, regional, and national decision-making committees.”63 Lopiano regretted the loss of “voice and vote to student athletes in the formation of rules and regulations under which they are governed” when the AIAW disbanded.64 Unlike the NCAA, the AIAW created a Code of Ethics to “promote dignity in sport.”65 Coaches, athletes, administrators, officials, and spectators all had clear behavioral expectations that were centered on fostering the educational value of athletics, rather than a win-at-all-costs philosophy.

The AIAW did not enforce or establish any consequences for breaking the Code. However, the fact that the AIAW outlined codes of conduct for how their alternative sport model should be practiced is still notable. Many people have called for athletic organizations to adopt a similar

61 Festle, Playing Nice, 125. 62 Festle, Playing Nice, 125. 63 “Appendix G: 1982 Students-Athletes’ Bill of Rights,” in Suzanne Willey, “The Governance of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics: Association for Intercollegiate Athletic for Women (AIAW), 1976-1982” (PhD Diss, Indiana University, 1996), 282. 64 Lopiano, “What NCAA Control Could Mean to Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics,” 2. 65 “AIAW Code of Ethics,” AIAW Handbook-Directory 1975-1976, Box 269, Folder “AIAW Handbook – Directories, 1975-1978,” Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland, 33.

Goorevich 22

Code of Ethics or conduct today to protect the safety, well-being, development, and enjoyment of athletes. The NCAA still does not have such a code.66

The AIAW Code of Ethics for Coaches describes the purpose of a coach as educational and centered on athletes’ development and well-being. Rather than defining success as a winning record, the code told coaches to “influence players in selecting and developing [players’] personal values and desirable qualities. The philosophy, attitude, and behavior of the coach should exemplify quality human characteristics.”67 The Code provided coaches with a 26-point list for “ethical considerations.” In addition to teaching players technical knowledge for athletic excellence, a coach has a duty to exhibit and encourage respect, fair play, and high standards of

“appearance, conduct, language, and sportsmanship.”68 The Code framed coaches as educators, who seek to “recognize the uniqueness and worth of each individual,” “develop understanding among players … encourage qualities of self-discipline, cooperation, self-confidence, leadership, courtesy, honesty, initiative,” through the “teachable moments” provided by competitive sport.69

The Code never mentions competitive success as an expectation of the coach. The Code of

Ethics for Athletes and Administrators also cultivate an educational ethos. For athletes, the opportunity to play sports are framed as an experience that “provides ways in which each

[player] may know herself and grow emotionally, socially, and intellectually.”70 Administrators are similarly instructed to prioritize the well-being, safety, and educational fulfillment of the athletes, rather than ensure a winning record. This athlete-centered, educational approach is a

66 D. Lopiano, G. Gurney, F. Polite, B. Porto, D.B. Ridpath, A. Sack, and A. Zimbalist, The Drake Group Position Statement: Athletic Governance Organization and Institutional Responsibilities Related to Professional Coaching Conduct, The Drake Group, 2016, 2, http://thedrakegroup.org/. 67 “AIAW Code of Ethics,” 34. 68 “AIAW Code of Ethics,” 34. 69 “AIAW Code of Ethics,” 34-5. 70 “AIAW Code of Ethics,” 38.

Goorevich 23 direct challenge to the win-at-all-cost sport model. Establishing an AIAW-inspired Code of

Ethics does not contradict the ideals of competition, but rather articulates principles to ensure that all athletes prioritize their education and accrue the developmental, social, and health benefits that intercollegiate sport provides.

Ultimately, the NCAA’s money and power overtook the AIAW as the governing body for women’s intercollegiate sport. Prior to sponsoring athletic championships for women in 1980, the NCAA was one of Title IX’s biggest opponents.71 Failing in its effort to challenge Title IX, the NCAA decided that the best case to protect male hegemony would be to assume control of women’s intercollegiate sports. Although the AIAW had successfully sponsored 750 different athletic championships across the country for over 900 institutions in 1980, the NCAA began offering championships for women’s athletic competitions.72 The NCAA offered money and exposure that the AIAW could not; the ability to pay for team’s travel expenses, multi-million dollar television packages, and opportunities to accrue profit off of their women athletes attracted institutions to abandon the AIAW.73 Despite attempts by the AIAW to sue the NCAA for antitrust violations, the AIAW could not survive and stopped operations in 1984.74

The NCAA takeover had significant consequences for women’s sports. First, women lost the power to shape and control women’s athletic opportunities as coaches and athletic directors.

Sport and gender scholars Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter found that in 1972 more than

71 NCAA officials found government mandates for institutions to provide equal opportunities to women athletes threatening to NCAA dominance and male hegemony in athletics. Specifically, the NCAA believed that men's programs would be damaged by being forced to endure budget cuts, scholarship reductions, and the loss of other resources if institutions had to also fund women’s programs. The NCAA even lobbied in Congress to pass the Tower Amendment, which would have exempted athletic programs from obeying by Title IX regulations as well as privilege revenue-producing sports: men’s football and men’s basketball. See Cahn, Coming on Strong, 255 and Festle, Playing Nice, 177. 72 Cahn, Coming On Strong, 256. 73 Cahn, Coming On Strong, 257. 74 Cahn, Coming On Strong, 257.

Goorevich 24

90% of women’s athletic teams were coached by women.75 By 1984, only 53.8% of women’s athletic teams had a woman coach. Additionally, 86.4% of women’s intercollegiate athletic programs were led by a male athletic director in 1984.76 Although women’s intercollegiate athletic programs did benefit from the greater publicity offered by the NCAA, Festle argues that as men subsumed leadership positions of women’s athletics, it reinscribed unequal power dynamics where women faced subordination in athletics.77

Second, as women’s leadership eroded, so did the AIAW’s athlete-centered, educational model. Succumbing to the power of the commercialized athletic structure, athletes lost out on protections offered by a Student Athletes’ Bill of Rights, prioritization of athletes’ education, ethical considerations offered by a Code of Conduct for Coaches and Administrators, as well as a voice on decision-making bodies. Additionally, the AIAW’s demise meant the loss of the potential opportunities for the athlete-centered, educational model to improve not just women’s athletics, but also remedy the negative effects of exploitation and commercialization that continue to stain men’s sports.78

Although not explicitly-feminist, the AIAW was clearly inspired by feminist voices. A sport-for-all philosophy, holistic approach to athlete development that prioritized educational and moral growth, and a democratic decision-making process had the potential to challenge the masculine-centric sport governance system that marginalizes women athletes and exploits all athletes.79 The AIAW had offered not just a way to combat sexism in athletics, but also a way to

75 Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal, National Study, Thirty- Seven Year Update 1977-2014, (2014), 18, www.acostacarpenter.org. 76 Festle, Playing Nice, 224. 77 Festle, Playing Nice, 225. 78 Lopiano, “What NCAA Control Could Mean to Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics,” 3. 79 Carole A. Oglesby, “Women and the Sport Governance System,” in Women’s Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole A. Oglesby (Philadelphia; Lea & Febiger, 1978): 253.

Goorevich 25 promote “ethical conduct, fair play, and the achievement of human betterment through sport.”80

Although it collapsed in 1984, the AIAW remains relevant today as activists seek models to challenge normative, male-centric athletic structures and coaching practices that perpetuate women’s subordination in athletics.

Title IX is the most impactful piece of legislation for women’s sports. It does not, however, completely challenge women’s inequality in athletics. Passed in 1972 as a part of the

Educational Amendments Act to end discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded educational institutions, Title IX is one of the biggest achievements of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Although the law does not ever mention athletics specifically, its call for ending discrimination on the basis of sex in all aspects of an educational institution meant that schools had to provide “equal accommodation” for male and female athletic programs.81 Title

IX-mandated expansions in women’s sports funding in educational institutions ushered in huge increases in women’s athletic opportunities; in 1970, before Title IX, the average number of women’s varsity teams per university or college was 2.5. In 2014, 37 years after the passage of

Title IX, the average number of women’s varsity teams offered by an institution was 8.83.82

Additionally, in 1970 only 16,000 women participated in intercollegiate sports. As of 2014, there

80 Oglesby, “Women and the Sport Governance System,” 254. 81 Deborah Brake, Getting in the Game: Title IX and the Women’s Sports Revolution (New York: NYU Press, 2010) 68. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) created the Title IX compliance guidelines for athletic departments. To increase the number of female participants and teams, HEW took an affirmative action-type plan called the Three-Prong Test. To be Title IX compliant, an institution must fulfill one “prong” in this list of three: 1) provide intercollegiate level participation opportunities for male and female students in numbers substantially proportionate to their respective enrollments; 2) show a history of continuing practice of program expansion which is demonstrably responsive to the developing interest and abilities of the members of the [underrepresented] sex; or 3) demonstrate that the interests and abilities of the members of [the underrepresented] sex have been fully and effectively accommodated by the present program. Legal scholar Deborah Brake regards the Three-Prong Test as a departure from liberal feminism and the most radical aspect of Title IX; it is in line with “different voice” feminism that recognizes and accommodates gender differences and demands equality of results rather than espousing a notion of a gender-neutral process. See Brake, Getting in the Game, 68-70 and Festle, Playing Nice, 187. 82 Acosta and Carpenter, “Women in Intercollegiate Sport,” 5.

Goorevich 26 are over 200,000 women intercollegiate athletes.83 Soccer experienced the largest boost in participation from Title IX; in 1977, less than three out of a hundred schools had women’s soccer teams. In 2014, the number of educational institutions with a women’s soccer program had jumped to more than nine out of 10.84 Overall, girls and women account for 40% of all interscholastic and intercollegiate sport participants today.85

Title IX transformed social constructions of gender and brought greater attention to the

“cultural constraints under which women live their lives.”86 Title IX facilitated opportunities for girls and women to experience a host of social, physical, and developmental benefits found in sports, like greater health and enhanced self-esteem. Importantly, women’s increased participation in sports challenged stereotypes of women’s athletic and physical inferiority compared to men and restructured cultural notions of idealized femininity to “applaud strength, confidence, and athletic prowess” rather than passivity.87

Despite increases in women’s sport participation and challenges to stereotypical gender expectations, male-dominance within athletics remains firmly intact. As gender and sport scholars Cheryl Cooky and Nicole LaVoi state, “[W]e are far from a world of gender equality in

American sport.”88 One of the consequences of Title IX is the vast gender disparity in coaching and athletic leadership roles. Title IX protects male-control over the sport landscape.

Homophobia in sports remains a barrier to gender equality in athletics, keeping women and girls out of athletic participation and leadership opportunities. Title IX also maintains sex-segregation

83 Acosta and Carpenter, “Women in Intercollegiate Sport,” 1. 84 Acosta and Carpenter, “Women in Intercollegiate Sport,” 2. 85 Cheryl Cooky and Nicole LaVoi, “Playing but Losing: Women’s Sports After Title IX,” Contexts 11, no. 1 (2012): 43. 86 Brake, Getting in the Game, 7. 87 Brake, Getting in the Game, 6-7. 88 Cheryl Cooky and Nicole M. LaVoi, “Playing but Losing: Women’s Sports after Title IX,” Contexts 11, no. 1 (2012): 43.

Goorevich 27 in sport, which leaves the widespread belief of women’s athletic inferiority unchallenged, resulting in further subordination. Media coverage is also an area rife with gender inequities; news coverage of women’s athletics is minimal and women athletes are often sexualized or trivialized as illegitimate athletes within media portrayals.89 Alarmingly, many schools are not

Title IX compliant. According to data collected by women’s sports advocacy group Champion

Women in conjunction with the California Women’s Law Center, in 2020 90% of universities and colleges with athletic programs are not Title IX compliant.90

Women’s loss of control over women’s athletic programs is an unintended consequence of Title IX.91 Before Title IX, women’s collegiate athletic programs were run almost exclusively by women. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter found that 1972 more than 90% of women’s athletic teams were coached by women.92 These coaching positions were largely occupied by women physical educators and were often unpaid.93 When Title IX was passed, however, funding for women’s athletic programs increased. Additionally, oversight of women’s sports became integrated with men’s athletic departments. As the coaching positions in women’s sports grew more lucrative and prestigious, men began to fill the positions. The expanded athletic opportunities provided by Title IX developed a “dual career track” where men could apply to coaching positions in both men’s and women’s sports. This strategy contributed to men’s success

89 Cooky and LaVoi, “Playing but Losing,” 44. See Cheryl Cooky, Michael Messner, and Robin H. Hextrum, “Women Play Sport, But Not On TV: A Longitudinal Study of Televised News Media,” Communication & Sport 1, no. 3 (2013): 203-230. 90 “Title IX in 2020,” Champion Women, accessed April 16, 2021, https://titleixschools.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/06/Title-IX-in-2020.pdf. According to legal scholar Jayma M. Meyer, a school’s failure to comply with Title IX can result in a loss of federal funding. However, Meyer reports that since Title IX has been enforced, no school has ever lost federal funding for failure to abide by Title IX regulations. See Jayma M. Meyer, “It’s On The NCAA: A Playbook for Eliminating Sexual Assault,” Syracuse Law Review 67: 364. 91 Mary Jo Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” in Women in Sports Coaching eds. Nicole M. LaVoi and Anna Baeth (New York: Routledge, 2016), 35. 92 Acosta and Carpenter, “Women in Intercollegiate Sport,” 18. 93 Acosta and Carpenter, “Women in Intercollegiate Sport,” 18.

Goorevich 28 at holding the majority of coaching positions on women’s teams sports.94 In 2014, only 43.4% of women’s teams were coached by women.95 For the 2019-2020 athletic season, the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport found that women held just 42.3% of head coaching positions of women’s NCAA Division 1 teams.96 Within soccer, women occupied just 27.2% of head coaching positions for NCAA Division 1 women’s soccer teams.97 Women also coach 2-

3.5% of men’s athletic teams. When combining both women’s and men’s athletic programs, women only make up around 20% of head coaches of collegiate sports98 and hold 22.3% of

Athletic Director positions across all NCAA divisions as of 2014.99 Intercollegiate athletics remains firmly under male control.

Gender-neutral language within Title IX encourages the decline in women’s leadership.

According to legal scholar Deborah Brake, Title IX’s employment guidelines follow a gender- blind structure: “as long as sex is not consciously considered in the selection process, no gender discrimination has occurred in the eyes of the law.”100 This means that when athletic directors hire coaches, male candidates who benefit from a historic pattern of mass male sports participation opportunities, stereotypical associations of sport leadership with masculinity, and access to vast “old boys networks” are often viewed as the best candidates. Additionally, Title

IX’s gender-blind guidelines support a practice of homologous reproduction. Homologous reproduction is when dominant groups systemically hire those similar to them. Sport and gender

94 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 39. 95 Acosta and Carpenter, Women in Intercollegiate Sport, 18. 96 N.M. LaVoi, C. Boucher & G. Sirek, Head Coaches of Women’s Collegiate Teams: A Comprehensive Report on NCAA Division-I Institutions, 2019-20 (Minneapolis: The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, University of Minnesota, 2020), 3. 97 Acosta and Carpenter, Women in Intercollegiate Sport, 24. 98 Brake, Getting in the Game, 202. 99 Acosta and Carpenter, Women in Intercollegiate Sport, 37. 100 Brake, Getting in the Game, 203.

Goorevich 29 scholars Nicole LaVoi, Julia Dutove, Mary Jo Kane and Jane Marie Stangl all find that as most athletic directors are men, a system of homologous reproduction occurs where men, due to internal sexist biases, hire other men similar to them. Without affirmative action measures to address these internal biases, men will continue to be privileged in the coach hiring process, maintaining women’s marginalization in the profession.101 Therefore, Title IX does not provide a tool for advancing women in coaching ranks.

Stereotypes of women’s inferior athletic and leadership abilities lead to gender bias in coach hiring practices. Title IX does not challenge or undermine the “ideological and structural barriers created — and vigilantly maintained by gender role stereotypes.”102 As sports are historically a male-dominated preserve, there is a widely-held assumption that men are athletically superior and hold greater competence about sports. Stereotypes of men’s “natural” athletic superiority perpetuate notions of women’s inferiority, incompetence, and inability to hold positions of power.103 The stereotype that “women aren’t qualified” remains pervasive.104

Additionally, leadership and coaching attributes, like assertiveness, have traditionally been associated with masculinity: “gender role stereotypes perpetuate the culturally embedded belief that what it means to be female and what it means to be a leader is a contradiction.”105 As sports, coaching, and leadership are all inextricably linked with masculinity, men are often

101 Nicole M. LaVoi and Julia K. Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” Sports Coaching Review 1, no. 1 (2012): 27 and Mary Jo Kane and Jane Marie Stangl, “Employment Patterns of Female Coaches in Men’s Athletics: Tokenism and Marginalization as Reflections of Occupational Sex- Segregation,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 15, no. 1 (1991): 21-41. 102 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 37. 103 Kane and Stangl, “Employment Patterns of Female Coaches in Men’s Athletics: Tokenism and Marginalization as Reflections of Occupational Sex-Segregation,” 23. 104 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 38. 105 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 40.

Goorevich 30 unconsciously perceived as “the best” coaching option by athletic directors.106 Sport Sociologist

Michael Messner also posits to a “sex-category sorting process” wherein women’s decisions not to coach and fulfil a “team mom” role in youth sports and men’s choices to coach are determined and shaped by prevailing gender assumptions.107 The sex-category sorting process reinforces gender essentialism and the belief that men are naturally suited to sport and leadership, thereby deterring women from athletic coaching roles. Ultimately, gender ideologies and stereotypes prove to be barriers that keep women from sport leadership.

Women face discrimination within coaching jobs. The Women’s Sports Foundation found that women coaches experience a lack of respect from male colleagues and challenges to their coaching competence as they attempt to navigate “a culture that is both hypercompetitive and masculine.”108 Other studies also found that gender assumptions of male superiority in athletics leads to men having a professional advantage in coaching; men are more likely to be promoted and obtain salary increases.109 Women coaches also feel that they face greater potential for retaliation if they complain about a gender bias situation and are often unable to openly voice opinions within athletic department decision-making processes.110 Stereotypes of femininity and masculinity mean that women coaches can be evaluated differently, and even more harshly, than their male counterparts. Women coaches find themselves in a “double bind” when negotiating the contradictory expectations of femininity that are necessary to being accepted as a woman and standards of masculinity that are deemed appropriate for competent coaching. This double bind

106 N.M. LaVoi and M.K.Wasend, Athletic Administration Best Practices of Recruitment, Hiring and Retention of Female Collegiate Coaches (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, University of Minnesota, 2018), 20-21. 107 Michael Messner, It’s All for the Kids (California: University of California Press, 2009), 47. 108 E.J. Staurowsky et al., The Women’s Sports Foundation Report Brief: Her Life Depends on It III & College Coaching and Athletic Administration (East Meadow, NY: Women’s Sports Foundation, 2015), 4. 109 Don Sabo et al., Beyond X’s and O’s: Gender Bias and Coaches of Women’s College Sports Executive Summary (East Meadow, NY: Women’s Sports Foundation, 2016), 5. 110 Sabo et al., Beyond X’s and O’s, 5.

Goorevich 31 creates an environment of further gender discrimination because women coaches can be

“penalized for not acting in traditionally feminine ways when displaying masculine leadership skills such as assertiveness and authority.”111

Many organizational structures also create barriers to equality in coaching. As Messner describes, coaching and athletic administration is often dominated by an “old-boys network” that provides crucial informal knowledge for “how things really work.”112 Women often find themselves ostracized from these networks; this male network “consolidates the legacy of patriarchy” and creates an environment that “marginalizes and controls women.”113 To encourage more women in sports leadership, administrators need to cultivate women’s support networks that help to recruit and empower female coaches.114 Furthermore, as women are traditionally the primary care-takers in their families,115 developing family-friendly policies within an athletic department such as covering childcare costs, paid maternity leave, and compensation for family members or caretakers to accompany teams on weekend road trips will

“attract and retain high-level female coaches.”116 Additionally, gender and coaching scholar

Leanne Norman documents how there are an “inadequate number of opportunities to coach, to develop, and to be educated.”117 Coach education programs are often inadequate as well as

111 Vicki D. Schull, “Female athletes’ conceptions of leadership: coaching and gender implications,” in Women in Sports Coaching, eds. Nicole M. LaVoi and Anna Baeth (New York: Routledge, 2016), 129. 112 Messner, It’s All for the Kids, 74. 113 Leanne Norman, “Feeling Second Best: Elite Women Coaches’ Experiences,” Sociology of Sport Journal 27 (2010): 97. 114 LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 26. 115 Traditional family responsibilities further disrupt the lack of access to beneficial support networks for career advancement. Since women are often the primary caretakers, studies have shown that balancing work and family is a significant challenge for women coaches, especially due to the reality of athletic competitions and practices taking place in the evenings and over weekends. See LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 24. 116 LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 26. 117 Norman, “Feeling Second Best: Elite Women Coaches’ Experiences,” 99-100. This lack of adequate training for female coaches functions as an organizational barrier as it perpetuates women’s feelings of being undervalued, under-supported, unprepared, as well as blocks opportunities for further advancement in coaching.

Goorevich 32 hypermasculine spaces that make women feel marginalized.118 Providing low-cost and flexible coach training options, especially more female-only and female-led coach education programs, is a tangible way to encourage women to enter coaching careers.

Many scholars have stressed the importance of increasing the number of women in athletic leadership positions.119 One of the primary arguments for supporting women coaches is to provide “exposure to female role models” that can “challenge stereotypic values and belief systems that women don’t possess the ‘right stuff’ when it comes to leadership skills.”120 Having visible and widespread access to strong, confident women leaders as role models is proven to positively affect younger female athletes’ self-perceptions.121 Without an increase of female coaches, society will be unable to challenge the limiting stereotypes surrounding gender and leadership.122 Having women in positions of athletic leadership is also likely to inspire younger generations “to see — and seek — coaching as a viable career option.”123 As a result, more women will enter and stay in coaching positions.124 Diversity within athletic departments not only better reflects and better serves the needs of student-athletes, but is also a business strength.125 Gender and sport scholar Mary Jo Kane argues that more female coaches in the

118 LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 26. 119 See Mary Jo Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” in Women in Sports Coaching, eds. Nicole M. LaVoi and Anna Baeth (New York: Routledge, 2016) and N.M. LaVoi and M.K.Wasend, Athletic Administration Best Practices of Recruitment, Hiring and Retention of Female Collegiate Coaches (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, University of Minnesota, 2018). 120 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 37. 121 LaVoi and Wasend, Athletic Administration Best Practices of Recruitment, Hiring and Retention of Female Collegiate Coaches, 1. 122 LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 18. 123 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 37. 124 LaVoi and Wasend, Athletic Administration Best Practices of Recruitment, Hiring and Retention of Female Collegiate Coaches, 1. 125 LaVoi and Wasend, Athletic Administration Best Practices of Recruitment, Hiring and Retention of Female Collegiate Coaches, 1.

Goorevich 33 workforce will lead to a “more positive and productive work environment.”126 In addition to dismantling gender stereotypes of what it means and looks like to be a coach as well as provide female role-models, increasing the number of female coaches has the potential to transform coaching culture.127 As I will further explain throughout this thesis, a coaching ideology that is closely aligned with traditional masculine values of hyper-competitiveness and aggression and repudiates so-called feminine values maintains gender hierarchies, heteronormativity, and sexual harassment. All of these perpetuate women’s subordination in athletics. However, similar to

Sally Kenney’s argument for increasing the number of women judges, women should not be in athletic leadership due to essentialist assumptions that they would automatically bring different qualities to coaching roles. Broadly, women’s increased presence in coaching roles can disrupt the normative, masculine ideology of what it means to look and act like a coach.

Despite broader cultural changes surrounding the visibility and acceptance of the

LGBTQ+ community, sport remains a bastion of homophobia. As sports historian Susan Cahn describes, fears of sport “masculinizing” women have existed since the late-nineteenth century.

Given that sport has often been associated with exclusively masculine virtues, women’s sport advocates have struggled to respond to critics’ fears of women’s masculinization disrupting the gendered order: would women who participate in sport become “manly” and relinquish feminine values? Even worse, the strong cultural associations between sport and masculinity made women's athletics ripe for emerging lesbian stereotypes that deterred women from participating in sports as well as made athletics an unwelcoming environment for lesbian athletes.128 Rather than working to breakdown gendered dichotomies between femininity and masculinity, however,

126 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 37. 127 Kari Fasting and Celia Brackenridge, “Coaches, Sexual Harassment and Education.” Sport, Education and Society 14, no. 1 (2009): 33. 128 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 184.

Goorevich 34 women’s sports advocates in the mid-twentieth century instead perpetuated homophobic fears of women who became too masculine and turned into a “mannish” lesbian athlete. The widespread association of female athletes and lesbianism resulted in women athletes taking an apologetic stance about their athleticism; according historian Susan Cahn, “the destructive stereotype of the mannish lesbian athlete pressured women in sport to demonstrate their femininity and heterosexuality, viewed as one and the same.”129 By attempting to associate female athleticism with heterosexuality, “women's sport unwittingly contributed to the homophobic climate.”130

Homophobia and the “mannish athlete” image causes women to “steer clear of competitive sport and the cultural traits associated with it.”131 The continued association of masculinity with sport and female athletes with lesbianism protects sport as “a key cultural location for male dominance, a site where traditional patriarchal values are upheld and transformed in response to changes in the broader society.”132

Homophobia functions as a barrier for women in accessing coaching positions. Fears of lesbian presence in women’s sports “maintain climates of fear and oppression” for women in athletic leadership roles.133 Not only do lesbian coaches have to endure sexist discrimination within their coaching roles, but also homophobic oppression, establishing an intersection that makes the work environment “uncertain, unpleasant, and sometimes hostile.”134 Although being single and without children would seemingly be an ideal candidate for a coaching role, as the coach would not have to encounter the challenges of family-coaching balance, the “single, never

129 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 181. 130 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 184. 131 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 225. 132 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 279. 133 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 41. 134 LaVoi and Dutove, “Barriers and Supports for Female Coaches: An Ecological Model,” 29.

Goorevich 35 married” status is often “interpreted by athletic administrators as being lesbian.”135 Homophobic assumptions among athletic administrators may prevent female coaches from being hired.136

Although Title IX has expanded athletic opportunities for women, white and middle-class women and girls have benefitted the most, maintaining racial hierarchies. The most substantial growth in women’s athletic opportunities have been in sports such as soccer, lacrosse, rowing, which are costly sports usually only offered in suburban areas, thereby disadvantaging women and girls of color or those from poor and working-class backgrounds.137 Since Title IX only addresses discrimination on the basis or sex, not race,138 “the law neglects racial inequality in sports in its quest to equalize women’s opportunities.”139 As a result, Title IX perpetuates the

“whitening of sports” across America.140 The intersection of racial and sexist oppression means that women and girls of color often face even more obstacles to athletic participation and leadership opportunities. While white women have reaped the benefits of increasing intercollegiate athletic opportunities and scholarships, women of color “remain significantly underrepresented in intercollegiate athletic participation.”141 According to the Women’s Sports

Foundation, in 2016 female athletes of color comprised 26.2% of the female student population, yet received only 17.5% of the total female athletic opportunities while white women comprised

68.5% of the female student population and received 75% of the total female athletic opportunities.142 Female athletes of color often face racial stereotypes and access-barriers, such

135 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 41. 136 Kane, “A socio-cultural examination of a lack of women coaches in sport leadership positions,” 41. 137 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 289. 138 Title IX does not cover discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or religion. Race-based discrimination in education is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 139 Brake, Getting in the Game, 115. 140 Welch Suggs, A Place on the Team: The Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006), 179. 141 Brake, Getting in the Game, 113. 142 “Race and Sport,” The Women’s Sports Foundation: The Foundation Position (East Meadow, NY: Women’s Sports Foundation, 2015), 2,

Goorevich 36 as high monetary costs, to a variety of sports, which has led them to cluster into lower-cost sports like basketball and track and field.143 This leads to a pattern where suburban, white girls are able to obtain superior and consistent athletic training, making them more likely to be recruited for athletic scholarships compared to their non-white counterparts. Title IX, therefore, replicates and compounds racial and socio-economic inequalities by privileging white and wealthier women and girls.144 The reproduction of racial inequality also occurs for female coaches of color; according to the Women’s Sports Foundation, “only 3.2% of all head coaches of women’s teams were Black, with Native American/Alaskan Native, Asian, Hispanic/Latina, Native

Hawaiian/Pacific Islander women as well as women of two or more races and non-resident aliens comprising 1% or less.”145 Women coaches of color also face intersecting levels of oppression, such as added marginalization due to institutionalized racism and racial stereotypes.146

Title IX’s entrenchment of sex-segregated sports affirms male hegemony and the gender binary. In this sex-segregated structure, women compete exclusively against other women and men compete only against other men. Sex-segregated sports, however, have some benefits.

Aiming to expand and maximize women’s opportunities in sports, Title IX “left the sex-separate structure of sports largely intact and opted for more substantial measures of equal

https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/race-and-sport-the-womens-sports- foundation-position.pdf. 143 Brake, Getting in the Game, 113-4. Privatized, pay to play structures linked to college and even professional opportunities dominate youth sports in America. In the case of soccer, ‘club’ or ‘travel’ environments that are often very expensive and time-consuming attract affluent and mostly-white athletes. Club environments provide exposure to college coaches that lower-cost recreational programs are unable to access. The extreme demands and high monetary costs prove to be exclusionary for athletes of color and athletes from poor and working-class backgrounds. See Rachel Allison and Raymond Barranco, “‘A Rich White Kid Sport?’ Hometown Socioeconomic, Racial, and Geographical Composition among U.S. Women’s Professional Soccer Players,” Soccer & Society (2020): 1-13. 144 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 289. 145 Staurowsky et al., The Women’s Sports Foundation Report Brief: Her Life Depends on It III & College Coaching and Athletic Administration, 5. 146 Laura J. Burton and Nicole M. LaVoi, “An ecological/multisystem approach to understanding and examining women coaches,” in Women in Sports Coaching eds. Nicole M. LaVoi and Anna Baeth (New York: Routledge, 2016), 54.

Goorevich 37 opportunity.”147 Title IX, therefore, idealizes a “separate but equal” athletic system to facilitate significant increases in women and girls’ athletic participation.148 Sport segregation also has the potential to increase women’s control over sport and provide an athletic environment “free from male domination.”149 Separate, exclusively female teams are also important for women and girls to create bonds, practice leadership skills, and develop a strong sense of self without male interference.150 The alternative to sex-segregation, a gender-blind selection process, runs the risk of shutting women out of sport participation; men, who benefit from historically more athletic opportunities and a masculine acceptance of athleticism, would be privileged in team selection processes, thus reproducing male dominance in athletics.151 Therefore, the sex-segregated nature of athletics has provided important ways to maximize women’s participation in sport.

Despite increasing opportunities for women and girls’ athletic participation, the nature of sex-segregated sports perpetuates women’s marginalization within athletics, maintains of women’s inferiority, and affirms gender essentialism. Gender essentialism, or “hard” essentialism according to Messner, is a “viewpoint that assumes natural (usually biological) differences between groups of people.”152 Essentialism often corresponds with a “categorical belief that all men are distinct from all women,”153 thereby erasing the diverse and intersectional racial, class, religious, and other differences within men’s and women’s experiences. Essentialist assumptions that men and women are inherently different suggests that gender inequality is also

147 Brake, Getting in the Game, 15. 148 Brake, Getting in the Game, 16. 149 Brake, Getting in the Game, 17. 150 Brake, Getting in the Game, 28. 151 Brake, Getting in the Game, 26. 152 Michael Messner, “Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism,” Sociology of Sport Journal 28 (2011): 154. 153 Rachel Allison, Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 8.

Goorevich 38 natural and unchanging.154 Sex-segregated sports function under the “essentialist rationale of sex difference in athletic ability” between men and women that reinforces ideologies of “women’s athletic inferiority to men.”155 In reality, athletic ability lies on a continuum where many women

“routinely outperform men.”156 As sex-segregated sports prevent competition between men and women, it ignores the “empirical evidence that many women can outperform many men … and that they can possess physical attributes such as strength and speed in greater capacities than do many men.”157 By promoting sex-segregation, Title IX “re-creates social divisions and can exaggerate sexism, with the message that biological sex … defines athleticism.”158 The system of sex-segregated sports proves to be a barrier for transgender and non-binary athlete inclusion.159

Sex-segregation may provide greater athletic opportunities for women, but will ultimately leave male dominance in athletics intact.

The Vision of a Feminist Coach?: Analyzing Dorrance’s Coaching Ideology

These debates about differences between men and women in sport and the mixed legacy of Title IX emerge in the career of Anson Dorrance. As he began his women’s coaching career in

1979, Dorrance’s trajectory parallels post-Title IX developments of women’s sports, giving us a

154 Allison, Kicking Center, 8. 155 Allison, Kicking Center, 12. 156 Mary Jo Kane, “Resistance/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary: Exposing Sport as a Continuum.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 19, no. 2 (1995): 193. 157 Kane, “Resistance/Transformation of the Oppositional Binary,” 197. 158 Brake, Getting in the Game, 16. 159 See Elizabeth Sharrow, “Five states ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports. But segregating sports by sex hurts all girls,” The Washington Post, April 16, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/16/five- states-ban-transgender-girls-girls-school-sports-segregating-sports-by-sex-hurts-all-girls/, Elizabeth Sharrow, “‘Female Athlete’ Politic: Title IX and the Neutralization of Sex Difference in Public Policy,” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5, no. 1 (2017): 46-66 and Bethany Alice Jones et al., “Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies,” Sports Medicine 47 (2017): 701-716.

Goorevich 39 lens to further analyze the achievements and failures of Title IX. Dorrance’s success in American women’s soccer since the 1980s establishes him as a trusted voice in the American women’s athletic community, allowing him to publicly espouse his coaching ideologies.

Dorrance published The Vision of a Champion in 2002 to share his coaching methodology with adolescent girls looking to excel in soccer. His ideology of nourishing women’s competitive mentality has shaped U.S. women’s soccer. In The Vision of a Champion,

Dorrance explicates the UNC coaching method, draws out fitness, social, technical, and tactical objectives, and, most notably, outlines his beliefs of inherent differences between men and women in soccer. Dorrance ultimately expresses an ambivalence towards feminism within his coaching methodology. On one hand, Dorrance challenges gendered binaries within athletics, by embracing and nourishing women’s potential to be competitive. However, Dorrance ultimately calls for maintenance of traditional femininity outside of the bounds of the soccer field. Dorrance also avoids recognition of structural gender inequalities, preferring to locate women’s differences as personalized, attitude choices. While one can be aggressive and win within athletics, women are also expected to be kind and relationship-driven as well as adopt to heteronormative, male- defined standards of attractiveness off the field. At times, Dorrance expresses a version of liberal feminism. He is a soft essentialist in the fact that he expands notions of women’s acceptable roles, but ultimately maintains patriarchal ideologies, like a belief in women’s inherent athletic inferiority and heteronormativity.

Dorrance’s Vision of a Champion is just one example from the genre of self-help

“coaching girls” books. While general coaching books are not a new phenomenon, sport researchers Nicole LaVoi, Erin Becker, and Heather Maxwell found that specific “coaching

Goorevich 40 girls” books emerged after the 1999 Women’s World Cup.160 Dorrance’s Vision of a Champion was first published in 2002, fitting into this post-1999 women’s soccer boom. Coaching books provide helpful information on standard practices and methodologies especially for novice coaches, parent-coaches, and those who lack the time and money to attend formal, in-person coaching education programs.161 LaVoi et al. assert that “coaching girls” books are an important yet under-examined medium for transmitting coaching knowledge and cultural beliefs about coaching and gender. Especially since “coaching girls” books are often written by well-known coaches like Dorrance, these books run the risk of perpetuating subordinating and unfounded claims of gender differences in sports. Oftentimes, authors derive information for the books from their personal experience and biases rather than research-based knowledge from coaching science, psychology, exercise science, or other disciplines within higher education. A coach's fame, stature, and “expertise” offer a misleading sense of legitimacy.

Gender discourses in coaching books have a powerful impact on maintaining women’s marginalization not just in coaching practices, but throughout the sport landscape. Discourse within “coaching girls” books have the potential to “reify gender stereotypes, marginalize girls, detrimentally affect girls and boys, and maintain the gender binary.”162 LaVoi et al. found that

“coaching girls” books inflated gender differences and reproduced marginalizing assumptions of female athletes.163 The books’ discourse constructed female athletes as non-normative, problematic, and as an “other” to male athletes, who are seen as the universal standard.164

Additionally, gender stereotypes framing women as communal, relational, and social were seen

160 Nicole M. LaVoi, Erin Becker, and Heather D. Maxwell, “‘Coaching Girls’: A Content Analysis of Best-Selling Popular Press Coaching Books,” Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal 15, no. 4 (2007): 9. 161 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 8. 162 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 8. 163 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 11. 164 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 11.

Goorevich 41 as a hindrance to the standard of competitive aggression. The researchers found that there was no discussion that “an ethic of care … [is] desired, positive and beneficial for all athletes — regardless of gender.”165 Ambivalent sexism was also widespread in the form of statements that appear to be empowering and flattering to women, yet ultimately subtly belittle women.166 The books’ discourse protected gender dichotomies; boys are constructed as physically superior to girls, thereby reproducing gender binaries.167 Puberty was also framed as a way to further problematize women’s athletics. Ultimately, the discourse within “coaching girls” books marginalizes women and protects sport as a male-preserve. Although appearing to support women and girls’ participation in athletics, the books “reify gender stereotypes which undermines female empowerment that can occur in and through sports.”168 Given how these

“coaching girls” books are often written by high-profile coaches and are an accessible means of teaching coaching ideologies to a mass audience, the fact that these sources purvey gender stereotypes and gender essentialism is alarming. Challenging the biased discourse within these books is an important step in dismantling notions of female inferiority in athletics.

Recent research shows that similar sexist coaching discourse is not just found in books aimed at novice coaches, but is engrained in coaching practices at the elite level. Sport management scholar Donna de Haan and sport and gender scholar Leanne Norman found that elite-level coaches expressed discourses that otherized, problematized, and sometimes even overtly discriminated against female athletes, protecting the masculine norm.169 In a different

165 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 13. 166 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 13. 167 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 14. 168 LaVoi et al., “‘Coaching Girls,’” 15. 169 Donna de Haan and Leanne Norman, “Mind the gap: the presence of capital and power in the female athlete– male-coach relationship within elite rowing,” Sports Coaching Review 9, no. 1 (2020): 109. de Haan and Norman argue that male coaches continue to marginalize female athletes even when they intend to advocate and empower because female presence in the traditionally-male sport space is threatening to patriarchy; dominant groups (men) “often stereotype non-dominant groups because they are afraid of losing power and privileges.” See de Haan and

Goorevich 42 study on gendered discourses in elite-level sport, de Haan and sport sociologist Annelies

Knoppers discerned that coaches who supervised both male and female athletes claimed adopting a gender-neutral approach to coaching, but in reality espoused gender hierarchies where women were deviants to the male norm.170 Coaches positioned female behavior as “‘other, deviant and disruptive.”171 The coaches’ proclamations of “sameness” were found to be an “empty ideology” that instead depended on internalized gender biases and male-defined norms that protected a social hierarchy.172 The social hierarchy, de Haan and Knoppers suggests, has alarming consequences where “material differences in the financial support for and media coverage of women’s and men’s sports in many countries ... are often seen as common sense.”173

Thus far, these studies of coaches’ ideologies have not included Dorrance’s Vision of a

Champion. His book and ideology fit into the feminist critique of other coaches’ texts.

Dorrance, Carol Gilligan, and Failed-Difference Feminism

Dorrance asserts that his coaching ideology is defined as “difference feminism” influenced by Carol Gilligan’s studies of gender and moral reasoning. Dorrance claims that

Norman, “Mind the gap: the presence of capital and power in the female athlete–male-coach relationship within elite rowing,” 109. 170 Donna de Haan and Annelies Knoppers, “Gendered Discourses in Coaching High-Performance Sport,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 55, no. 6 (2020): 636. 171 de Haan and Knoppers, “Gendered Discourses in Coaching High-Performance Sport,” 642. 172 de Haan and Knoppers, “Gendered Discourses in Coaching High-Performance Sport,” 643. 173 de Haan and Knoppers, “Gendered Discourses in Coaching High-Performance Sport,” 642. While these studies have focused on rowing coaches, anthropologist Elise Edwards discovered similar themes in her examination of coaching discourses in Japanese women’s soccer teams. Coaches as well as Japanese coaching manuals and “coaching girls” books protected masculine standards and superiority in athletics. Women were presented as mentally, psychologically, and physically inferior. A unique finding in Edwards’ study was a notion among Japanese coaches that women athletes were completely dependent on male coaches; coaching commentary framed female athletes as “desperately needy of and dependent upon strong males in order to achieve success” (213). Stereotypes of women as overly-relational and were also widespread and “disparaged as a hindrance to athletic excellence” (215). See Elise M. Edwards, “Gender lessons on the fields of contemporary Japan: The female athlete in coaching discourses,” in This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, eds W.W. Kelly and A. Sugimoto. New Haven: Yale University Press, 211–227, 2007.

Goorevich 43

Gilligan’s work has shaped his coaching ideology that is centered around resolving a supposedly inherent competitive deficiency in women:

[In a Different Voice] was very good about clarifying the differences between men and

women because I had a suspicion that men and women did think differently. This was

when I was changing my philosophy of coaching from what I assumed I had learned from

Ms. magazine and those sorts of things to what I was seeing was actually happening with

the players I was coaching. It was a transformation from understanding that men and

women don’t think the same … Gilligan introduced me to the fact that men and women

think differently, because I think we do… I was getting attacked [in the press] for

basically saying that men and women are different and should be treated differently and of

course the reaction anyone has to that statement is that it’s a form of sexism … I don’t

think for a second that we are unequal, but I think we are unequal in certain respects; I

think women have a tremendously greater capacity for empathy and a sort of a collective

sympathy. Does that mean we are unequal, well, yes, but, no. Just different. It is a very

difficult position to defend, not because I’m wrong — I’m not wrong — but because it’s

mis-interpreted.174

Dorrance enters the crux of a key feminist issue: sameness versus difference. Dorrance rejects an association with liberal feminism that often advocates for women’s sameness to men. Rather, he asserts that men and women are inherently different and require different coaching approaches.

Dorrance perpetuates essentialist ideas, like that all women are sympathetic. Dorrance’s claim that his philosophy is “mis-interpreted” is not incorrect; Gilligan’s difference feminism is the subject of backlash, controversy, and misinterpretation. However, Dorrance also falls victim to a

174Anson Dorrance, interview by Mary Jo Festle, June 11, 1991, interview L-0054, transcript, Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 34:02-37:33.

Goorevich 44 misinterpretation of Gilligan’s ideals by maintaining gender hierarchies where women are seen as inferior. A true interpretation of Gilligan — where an ethic of care and ethic of justice are adopted equally across humanity — has the potential to create a more inclusive and safe alternative to the potentially abusive and marginalizing prevailing male-constructed sport system.

Psychologist Carol Gilligan posited “difference feminism” in her 1982 book In a

Different Voice. Gilligan’s difference feminism contributes to a wider body of care-focused feminism. Care-focused and difference feminists believe that “boys and girls grow up into men and women with gender-specific values and virtues that serve to empower men and disempower women in a patriarchal society.”175 Instead of advocating for women simply adopting men’s values and moral development, care-focused feminists believe that true liberation for all of humanity will come when society embraces a relational morality “traditionally associated with women.”176 Gilligan asserts that men and women hold different yet equally important moral ideologies; females tend to see themselves and their decisions in relation to other people and within an ethic of care, while men prioritize individual success, competition, and responsibility.

Gilligan also describes that while women make moral decisions based on a network of relationships and men view themselves as autonomous individuals, both genders perceive “a danger in which the other does not see — men in connection and women in separation.”177

Related to Dorrance’s claims that women tend to lack a competitive drive, Gilligan argues that women “construe danger to result from competitive success.”178

175 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 67. 176 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 58. 177 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 42. 178 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 42.

Goorevich 45

Gilligan critiques gender hierarchies and desires an ideal where masculine and feminine moral reasoning perspectives are equally celebrated and used in society. Gilligan argues that a

“problem of interpretation” has created a moral hierarchy that prioritizes male-defined ideologies and degrades female tendencies to “be at the center of connection.”179 For instance, as aggression is often viewed as a male norm, “the absence of aggression in women is identified as the problem to be explained.”180 Although highlighting inherent differences between men and women,

Gilligan calls for a “nonhierarchical vision of human connection” where both men and women can engage in and benefit from ethics of attachment as well as individualism.181

By 1991, when Dorrance spoke about Gilligan’s ideas, her work had already become the subject of much scholarly debate. Academics have particularly criticized Gilligan for her generalized methodology and essentialist conclusions. Gilligan’s evidence in In a Different Voice is limited to a small group of mostly white, heterosexual, and middle-class women. Basing her expansive conclusions from this narrow racially and economically privileged group led her to create a theory of a “women’s moral voice” that is not truly representative of all women and their complex racial, socio-economic, and religious experiences.182 Instead of recognizing the “diverse nature of gender,” Gilligan’s broad categories often overlook the experiences of women of color, women from poor and working class backgrounds, and non-heterosexual women.183 Although critics characterize Gilligan’s work as negatively essentialist, feminist theorist Cressida Heyes claims that simply writing Gilligan off as essentialist undermines the political action made

179 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 62. 180 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 43. 181 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 62 and 156. 182 Cressida J. Heyes, “Anti-Essentialism in Practice: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Philosophy,” Hypatia 12, no. 3 (1997): 148. 183 Heyes, “Anti-Essentialism in Practice,” 147. In later work, including 1988’s Mapping the Moral Domain, Gilligan does address non-white, non-heterosexual women from poor and working-class backgrounds.

Goorevich 46 possible by her work; despite her overly-general conclusions, Gilligan has provided a “basis for feminist analysis and mobilization … [that is] enabling and galvanizing for many feminists.”184

Although early Gilligan is white-dominated, it is undeniable that her work was a revolutionary launching point for “creating a space” for girls and women’s voices to be heard and understood.185

Critics also state that Gilligan reinforces biologically-determinist views that uphold patriarchal systems. For instance, Gilligan’s ethic of care “may promote the view that … because women can and have cared, they should always care, no matter the cost to themselves,” thereby possibly perpetuating women’s subordinated domestic role.186 Additionally, critics state that

Gilligan’s notions of a relational-based female morality ignores entrenched, patriarchal historical, social, and economic patterns that “conceal the ‘real’ exploitation” of women in society.187 Heyes also comes to Gilligan’s defense against claims that In a Different Voice offers a biologically determinist stance on the natural moral reasoning capabilities of men and women, another common criticism of Gilligan's work. Countering this mis-interpretation of Gilligan,

Heyes states that Gilligan does not “implicitly or explicitly argue that [gendered moral voices] are biological features of either men and women. [Gilligan] adopts a social constructionist model” and asserts that these voices are learned at young ages.188 Additionally, Gilligan decries characterizations of gender essentialism, claiming instead that her theory only acknowledges that restricting and women’s voices perpetuates “a male-voiced civilization and an order of living

184 Heyes, “Anti-Essentialism in Practice,” 146. 185 Heyes, “Anti-Essentialism in Practice,” 149. 186 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 70. 187 Kathy Davis, “Toward a Feminist Rhetoric: The Gilligan Debate Revisited,” Women’s Studies International Forum 15, no. 2 (1992): 224. 188 Heyes, “Anti-Essentialism in Practice,” 147.

Goorevich 47 that is founded on disconnection from women.”189 Gilligan’s later work, such as Mapping the

Moral Domain, further clarifies that moral reasoning originates from early childhood relationships where children observe the gendered divisions in the world around them.190

Scholars also critique the ambiguity in In a Different Voice that results in a wide range of misinterpretations. Feminist scholar Kathy Davis contends that rather than asserting a concrete and clear political position, Gilligan’s work invites “a diversity of readings” among conservatives as well as liberal and radical feminists.191 For example, on one hand, feminists use

Gilligan’s ethic of care to promote women’s inclusion into the public realm by offering “proof that women can be good managers.”192 On the other hand, conservatives use Gilligan to reproduce patriarchal demands that a domestic role is women’s natural place.193 Gilligan has attempted to clarify her position and speak out against criticisms in her later work. In a 1993

“Letter to Readers” of an updated version of In a Different Voice, Gilligan asserts that difference feminism is a feminist tool for women’s political mobilization against patriarchy, rather than a theory meant to speak for the experiences of all women: “[A]s I have continued to explore the connections between the political order and the psychology of women's and men's lives, I have become increasingly aware of the crucial role of women's voices in maintaining or transforming a patriarchal world.”194

189 Carol Gilligan, “Letter to Readers, 1993,” in In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), xi. 190 Carol Gilligan and Grant Wiggins, “The Origins of Morality in Early Childhood Relationships,” in Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education, eds. Carol Gilligan, Janie Victoria Ward, and Jill McLean Taylor with Betty Bardige (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 137. 191 Davis, “Toward a Feminist Rhetoric,” 227. 192 Davis, “Toward a Feminist Rhetoric,” 227. 193 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 70. 194 Gilligan, “Letter to Readers, 1993,” xii.

Goorevich 48

Another misinterpretation of Gilligan is that she proposes female morality as a superior form of moral reasoning.195 The belief that an ethic of care is superior to an ethic of justice would contradict Gilligan’s core thesis of a non-hierarchical moral reasoning system. Davis argues that Gilligan’s ambiguity gives room for critics to read her work as “advocating a female morality.”196Although ultimately arguing for the equal valuation of an ethic of justice and ethic of care, some readers have interpreted Gilligan’s assertion of the ethic of care’s strength as

“underappreciating the value of an ethics of justice.”197 Gilligan does not undermine the importance of an ethic of justice, but rather suggests that an ethic of care should receive greater societal value than it has historically held. Thus, the key to understanding Gilligan is that different moral reasoning strategies should be viewed as equal; “fully developed moral agents” are adept at understanding and using ethics of care and justice equally.198

While Gilligan concludes that both men and women would benefit from an ethic of care and an ethic of individualism, Dorrance mainly espouses a belief that male competitiveness and aggression are more important to success than a female relational ideology. In an oral history conducted by historian Mary Jo Festle, Dorrance explicates his desire to create an environment where female competitiveness is acceptable. Although he doesn’t negate the importance of relational ideology in this instance, he does not impart any value into an ethic of care. He instead maintains individualism as the sole pathway to athletic success:

195 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 68 and Davis, “Toward a Feminist Rhetoric,” 223. 196 Davis, “Toward a Feminist Rhetoric,” 223. 197 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 70-1. 198 Tong, “Psychoanalytic and Care-Focused Feminism,” 68. Later in Mapping the Moral Domain, Gilligan claims that “the sex difference question … does not carry the implication that one sex is morally superior, nor does it imply that moral behavior is biologically determined. Instead, it draws attention to two perspectives on morality.” See Gilligan and Wiggins, “The Origins of Morality in Early Childhood Relationships,” 116.

Goorevich 49

What I have learned in training women is that they have the superior understanding that

relationships are more important than winning. And so rather than jeopardize their

relationship, what they will do is dissolve the contest and preserve the friendship … It

takes them four years to really adjust to accept the fact that it's okay to bury each other

and that it shouldn't jeopardize relationships, and it's going to make us stronger and more

competitive and better. And so those are hard challenges in developing that quality in

women.199

Dorrance proclaims an alignment with Gilligan, but he positions what he sees as exclusively male individualism and competitiveness as superior decision-making without making it clear that relational ideologies would benefit any successful soccer team, including male teams.

Although Dorrance may claim that his feminism aligns with Gilligan’s theories, he instead falls victim to one of the many misinterpretations of Gilligan. Dorrance forces his players to embrace intense competition and a “win at all cost” attitude. In this way, Dorrance prioritizes what he sees as innately male competitiveness. Disregarding Gilligan’s calls for a non- hierarchical valuation of an ethic of care and ethic of justice, Dorrance does not imbue any value in what he believes as exclusively female relational ideologies. Values that are considered masculine, like individualism, autonomy, and competition, are exclusively used as the yardstick for measuring athletic success.200 In an interview with an academic coaching journal, Dorrance underscores his belief in the paramount importance of individualism above all else:

As a coach sometimes you are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of team chemistry to

have very aggressive players or very talented players. So, as a coach, even though it

199 Anson Dorrance, interview by Mary Jo Festle, June 11, 1991, interview L-0054, transcript, Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27:23-32:37. 200 Lenskyj, “Girl-friendly Sport and Female Values,” 35.

Goorevich 50

would be ideal to have great team chemistry, sometimes you make a sacrifice in

chemistry in order to gain a remarkable player that might be difficult to coach or difficult

to play with.201

Dorrance undermines the importance of relationality. In order to be successful, Dorrance believes that women should relinquish an ethic of care to embrace individualism, diverging from

Gilligan’s belief in an equal blend of these qualities. Dorrance maintains women’s subordination in athletics as well as stymies potential for a care-focused coaching model.

Despite Dorrance’s misinterpretations of Gilligan, there is potential to incorporate

Gilligan’s ethic of care into an alternative sport model that both maintains sport’s competitive purpose and is more morally beneficial for all athletes. Gilligan’s ideology aligns with sport and gender theorists like Carole Oglesby, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, and Leslee Fisher. Gilligan’s androgynous moral reasoning structure relates to Oglesby’s androgynous sport. Fisher and

Lenskyj hypothesize a future of incorporating ethics of care into coaching and athletics. A care- focused, woman-centered sporting program can “meet girls’ and women's specific needs, interests, values and priorities in sport … [and] optimize girls’ and women's enjoyment and self- actualization through physical activity.”202 While Gilligan’s findings that women prioritize caring and relationships more than individual achievement may seem incompatible with competitive athletics, sport sociologist Annelies Knoppers challenges male-constructed notions of women having a competitive deficiency that hinders their success in sports:

[Gilligan’s hypothesis does] not necessarily mean that females do not value winning or

that they fear success. In fact, success may be highly valued but would always be coupled

201 Jin Wang and William F. Straub, “An Investigation into the Coaching Approach of a Successful World Class Soccer Coach: Anson Dorrance,” The Journal of Sports Science & Coaching 7, no. 3 (2012): 435. 202 Lenskyj, “Girl-friendly Sport and Female Values,” 36.

Goorevich 51

with the realization that such achievement usually occurs at the expense of someone

else’s failure.203

A care-focused approach to athletic ideology would therefore not lose the competitive aspect that is the core purpose of sport, but would value cooperation and relationality equally:

Rather than trivializing the preferred female ways of relating, a radical feminist analysis

would question the male competitive model, and would challenge the assumption that

friendship, connection and cooperation are less important than winning.204

Not only would including concepts of relationality to a greater extent in sports help to combat potential alienation that women and girls experience throughout athletics, but would also help to improve beneficial team chemistry without compromising competitive drive.

Fisher argues that an alternative care-focused sports model will enhance both male and females’ athletic experiences by prioritizing athletes’ well-being, safety, and character development. Competition would not be sacrificed, but reframed; like feminist activist Wilma

Scott Heide posits, an alternative sport model would focus on competition with others, not against others in a struggle for power with the intention to destroy and defeat.205 Adding an ethic of care will first restructure the definition of “success” in athletics; rather than exclusively valuing winning, an ethic of care will instead see “consciousness, caring, and connection … as the standard for what it means to be an excellent coach, athlete, and administrator.”206 Although

Dorrance may see connection and relationality as a hindrance to competitive success, Fisher asserts that a care-orientation can only bolster a team’s potential for winning performances:

203 Annelies Knoppers, “Professionalization of Attitudes: A Review and Critique,” Quest 37 (1985): 97. 204 Lenskyj, “Girl-friendly Sport and Female Values,” 39. 205 Heide, “Feminism For a Sporting Future,” 197. 206 Fisher, “Where are Your Women,” 383.

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“caring and performance excellence are inextricably intertwined.”207 The ethic of care can dismantle the male-constructed “win at all costs” model. Instead, increased focus on the ethic of care will support the complete moral development of coaches and athletes. Embracing an ethic of both justice and care can only strengthen a team, positively develop participants’ character, and nourish a liberating and empowering environment for all athletes, no matter their gender.208

Coaches and administrators should give Gilligan a place within athletics. Dorrance’s attempt to impart a mis-interpreted Gilligan only results in the same male-constructed system that perpetuates women’s subordination in athletics and even harms the athletic experiences of male athletes. For Gilligan’s ideals to truly reach their liberating potential, an equal valuation of competition and cooperation, rather than a willingness to sacrifice team chemistry and moral development to accommodate a “win at all costs” attitude, is necessary and opens possibilities for both women and men to find a more hospitable environment in athletics.

Dorrance and Inconsistent Liberal Feminism

In Vision of a Champion, Dorrance occasionally expresses a liberal feminist approach to coaching, yet mostly encapsulates many inconsistencies. Sociologist Michael Messner’s “soft essentialist” theory offers a more fitting definition of Dorrance’s approach. In his sociological study on coaching and youth sports It’s All for the Kids, Messner uses soft essentialism to describe how liberalization of gender roles emerging from the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s have created an “articulation of ‘choice’ for girls and women” but not for boys and men, which ultimately “recreate[s] and naturalize[s] the continuing gender inequalities in

207 Fisher, “Where are Your Women,” 383. 208 Fisher, “Where are Your Women,” 385.

Goorevich 53 professional class work and family life.”209 Messner finds that hard essentialism, where differences between boys and girls are viewed as unchanging and natural, does not explain current acceptance of women and girls in sports, where women can be aggressive and competitive as Dorrance desires.210 According to Messner’s research, coaches of girls often espouse soft essentialism, where they balance assumptions of inherent gender differences with a belief in gender equality.211 While sports ultimately maintain gender differences, especially through sex-segregation and through formal and informal barriers to gender equality, athletics also represents a tolerance of women’s right choose between a traditional domestic role and public life. Soft essentialism provides a middle ground that recognizes the blurring of gender boundaries, grants girls a socially constructed field of choices, as well as maintains the differing worlds of men and women.212 However, while girls have the choice to enter the sports realm, where they are perceived as benefiting from the adoption of masculine traits, boys have no choice to adopt stereotypically and historically feminine behaviors; men and boys are denied this flexibility and are not allowed to express a relational ethic of care under soft essentialism, which ultimately maintains traditional gender regimes. Masculine individualism and competitiveness is viewed as superior and as something that women can choose to aspire to. Soft essentialism accommodates women’s increasing opportunities while protecting the sport realm as a male enclave, which accepts gender inequality and protects traditional, patriarchal gender regimes in societal institutions.213

209 Messner, “Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism,” 154. 210 Messner, It’s All for the Kids, 140 and Messner, “Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism,” 154. 211 Messner, It’s All for the Kids, 149. 212 Messner, It’s All for the Kids, 159. 213 Messner, “Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism,” 166. For other studies that have affirmed Messner’s soft essentialist theory, see Phillipa Velija, Mark Mierzwinski, and Laura Fortune, “‘It made me feel powerful’: women’s gendered embodiment and physical empowerment in the martial arts,” Leisure

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Dorrance’s advice to youth female soccer players in The Vision of a Champion is an example of soft essentialism. Dorrance is most associated with his theory of demanding a sense of competitive fury among women athletes, called the “competitive cauldron,” representing a direct challenge to “hard” gender essentialism. Understanding that women have been socialized to value relationships and not to “take physical risks, not to confront or do battle,” Dorrance encourages his athletes to find “freedom and confidence” by discovering “their warrior selves” and engaging in physical, social, and psychological competition with their opponents.214 With his standardization of the “competitive cauldron” and the “competitive matrix,” Dorrance forces his players to embrace intense competition and a “win at all cost” attitude. According to Dorrance, women should exclusively adopt traditionally masculine traits in order to reach success.

It is important to note that at times Dorrance expresses a liberal feminist attitude. His insistence on women’s competitiveness is a radical challenge to traditional assumptions of femininity. Dorrance asserts that competitiveness “isn’t a talent we are born with. Competitive drive is not governed by innate ability, but by self-discipline and desire.”215 In this instance,

Dorrance does not associate a competitive mentality with either men or women, but rather something that needs to be nourished and taught for everyone. On occasion, Dorrance states that women’s relational tendencies are socially constructed by historical gender expectations rather than biologically innate. Here, Dorrance acknowledges the power that social constructs have had on keeping women from embracing a winning mentality:

Studies 32, no. 5 (2012): 524-541, Michela Musto and P.J. McGann, “Strike a Pose! The Femininity Effect in Collegiate Women’s Sport,” Sociology of Sport Journal 33 (2016): 101-112. 214 Anson Dorrance and Gloria Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion: Advice and Inspiration from the World’s Most Successful Women’s Soccer Coach (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Huron River Press, 2002), 25. 215 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 125.

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Even the best female players aren’t socialized to have the competitive drive that males

have … The challenge is to change the way we have socialized our girls and young

women and make it okay to go after your friends in practice, because currently many feel

competition and friendship are mutually exclusive.216

Dorrance attributes this socialization that deters women from developing competitiveness to peer pressure and parental surveillance by stating, “the ‘voices of authority’ — coaches, parents, and officials — can have many subtle, and not so subtle, ways of hindering [competitiveness].”217

Dorrance feels that the power of peer and familial expectations of women stymie women’s ability to express competitiveness. To Dorrance, the idea that women just simply aren’t inherently competitive is false. Instead, Dorrance places blame figures within women’s and girls’ lives for stifling aggressive attributes and imposing ones that align more with traditional femininity, like submission and cooperation. This promotion of challenging socially acceptable norms of femininity and embracing women’s development of competitiveness and aggression reflects a liberal feminist and soft essentialist viewpoint.

By normalizing and rewarding intense competitiveness, Dorrance creates an environment that dismantles traditional gendered expectations of women. Rather than prioritizing values that are typically seen as feminine, like cooperation, teamwork, and submissiveness, Dorrance defines success as diverging from what society deems as socially acceptable for women:

In order to be powerful, you must give yourself permission to be aggressive on the soccer

field. Never mind who it is — friend or foe — you play to beat them because that is part

of the game … Being dominant, aggressive, and courageous — that’s the powerful part

216 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 129. 217 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 130.

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of you. That is the part that is worthy of self-respect, and ultimately, the respect of

others.218

Dorrance’s challenges to traditional expectations of femininity contain limits as they maintain gender hierarchies in sports that primarily value masculinity. Messner’s soft essentialism, especially what he calls an “equality with difference” ideology, strongly aligns with Dorrance’s attitude. Among youth sports coaches, Messner found that:

Many coaches talk (approvingly) about how sports participation can stretch girls away

from their presumably soft and cooperative nature and toward more individualistic,

competitive, and aggressive traits that will benefit them, while assuming (often

implicitly) that playing sports is already fully consistent with boys’ aggressive and

competitive natures.219

Messner finds that pushing girls to adopt competitiveness and aggression as a way to make up for “natural” deficiencies, as Dorrance does throughout his book, perpetuates a cultural celebration of masculinity and devaluation of femininity. What Messner finds in soft essentialism is exactly what Gilligan warns of; continued hierarchical superiorization of male decision-making abilities and denigration of feminine relationality.

While Dorrance’s intention is to impart a sense of competitive ferocity among female athletes, he often presents an ambivalence with attempting to reconcile his call for female aggression with a maintenance of traditional femininity. Rather than calling for complete deconstruction of gender ideologies, he instead outlines the athletic field as a realm where a woman can safely act like men without compromising their femininity. Dorrance appears feminist when he deplores “society’s messages about fitting in” by having to “smile and be

218 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 55. 219 Messner, It’s All for the Kids, 152-3.

Goorevich 57 cooperative, be cute and sweet and defer to others.”220 However, it quickly becomes clear that he only desires transgression in gender ideologies within the athletic realm:

You’re not going to be one-dimensional. You’re going to be a tremendously confident

and aggressive personality who still wants and needs to connect with people. Within the

context of soccer … you can be empowered to tap into that part of your personality that’s

not afraid of being dominant, aggressive, courageous, and powerful.221

Dorrance often promotes the necessity of women’s competitive fury to be successful in soccer and is eager to use stories of the many soccer legends that he has coached. However, as this example of Dorrance praising U.S. Women’s National Team Michelle Akers shows, he ultimately gives the highest praises those players whose challenges to gender essentialist binaries are limited to the athletic arena:

Michelle Akers … has this trait [competitive fury]. She is also a consummate Christian.

Yet there is no contradiction between those two roles, because when you cross the line

and walk onto the field you are in effect embracing a set of rules that demands

competitive fire. You can be powerful on the field, yet be a thoughtful and kind person as

well. But one of the things you don’t need to demonstrate between the lines is the type of

kindness you might show outside the lines.222

Dorrance limits his competitive ideology to athletics. In this carefully constructed compliment,

Dorrance espouses a viewpoint that the soccer field is the only space where women can exhibit this competitive strength, and he maintains traditional femininity — kindness and Christianity — as key traits within the outside world.

220 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 131. 221 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 131. 222 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 45.

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Dorrance’s overall message is to “imitate the boys” by embracing a “win-at-all-costs” mentality within the soccer environment.223 Rather than seeing the breakdown of gender dichotomies as a symbiotic exchange from which men also benefit, Dorrance only sees potential for women to learn from men. Overall, Dorrance views the key to success in athletics as essentially “playing men”; women should adopt a sense of masculine aggression on the field, yet recover their femininity off of it.

Dorrance downplays structures of gendered power and patriarchal oppression of women, often providing overly simplistic solutions to solving what he perceives to be women’s inadequacies in soccer. For instance, Dorrance asserts that male soccer players have superior technical skills. To remedy this, Dorrance suggests that women individually practice their ball skills more. Dorrance hypothesizes why he believes that girls are more reluctant to practice individually:

Girls seem to need someone with them, a girlfriend or a team, in order to play. To evolve

as a gender, girls have to get beyond the social aspects of player development. You have

to get beyond requiring a friend to be there in order to spend time with the ball.224

Dorrance reduces all women to being overly dependent on social relationships. What he ignores, however, are the realities of patriarchal oppression throughout society; male dominance in sport may make athletic spaces unwelcoming or intimidating to women and young girls who want to practice individually. Continued resistance to women athletes who defy traditional notions of femininity and even the threat of male violence against women throughout all facets of society may endanger female athletes that venture to fields or spaces on their own. Significantly,

Dorrance views this as a problem that women need to deal with themselves; he neglects to

223 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 45. 224 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 167.

Goorevich 59 acknowledge how patriarchal systems have historically constructed unsafe and discriminatory environments for women in sports.

Dorrance’s understanding of boys as one-dimensional and girls as more flexible is a classic soft-essentialist position. Especially in the instance above of Dorrance questioning why girls will not go train outside of formalized practices like boys often do, he neglects to acknowledge that athletic spaces are often male-dominated, homosocial spaces. Perhaps what encourages boys from returning to these spaces to train individually is that there are other boys to interact with, leading us to believe that boys also value the relational networks that Dorrance associates exclusively with women, as Gilligan argues. Ultimately, while on the surface

Dorrance’s promotion of competition and aggressiveness may appear to be combating gender essentialism, he is reproducing patriarchal protection of sports as a male enclave. In order to be successful, women have to choose to exhibit masculine characteristics, yet then choose to become feminine once off the field.

Another liberal feminist element of Dorrance’s coaching ideology is his critiques of traditional beauty standards that denigrate female athleticism, particularly physical strength.

Speaking on the necessity of weight training in soccer, Dorrance comments that “our modern culture has made our women, even many of our athletic women, terrified about being ‘big’” and decries how women are socialized to succumb to “the pressure of trying to look a certain way to gain affection … which means a diet of watercress and celery.”225 Without explicitly stating it,

Dorrance is acknowledging the prevalence of eating disorders among female athletes in society today.226 To combat this, he is encouraging a sense of agency among his female athletes to

225 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 46. 226 See Vikki Krane et al., “Body Image Concerns in Female Exercisers and Athletes: A Feminist Cultural Studies Perspective,” Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal 10, no. 1 (2001): 1-17 and Rachel D. Peterson et al.,

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“create your own image of who you are. Don’t be manipulated by the culture that wants you to be an ornament” and engage in weight training and proper nourishment.227 Rather than defining women’s success to their appearance, Dorrance views strong, athletic women’s bodies positively.

His encouragement of dismantling feminine associations of thinness and frailty with beauty is evidence of feminism within Dorrance’s coaching ideology.

Dorrance’s feminist appeals toward body positivity, however, have limits. Dorrance only appears to support female athleticism and strength only when players can still maintain a patriarchal-defined, feminine ideal of attractiveness outside of the athletic realm. His players can be strong and muscular on the athletic field so long as they resist a mannish image. Therefore,

Dorrance perpetuates patriarchal heteronormativity. This is best exemplified when Dorrance praises a player named Anne:

For her, femininity and powerful soccer are not at odds. Anne, a pretty blonde with long,

painted nails, looks like Barbie and plays like Attila the Hun. Everyone on the team has

admiration for her … she isn’t ruled by her female culture, although she fits perfectly

within it.228

This is a contradictory statement compared to Dorrance’s previous desire to deconstruct feminine beauty standards. Similar to how competitiveness is only acceptable on the soccer field,

Dorrance believes that his athletes should maintain traditional feminine attractiveness outside of the athletic arena. Being fiercely competitive, strong, and physical is only acceptable if you can then assume a traditional feminine role after the game ends. Dorrance, thus, contains extreme inconsistencies with liberal feminist ideals.

“Empowerment and Powerlessness: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Feminism, Body Image and Eating Disturbance,” Sex Roles 58 (2008): 639-648. 227 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 47. 228 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 47.

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This soft essentialism has ramifications off the field and throughout society by reinforcing separate male public and female private spheres. Messner explains that associating boys exclusively with a natural aggressiveness, competitiveness, and individualism positions boys as “pre-career” while a soft essentialist belief in women’s flexible adoption of male characteristics leads them to a path of choice.229 Despite having a choice to become competitive within sports, women still maintain sole responsibility over domesticity. Dorrance’s illustrations that women can only be competitive within the athletic space yet then adopt traditional femininity outside of it sits comfortably within soft essentialism.

Players’ Resistance to and Qualifications of Dorrance’s Coaching Ideology

Since the publication of A Vision of a Champion twenty years ago, Dorrance’s coaching ideology has stood the test of time, but not without contestation and re-interpretation from his players.230 Still at the helm of North Carolina’s dominant program today, Dorrance has influenced generations of female athletes with his “competitive cauldron.” Beginning in Summer

2020, Dorrance has brought A Vision of a Champion into a podcast format: “The Vision of a

Champion Podcast with Anson Dorrance.” In this, each episode reviews a chapter of his 2002 book in a conservational format between Dorrance and his former star players, including Mia

Hamm, Crystal Dunn, Yael Averbuch, and Tobin Heath, and co-author Gloria Averbuch. All of the figures he speaks with on the podcast are current and former leaders in women’s soccer from across the globe, illustrating Dorrance’s strong influence on the history of women’s soccer.

Listening to these conversations, we are able to see how athletes experienced Dorrance’s

229 Messner, It’s All For The Kids, 170. 230 The Vision of a Champion is still sold at major booksellers, including Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. New editions were released in 2005 and in 2019.

Goorevich 62 ideology. Significantly, former UNC players contest Dorrance’s coaching methodology and interpret his ideas in a more feminist manner. Players qualify and resist Dorrance’s ideologies; they embrace Dorrance’s belief in advocating for female competitiveness, but simultaneously challenge Dorrance’s repudiation of stereotypically feminine values as well as his belief in inherent gender differences.

In the podcast, it is evident that Dorrance’s ideology underwent changes as well as remained the same. For example, Dorrance evolves by appearing to value a female ethic of care more than he did in the early 2000s. He also continues to acknowledge how societal gender expectations stifle female competitiveness. Despite this progression, though, Dorrance maintains an ambivalence with feminism and soft essentialist valuation of exclusively male traits.

Dorrance continues to problematize a lack of female competitiveness and considers peer and parent-policed traditional gender roles and expectations as the core reason for women’s supposed reluctance to engage in athletics aggressively. When asked if he felt that women in

2020 are embracing competition more, Dorrance maintains his view that society stifles the competitiveness needed for athletic success:

Yeah I think women are embracing it more, but let's face it, we still raise women to

genuflect. We still raise them to be polite. We still raise them not to compete. But they've

always existed out there, the warriors, the ones that were confident that wanted to

compete. So I think these girls and women have lived with this quality for a long time.

But then, you know, society, their friends, the culture around them, has told them no, no,

no, we're not gonna allow you to be this way. Because God forbid that you're

competitive. If a man is competitive, it's incredible. He's lauded, he's put on a pedestal.

He's complimented for his competitive fire. And all of a sudden, if a woman or young girl

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exhibits this, you know, oh, no, that's not the way to behave. You know, you're losing

friends, and blah, blah, blah. So I still think there are pieces of that societal pressure to act

a certain way for our girls and young women.231

Although Dorrance does not say this explicitly, he is critiquing how patriarchal gender expectations constrain women; phrases like “we still raise women to genuflect” articulates his acknowledgement of women’s marginalization that stretches beyond athletics. Dorrance still does not acknowledge how systemic sexism and male-dominated athletic structures have made athletics unwelcoming and unrewarding for women and girls throughout history, such as through resource inequality and gender disparities in professional athletic opportunities. Dorrance views society’s degradation of female competitiveness as remedied by simple attitude adjustments.

Dorrance articulates a belief that individual choices towards cultivating female competitiveness would solve women’s subordination instead of vouching for equitable resource distribution, appointment of women in leadership roles, or other structural changes that could challenge patriarchy in athletics.

Dorrance’s validation of what he sees as exclusively masculine competitiveness persists in his podcast. In the above passage, Dorrance comments on how society praises men who are competitive: “If a man is competitive, it's incredible. He's lauded, he's put on a pedestal. He's complimented for his competitive fire.” Furthermore, Dorrance articulates a belief in gender differences. He continues to claim that women shy away from aggression and men are adept at fostering competitiveness in order to achieve social and athletic success:

231 Anson Dorrance, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 14:34 - 15:37, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision- of-a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

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You've got to be comfortable in that environment and be comfortable competing. You

gotta be comfortable beating your friend to death. In practice, it is a challenge for our

young girls and women. It's no issue for the men. I use this analogy all the time… If a

guy's out there shooting hoops one day, and he's shooting alone, all the sudden another

guy shows up, one finally turns to the other and says, ‘Hey, you want to go?’ and we all

know what that means, baby, let's find out who the alpha is. And then the two guys go

after each other. And Holy cow, if this is a brother-brother battle, or a father-son battle, it

is blood on the ground. I mean, this is incredibly aggressive. And here's the difference. A

little young girl’s shooting hoops out there, another girl shows up, one doesn't turn to the

other and say, ‘hey, you want to go?’ No, at best they play HORSE, which is a non-

confrontational shooting game, where the other girl isn't gonna want to strangle you to

death if you're competitive.232

In this, Dorrance perpetuates soft essentialism; men are competitive and aggressive and women should choose to relinquish relationality and adopt this male-mentality if they want to achieve athletic success. Dorrance continues to place what he sees as masculine competitiveness in a superior position and implies that women simply have to make the choice to be more like men.

Dorrance avoids a true feminist ideology that would call for a destruction of the patriarchal structures that create marginalizing environments for women in sports, such as homophobia and resource inequality.

One important evolution of Dorrance ideology is a greater appreciation of relationality.

Although he still associates friendship as an exclusively feminine quality, he appreciates the

232 Anson Dorrance, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 19:52 - 20:48, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision- of-a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

Goorevich 65 benefits that relationality brings to athletic success much more than in 2002. When describing his process for judging his players, Dorrance reveals that he recently added a category of evaluation called “connection”:

Connection is your ability to answer this question: do you love your teammates and do

they love you. And that's a very important character piece, because if you're going to

have an incredible team, there has to be this love of teammates. I think the most powerful

quality in elite women's teams is playing for each other and when this bond, this

chemistry bond, is actually visible.233

While previously Dorrance decried relationality as a hindrance to creating a hyper-competitive, winning mentality, he now understands how valuable an ethic of care is in having a successful team. This newfound validation of relationality approximates Gilligan’s difference feminism, where both an ethic of care and individualism offer benefits. However, when Dorrance states that connection is “the most powerful quality in elite women’s teams,” he implies that this relationality only benefits women. According to Dorrance, men do not need this same love of teammates in order to be successful. Overall, Dorrance’s praise of “connection” is unconvincing;

Dorrance continues to champion competitiveness at all costs.

Dorrance’s former players contest, resist, and qualify his opinions, sometimes even pushing his coaching ideology to a more feminist ideal. For instance, Crystal Dunn, a UNC graduate and World Cup-winning member of the USWNT, discusses Dorrance’s competitive cauldron as well as socialized gender roles. Dorrance views competitiveness as a personal choice

233 Anson Dorrance, host, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 27:05-27:33, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of-a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

Goorevich 66 that has exclusively individual benefits. Although affirming Dorrance’s ideology, Dunn qualifies

Dorrance by pointing out the team and relational benefits of promoting competition:

Just the environment trained you to embrace competition, and also make it part of your

daily routine. Every day you wake up, and if I'm not ready to go, my teammates are going

to beat me. Maybe that decides whether I'm starting or not playing that game that

weekend. And so the environment definitely made us all feel like we're in this together.

Competition is great, it's gonna make us better, and it's gonna shape us for moments

down the road, not even just in college.234

Dunn exemplifies Gilligan’s ideal by merging an ethic of individualism with an ethic of care;

Dunn interprets Dorrance’s coaching methodology, particularly the daily competition that his competitive cauldron and competitive matrix cultivates, as a tool for fostering team togetherness.

While Dorrance claims that women who desire to be competitive have to sacrifice a “natural” desire to prioritize friendships, Dunn qualifies Dorrance by implying that athletes are both competitive and relational:

Every day, I work to be a good teammate. And I don't think it's something that is easy. I

think there's some days that I'm not a good teammate, maybe I'm having an off day…But

I think it's something that we all have to work at … If you can't trust and connect with

your teammates, then how do you expect to be successful on the field? And of course,

obviously, in the women's world and women's sports, I feel like people think that we all

want to be best friends. It's important that people realize I'm in a team of 23. Chances of

me asking 23 people out to dinner and going to the mall is very, very unlikely. So I think

234 Anson Dorrance, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 18:22-18:45, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of- a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

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as long as there's that respect, there’s that understanding that hey, I know I'm doing a

recovery run, you're also going to do a recovery run for me and that mutual respect is

there. I think that really is the key to championships and successful careers.235

Here, Dunn establishes a much more complex image of femininity and athleticism. While

Dorrance often simplifies all women as being kind, loving, and only caring about maintaining their friendships, Dunn directly defies that traditional version of womanhood. Although gender roles may expect women on a team to “love” each other, as Dorrance states, Dunn’s reality of demanding mutual respect rather than unwavering friendship challenges this definition of femininity. To Dunn, there is no “natural” way of being a woman or a man; women do not have to be loving friends in order to find success. She frames notions of individualism and relationality within a gender-neutral, exclusively athletic context where team chemistry as well as a competitive environment are keys to success for both men and women.

Mia Hamm, a two-time World Cup winner, UNC alumnus, and one of the most legendary figures of the women’s game, normalizes female competitiveness and equally validates the importance of supposedly non-masculine values, like humility, in order to have success:

What motivated me was to be responsible to other people. And I still tried to be the best

player I could be. One of the things that I learned from my coaches … that it’s okay not

to be the best in every single thing. You still work on those skills. But you know, you

have people around you that that’s what their strength is. And you should find greatness

in that. I wasn’t a great header of the ball. I shouldn’t push Michelle Akers out of the way

[to head the ball] … heck no, I want to win. I’m going to put Michelle Akers on the end

235 Anson Dorrance, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 29:52-30:59, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of- a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

Goorevich 68

of that service … So that humility comes from my upbringing, but also it’s just who I am.

It’s how I view relationships. And believe me, I’m as competitive as anyone.236

In contrast to Dorrance, who completely denigrates so-called feminine attributes like humility as a barrier to producing a winning mentality, Hamm centers her competitiveness within a relational framework; she values humility as a tool to cultivate a successful team where everyone, no matter their strengths or weaknesses, can feel included. Hamm is illustrating Gilligan’s argument that women often see a “world comprised of relationships.”237 However, rather than viewing connection as a symbol of immature moral judgement that could potentially harm competitiveness, as Dorrance often does, Hamm characterizes relationships as a signifier of a strong team.

Similar to Dunn and Hamm, two-time World Cup winner Tobin Heath238 echoes a more androgynous conception of competitiveness:

I have never really had a problem with competitiveness not being friendly. I think the

purest form of sport is where you go as hard as you can and you still love everyone …

there is a real rawness to competitiveness. It’s a vulnerability in a way because if you’re

pushing yourself to the absolute furthest that you can get … there is this vulnerability in

that you are exposed; your weaknesses are exposed to failure. If you can embrace that

236 Anson Dorrance, host, “Mia Hamm: The Vision of a Champion,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast), September 23, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 24:04-25:27, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of-a- champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/. 237 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 29. 238 Tobin Heath is an outspoken feminist. In addition to her athletic career, Heath is an entrepreneur and designer who founded a streetwear company in 2019 called re—inc along with other USWNT players Megan Rapinoe, Christine Press. re—inc’s mission is to “boldly re-imagine the status quo” by creating gender-fluid fashion. See “About Us - Reimagine with Us,” re—inc, accessed April 15, 2021, https://re-website.com/pages/about-us.

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vulnerability and that exposure to failure, that is where the growth and the magic

happens.239

Equating competitiveness with vulnerability is a direct resistance to Dorrance’s coaching ideology. Dorrance has a strict belief in a division between masculinity and femininity, with competition being “masculine” and vulnerability being “feminine.” Heath deconstructs the gender binary; she does not see femininity and masculinity as mutually exclusive and incompatible. Heath’s belief that competition is vulnerability reflects feminist sport psychologist

Carole Oglesby’s theory of androgynous sport; sport is a place that doesn’t have to be gendered, but instead demands the use of all human qualities. Heath, thus, challenges Dorrance’s belief in inherent gender differences.

Although Dorrance’s ambivalence with feminism oftentimes restricts challenges to gender essentialism exclusively to the athletic realm, Dorrance’s players extend his ideology outside of sports. Dorrance’s players leverage the liberal feminist aspects of his ideology within all aspects of society, particularly in their non-athletic careers. For example, Dorrance’s advocacy of women challenging societal expectations inspires his players to seek out success in other male-dominated sectors, like business. Dunn affirms the importance of Dorrance’s competitive cauldron and competitive matrix coaching methods, stating that “competition is great, it's gonna make us better, and it's gonna shape us for moments down the road, not even just in college.”240 Yael Averbuch strongly credits Dorrance’s approach of emphasizing women’s

239 Anson Dorrance, host, “Tobin Heath: Chapter 12 — The Competitive Cauldron,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). December 8, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, 28:14 - 29:25, https://www.earfluence.com/tobin-heath- chapter-12-the-competitive-cauldron/. 240 Anson Dorrance, “Crystal Dunn: Chapter 3 — Your Game and Why It’s Great,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). October 6, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 18:22-18:45, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of- a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/2/.

Goorevich 70 competitiveness and aggression as a driving force for her personal development outside of athletics:

What Anson always provided seemed to be the blueprint. I never thought of it as bizarre.

And then having lived it and actually experienced it for my four years in college, I think

it became even truer and even more important to understand that everything Anson says

about teaching these players to, first and foremost, be strong, resilient, quality human

beings is really the case. That was always the emphasis; there was something quite larger

than what went on the field … I was immersed in this philosophy that seemed to me to be

the guiding light; this was the way to do things if you wanted to be great at anything you

do in life, not just on the soccer field.241

In these examples, both Dunn and Averbuch amplify Dorrance’s liberal feminist approach;

Dorrance has encouraged these women to break through any gendered barriers they may face in life, not just in sports. Although Dorrance previously implied in his 2002 book that he expects women to revert back to traditional femininity once athletic competition was over, the players extend his philosophy to challenge what is typically deemed acceptable for women into many different aspects of society. Dorrance has often appeared to be unaware of patriarchal obstacles that keep women in a marginalized position within society. His female players, however, experience systemic sexism in many different aspects of life. Thus, Dorrance’s players can see a place for his philosophy outside of athletics.

Eating disorders are a common occurrence among female athletes.242 Patriarchal standards of beauty discourage women athletes from adequately fueling their bodies and

241 Anson Dorrance, host, “Gloria and Yael Averbuch: Chapter 4 — Enriching Your Life Through Soccer,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast), October 14, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 26:16-27-16, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of-a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/1/. 242 Jorunn Sundgot-Borgen, “Eating Disorders in Female Athletes,” Sports Medicine 17 (1994): 176.

Goorevich 71 engaging in strength training that is crucial to athletic success, resulting in self-harm and psychological disorders.243 In his 2002 book, Dorrance glosses over the persistence of eating disorders among female athletes by saying how women should resist “the pressure of trying to look a certain way to gain affection … which means a diet of watercress and celery.”244

Dorrance’s joking tone when discussing such a serious and widespread issue further reflects his ignorance towards institutionalized sexism. Again, however, the women Dorrance interviews expand and qualify Dorrance’s philosophy. Gloria Averbuch, Dorrance’s co-author of Vision of a

Champion, more clearly establishes how Dorrance’s competition-first mentality can help combat the prevalence of female athlete eating disorders:

I think it’s just as bad today as it's always been … Why is it that men want to get bigger,

sit bigger, stand bigger, lift to get bigger, dominate space, and want the power and

women want to get smaller in a less powerful position, and take up less space? It’s

literally a metaphor that’s physical that you can understand and this is a big battle. So I

do give credit because I can still in my mind’s eye see … the group of [UNC] women

players, I don’t ever remember seeing someone who looks small in a stereotypical fragile

sense … these were strong women who were trained and socialized at that UNC program

to take up space, and this is such a big issue right now.245

Here, Gloria Averbuch again extends Anson’s ideology outside of the soccer realm and into more expansive societal issues. Significantly, Averbuch alludes to unequal power dynamics

243 See Rachel D. Peterson et al., “Empowerment and Powerlessness: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Feminism, Body Image and Eating Disturbance,” Sex Roles 58 (2008): 639-648 and Vikki Krane et al., “Body Image Concerns in Female Exercisers and Athletes: A Feminist Cultural Studies Perspective,” Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal 10, no. 1 (2001): 1-17 244 Dorrance and Averbuch, The Vision of a Champion, 46. 245 Anson Dorrance, host, “Gloria and Yael Averbuch: Chapter 4 — Enriching Your Life Through Soccer,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast), October 14, 2020, accessed December 17, 2020, 36:40-38-06, https://www.earfluence.com/show/vision-of-a-champion-with-anson-dorrance/page/1/.

Goorevich 72 between women and men. She views UNC as a space to teach women how to reclaim power and authority, which is a clear feminist act. Averbuch and Dorrance’s players utilize his ideology to combat the systemic, widespread, patriarchal obstacles that keep women marginalized throughout society.

Dorrance’s coaching ideology is undoubtedly complex. At times, Dorrance expresses liberal feminist viewpoints. Similar to popular corporate-feminist texts, like Sheryl Sandberg’s

Lean In, Dorrance recognizes the socialized limitations placed on women, but calls for women to assume individual responsibility in remedying their subordinate position.246 What further complicates Dorrance’s “feminism” is his belief in inherent gender differences and his universal championing of what he views as exclusively male attributes. A perpetuation of heteronormativity and masculine superiority within Dorrance’s ideology are antithetical to any feminist goal. Although Dorrance originally claims he is a difference feminist, he is better described as a soft essentialist and, at times, a liberal feminist.

Dorrance’s players, however, disrupt his gender essentialist beliefs. His players clearly experience his ideology as empowering. Furthermore, the players resist believing that relationality and other stereotypically feminine qualities are a hindrance to athletic success.

Hamm, Dunn, and Heath all present a more androgynous outlook on sport, where all human qualities are necessary for achievement in sports. Dorrance’s players, thus, complicate notions of femininity and masculinity and attempt to challenge his binary, overly simplistic perspective.

Dorrance’s players’ progressive opinions offer hope for the realization of the androgynous athletic ideal.

246 Christine Williams, “The Happy Marriage of Capitalism and Feminism,” Contemporary Sociology 43, no. 1 (2014): 59.

Goorevich 73

Dorrance and Coach-Athlete Sexual Harassment

Dorrance was charged for sexual harassment by three of his athletes in 1998. This case provides a window into the widespread problem of coach-athlete abuse and also highlights the insufficient institutional responses to ensuring the safety of female student-athletes. In addition to Anson Dorrance’s coaching ideologies maintaining masculine-controlled gender hierarchies and heteronormativity, his history with sexually harassing his athletes further exemplifies the ways coaches can uphold patriarchy in women’s sports and perpetuate harm, even as they lead their teams to championships. High-profile athlete-abuse cases in the past two decades, such as

Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics, have forced athletic governing institutions like the NCAA and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to respond with more stringent policies against coach-athlete abuse. Despite improving reporting mechanisms, policies implemented by the NCAA and the USOPC as well as recommendations from athletic advisory organizations, like the Drake Group, ignore the reality of gendered power structures between male coaches and female athletes that are conducive to abuse. Female athletes call for increasing female leadership as a way to combat the prevalence of coach-athlete abuse.247 As Sally Kenney argues, although it is essentialist and factually incorrect to argue that women will automatically bring change, increasing women’s presence in previously male-dominated spaces can destabilize patriarchy. Athletic institutions and governing bodies, however, refuse to dismantle patriarchal power as part of the solution to end the prevalence of coach-athlete abuse.

247 Alexandra Starr, “As USA Swimming Grapples with Sexual Abuse, Athletes Cite Lack of Female Coaches,” NPR, July 4, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/623540000/as-usa-swimming-grapples-with-sexual-abuse- athletes-cite-lack-of-female-coaches and Alexi Pappas, “Female Athletes Need to See Puberty as a Power, Not a Weakness,” The Atlantic, January 10, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/female-athletes- need-see-puberty-power-not-weakness/617613/.

Goorevich 74

Using Anson Dorrance’s 1998 sexual harassment lawsuit as a case study, this section will expose how a masculine-centered sports model leaves women and girls at an increased risk of abuse.248 Despite the proven vulnerability of women and girls to abuse by their coaches, sport governing institutions like the NCAA and the USOPC, as well as legislative regulations in athletics like Title IX, the 2018-2019 US Senate Olympics Investigation, the Protecting Young

Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 (hereafter known as

SafeSport Act), and the Empowering Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act of 2020 fail to address the gendered power structures that endanger female athletes. This represents yet another example of the maintenance of patriarchal power in sports. Male coaches who harass or abuse female athletes reproduce gender hierarchies in athletics that demean and create an unwelcoming environment for women. Patterns of female athlete abuse illustrate that despite women and girls having increased opportunities in sport, male-domination continues to perpetuate gender injustices within athletic spaces.

In 1998, Melissa Jennings, a former player on the UNC team, filed a suit against the

University of North Carolina under Title IX accusing Dorrance of sexual harassment.249 Jennings

248 Although women and girls may be at increased risk for abuse, researchers also find that sexual assault against boys is still widely common. Journalist Emma Brown asserts that one in six boys are sexually abused. Public health scholars Robert Blum et al. discovered in their Global Early Adolescence Study that boys “report greater exposure than girls to physical neglect, sexual abuse, [and] violence victimization … than girls.” Blum et al. also found that boys who experienced abuse were more likely to commit acts of sexual violence. The lack of conversations surrounding widespread sexual abuse against boys is symptomatic of gendered power relations in society. Masculine standards perpetuate stereotypes about “male invulnerability” that “obscure the truth” that men and boys “are equally capable of feeling pain and doing violence.” Brown finds that athletics is an arena rife with sexual assault against boys, where the “staunchly macho” sport culture leads to boys to become victims of sexual abuse, often in team hazing rituals. Acknowledging the fact that boys and men are also in danger of sexual violence does not undermine the threat that women and girls face, but instead underscores how “both problems are tangled up in some of the same deeply ingrained notions about what it means — or what we think it means — to be a man.” See Emma Brown, “Sexual Assault Against Boys is a Crisis: It’s Far More Common Than We Think. Here’s Why We Don’t Talk About It,” The Washington Post, February 22, 2021 and Robert Wm Blum, Mengmeng Li, and Gia Naranjo- Rivera, “Measuring Adverse Child Experiences Among Young Adolescents Globally: Relationships With Depressive Symptoms and Violence Perpetration,” Journal of Adolescent Health 65 (2019): 86-93. 249 Deanna DeFrancesco, “Jennings v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Title IX, Intercollegiate Athletics, and Sexual Harassment,” Journal of Law and Policy 15, no. 3 (2008): 1275.

Goorevich 75 claimed that Dorrance “persistently and openly pried into” the sex lives of his players “and made sexually charged comments, thereby creating a hostile environment in the women’s soccer program.”250 Jennings first joined the UNC program as a 17 year-old freshman in 1996 and remained on the team until May 1998, her sophomore year, when Dorrance cut her from the team, citing her lack of fitness and academic ineligibility.251 Jennings stated that Dorrance created an overly-sexual environment that left her and other players in “constant fear of his attention” as well as “uncomfortable, filthy, and humiliated.”252 According to Jennings’ testimony, Dorrance regularly participated in sex-focused talk, asking nearly every player every day, “who [her] fuck of the minute is, fuck of the hour is, fuck of the week [is],” whether there was a “guy [she] ha[dn't] fucked yet,” or whether she “got the guys' names as they came to the door or . . . just took a number.”253 Jennings also stated that Dorrance would often sexualize his players in public, by regularly commenting on “certain players’ bodies, referring to their ‘nice legs,’ ‘nice rack[s],’ breasts ‘bouncing,’ ‘asses in spandex,’ and ‘top heav[iness].’”254 Dorrance reportedly openly expressed his sexual fantasies about players on the team. Debbie Keller, a

UNC and US National Team star player who filed the suit along with Jennings, testified that

Dorrance told her that he wanted to watch particular players have sex. Keller also described how

Dorrance showed unwelcomed, overt affection towards her by “brushing her forehead, hugging her, rubbing her back, whispering in her ear, dangling a hand in front of her chest, or touching her stomach” as well as telling her that he “couldn't hide his affection for [her]” and that “in a

250 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 4. 251 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 4. 252 DeFrancesco, “Jennings v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” 1286 and Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6. 253 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 5. 254 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 5.

Goorevich 76 lifetime you should be as intimate with as many people as you can.”255 Jennings also described

Dorrance’s pervasive homophobia, with Dorrance calling a player “Chuck … because he believed that she was a lesbian” and often openly inquiring in front of the team about her sexual orientation.256 Although Jennings described the sexually-charged environment as a whole, she provides one specific example of Dorrance probing her sexual life during a one-on-one meeting in Dorrance’s hotel room on a team trip to California:

Dorrance told Jennings that she was in danger of losing her eligibility to play soccer if

her grades did not improve. In the midst of this discussion, Dorrance asked Jennings,

“Who are you fucking?” She replied that it was “[n]one of his God damn business” what

she did off field. As Jennings described the scene, “I was 17 when he asked me that in a

dark hotel room, knee-to-knee, bed not made, sitting at one of those tiny tables.” She felt

acutely uncomfortable.257

Jennings, Keller, and a third player who testified named Amy Steelman all expressed how the sexually charged environment Dorrance cultivated caused emotionally destructive feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and humiliation.258

In the fall of her first season on the team, Jennings’ met with Susan Ehringhaus, UNC’s legal counsel and Assistant to the Chancellor, to notify the university about the sexually hostile environment she and her teammates were experiencing. Ehringhaus, however, dismissed the complaints.259 After Jennings was cut, her parents submitted complaints about Dorrance’s sexual comments. Only then did Athletic Director Richard Baddour conduct an administrative review

255 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 5. 256 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 5-6. 257 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6. 258 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6. 259 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6.

Goorevich 77 where Dorrance admitted that he participated in sexual discussions, but that his comments were only “of a jesting or teasing nature.”260 Baddour then reprimanded Dorrance in a letter saying that it was inappropriate to engage in sexually charged conversations, with Dorrance signing the letter to indicate his own apology.261

Jennings and Keller sued UNC, Dorrance, and Ehringhaus for violating Title IX of the

Educational Amendments of 1972. Keller settled her claims with UNC, but Jennings proceeded.

In 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court decided that Dorrance’s conduct “could not be considered severe and pervasive, and therefore, did not create a hostile environment under Title IX,” awarding summary judgement to the defendants (UNC).262 Sending the case to summary judgement means that the case would not be heard by a jury. However, in 2007, the Fourth

Circuit Court reheard the case and sided with Jennings, finding that Dorrance discriminated on the basis of sex and subjected her to “severe and pervasive sexual harassment in the women’s soccer program.”263 In January 2008, Jennings and UNC settled the case, with UNC agreeing to pay Jennings $385,000. Dorrance issued an apology to all players.264 Outside of this payment and apology, Dorrance did not face any other consequences for his actions and the event has little-impact on his storied reputation. Despite losing the case, the outcome is unsatisfactory; he did not lose his job and did not receive public punishments from the NCAA or from UNC. Given that Dorrance continues to espouse heteronormative and marginalizing ideologies in his coaching

260 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6. 261 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 6. 262 DeFrancesco, “Jennings v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” 1275. 263 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 7. According to legal scholar Deanna DeFrancesco, the Fourth Circuit reheard the case en banc after an appeal from Jennings. Hearing a case en banc means that a case is reheard in front of a court’s entire bench, rather than one or multiple selected judges. DeFrancesco, “Jennings v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” 1275. 264 “Jennings v. UNC-CH is settled,” American Association of University Women: North Carolina, January 15, 2008, https://www.aauwnc.org/jennings-v-unc-ch-is-settled/.

Goorevich 78 books and podcasts, it is unclear if he made any fundamental changes in his coaching methodology since the case ended.

Dorrance’s case is just one instance in the widespread pattern of coach-athlete abuse. A legacy of conservatism sees sports as a “site of political neutrality” and creates an environment where coach behavior is often unregulated and unchallenged, leaving athletes susceptible to harm.265 A historic reluctance among athletic administrators to address topics of athlete abuse in the form of policies or educational programs to define and govern the coach-athlete relationship as well as clear and fair procedural guidelines to report complaints sustains an environment that leaves athletes at risk of abuse.266

Confusion around definitions and variations between terms like “abuse,”

“discrimination,” and “harassment” create misunderstandings around “establishing clear boundaries for appropriate interactions” between coaches and athletes.267 Sport Sociologist Celia

Brackenridge defines a “sexual discrimination/abuse continuum” where sexual discrimination refers to the “chilly climate” of various institutionalized oppressions based on gender, such as unfair workplace practices or differential pay structures.268 Title IX and Title VII define harassment as any action that is “sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it adversely affects a student's (or employee’s) education (or workplace) or creates a hostile or abusive educational (or workplace) environment.”269 Some behaviors associated with sexual harassment are:

265 Celia Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically…’ Women’s Experiences of Sexual Abuse in Sport,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 32, no. 2 (1997): 115. 266 Karin A.E. Volkwein et al., “Sexual Harassment in Sport: Perceptions and Experiences of American Female Student-Athletes,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 32, no. 3 (1997): 292-3. 267 Volkwein et al., “Sexual Harassment in Sport,” 292. 268 Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically,’” 116. 269 Norma V. Cantu, “Office of Civil Rights: Sexual Harassment Guidance,” U.S. Department of Education, last modified January 10, 2020. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/sexhar00.html. Title VII is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and bans harassment of an employee based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.

Goorevich 79

Written or verbal abuse or threats, sexually oriented comments, jokes, lewd comments or

sexual innuendos, taunts about body, dress, marital status or sexuality, intimidating

sexual remarks, propositions, invitations or familiarity, domination of meetings, play

space, or equipment, condescending or patronizing behavior undermining self-respect or

performance, physical contact, fondling, pinching, or kissing.270

“Sexual abuse” is the most severe action on Brackenridge’s continuum. Sexual abuse involves actions of grooming or coercing where there is an “exchange of reward or privilege for sexual favors.” Rape, sexual assault, and groping are all examples of sexual abuse.271

To what extent is harassment and abuse in sport a gendered problem? Abuse and harassment in sport is a product of male dominance in sport as well as the lack of regulation of coaching behavior. Some critics argue that more female coaches will solve the problem, but that is an overly-essentialist and simplistic solution overlooks the structures of sport. The intimate and unregulated nature of sporting environments makes athletes more susceptible to sexual harassment and abuse. Basing her argument on philosopher Michel Foucault’s 1979 theories on discourse, sport sociologist Celia Brackenridge asserts that since sport is centered around the body and bodies are sites “of struggle for discourses that define acceptable sexuality and body shape,” sport is an arena “more susceptible to abusive sexual relations than other, less physical, domains.”272 It is unknown, however, of the percentage of athletes that are abused by coaches and administrators. The difficulty in identifying the rate of coach-athlete harassment or abuse is due to underreporting, a phenomenon found throughout society. Underreporting of sexual

270 Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically,’” 116-7. 271 Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically,’” 117. 272 Celia Brackenridge, Spoilsports: Understanding and Presenting Sexual Exploitation in Sport (London: Routledge, 2001): 85.

Goorevich 80 harassment is caused by various factors; coaches, athletes, and parents often lack the necessary education to be able recognize and identify sexual harassment and abuse. Institutions often fail to make reporting mechanisms fair and accessible. Additionally, silence among victims as a coping mechanism to deal with the shame and pain of being harassed contributes to this underreporting.273 The intimate nature of the athletic environment, which is usually unregulated, provides added risk-factors that can increase the likelihood of coach-athlete abuse. For instance, the centrality of a “win-at-all-costs” coaching ideology, the closeness of the coach-athlete relationship, which often includes access to athletes’ personal lives and their bodies, and the lack of supervision within training environments all leave the athlete more vulnerable to sexual harassment or abuse.274 Furthermore, the extreme power imbalances between coaches and athletes, where a coach’s expertise, reputation, and access to resources creates a situation where the athlete is completely dependent on the coach for their success, leave the athlete powerless to report instances of harassment or abuse.275 Brackenridge best explains how the power and respect afforded to coaches creates a system of silence that prevents interventions to end athlete sexual abuse or harassment:

[The coach] is in a position of power over athletes (who want skill, improvement and

selection), parents (who want success for themselves and their [children]) and

administrators (who need success in the sport for it to flourish and for their empires to

survive). The significance of the power of the coach cannot be underestimated and can be

273 Volkwein et al., “Sexual Harassment in Sport,” 284. 274 Misia Gervis and Nicola Dunn, “The Emotional Abuse of Elite Child Athletes by Their Coaches,” Child Abuse Review 13 (2004): 222 and Ashley E. Stirling and Gretchen A. Kerr, “Abused Athletes Perceptions of the Coach- Athlete Relationship,” Sport in Society 12, no. 2 (2009): 231-2. 275 Stirling and Kerr, “Abused Athletes Perceptions,” 228.

Goorevich 81

likened to that of the priest who is also vested with authority (of God) and whose absolute

knowledge is not questioned or challenged.276

Despite a lack of data surrounding athlete abuse at the hands of coaches, scholars have found that female athletes are much more likely to experience sexual harassment, abuse, or harm than male athletes. For example, sport sociologists Karin Volkwein et al.’s study on NCAA female student-athletes’ experiences and perceptions of sexual harassment found that 20% of respondents were “subjected to potentially threatening behaviors” with 18% experiencing derogatory remarks or sexist jokes.277 The researchers also believed that these numbers underestimate the prevalence of female athlete abuse; students are not always aware of what constitutes sexual abusive behavior and students who experienced abuse may have not participated in the study or ended their sporting careers before the study was conducted.278 Sport scholars Alan Tomlinson and Ilkay Yorganci’s study similarly found that female athletes experience high rates of abuse at the hands of male coaches with nearly 1 in 4 of respondents stating they have experienced demeaning language, physical contact, verbal intrusion, fondling, or pressure to have sexual intercourse.279

The gendered power relations within the sporting environment facilitate the greater vulnerability female athletes face. Sporting institutions and coaching roles are often dominated by men. As noted previously, a legacy of Title IX is that “female athletes now get to play, but they play under male leadership.”280 This persistence of male hegemony in athletics means that

276 Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically,’” 120. 277 Volkwein et al., “Sexual Harassment in Sport,” 291. 278 Volkwein et al., “Sexual Harassment in Sport,” 292. 279 Alan Tomlinson and Ilkay Yorganci, “Male Coach/Female Athlete Relations: Gender and Power Relations in Competitive Sport,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 21, no. 2 (1997): 146. 280 Mariah Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994): 162.

Goorevich 82 power imbalances between the male coach and the female athlete are widened, allowing the coach to more easily exploit his power through sexual abuse or harassment.281 Additionally, the ways that both men and women within the sporting space negotiate gender relations and adapt to patriarchal norms may result in abuse of female athletes. For example, “male coaches have long been prone to excessive and exaggerated forms of macho self-assertion that belittles and humiliates their athletes,” leading to sexual harassment.282 Additionally, the continued, unquestioned belief in women’s physiological and athletic inferiority within the sporting sphere further created an environment conducive to exploitation of female athletes and the maintenance of male power within sport. Feminist sport scholar Mariah Burton Nelson views the phenomenon of male coaches abusing female athletes as a reaction to women increasingly entering athletics and threatening the once exclusively male realm:

The gatekeepers of female athletic success, male coaches may at some level feel

threatened by that success, or by the increasing female social power it symbolizes. So

while a coach may with one hand reach to help a woman free herself of sexist constraints

through athletic achievement, he may with the other hand seduce her, thus effectively

trapping her in a sexualized, dependent position.283

Burton Nelson also suggests that the sport environment’s prioritization of masculinist values perpetuate abuse and the degradation of female athletes. She argues that the god-like, unquestionable status of coaches are products of masculinist sport environments that control and marginalize:

281 Brackenridge, “‘He Owned Me, Basically,’” 120. 282 Tomlinson and Yorganci, “Male Coach/Female Athlete Relations,” 136. 283 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 163.

Goorevich 83

Coaching styles, adopted from manly sports, are often authoritarian and all-

encompassing. Athletes are taught not to question the coach. A coach might tell an athlete

not only when and how to practice but when and what to eat, when to sleep, how to dress.

It’s the coach’s job to define the rules and to say what’s out of bounds, what’s illegal.

The coach knows best. If the coach says it’s OK, it must be OK. In this way a coach

creates a dominance he may not have in his family life, or may not have felt as an athlete

on the manly playing fields. Having had male coaches all of her life, the athlete may

accept this strict control as normal. She may know of no other way. In the habit of

acceding to numerous personal demands, the athlete who is asked for sex—even if she

does not feel infatuated—may feel unable suddenly to say no to her all-powerful

coach.284

Female athletes’ responses to sexual abuse or harassment are also shaped by patriarchal systems. For instance, female athletes may succumb to sexual abuse by their coaches “to acquire for herself patriarchal approval, assurance that her strong body and strong ambitions really are

OK.”285 As societal ideals of femininity are often seen as incompatible with the masculine realm of sports, being sexually subordinated and exploited by a powerful male figure is a possible coping mechanism for gendered insecurities. Tomlinson and Yorganci also find that female athletes accept as normal and sometimes even prefer the gendered power dynamic of male coaches being authoritarian and over-controlling, despite the consequences, because “the male coach is widely perceived as a more effective motivator and disciplinarian, traits commonly associated with success at producing winners.”286 The masculine-constructed athletic system,

284 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 185. 285 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 161. 286 Tomlinson and Yorganci, “Male Coach/Female Athlete Relations,” 144.

Goorevich 84 which depends on female-athlete compliance, functions to blind female athletes from potential abuse that they may be experiencing.

The negative consequences of sexual harassment and abuse faced by victims leads to underreporting. Victims may suffer from “depression, fear, anxiety, shame, and overwhelming guilt,” that prevents them from reporting.287 Coach abuse also has devastating implications on athletes’ careers. An athlete may leave the sport to escape the abuse or be forced to shift her focus from “herself and her goals to her coach. Rather than concentrate on her own increasing athletic ability,” the athlete questions her relationship with her coach.288 The once-close and strong athlete-coach relationship, which is often a prerequisite for athletic success, can also become tarnished when a coach violates an athlete’s safety and trust. Additionally, an abused athlete may face social isolation from their teammates and peers.289

Current politics and measures are insufficient to protect athletes from abuse. Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 is one of these inadequate tools to combat sexual harassment in educational environments, like the UNC soccer team.290 Sexual harassment within an educational environment is a Title IX violation, as sexual harassment denies the victim access to equal opportunity and benefits within their educational experience.291 Title IX defines sexual harassment as being “sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile (or abusive) environment in an educational program or activity.”292 Sex-specific language “that is aimed to humiliate, ridicule, or intimidate” is one example of an activity that can meet Title IX’s threshold of “severe

287 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 170. 288 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 178. 289 Burton Nelson, The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football, 178. 290 Deborah Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” Marquette Sports Law Review 22, no.2 (2012): 396. 291 DeFrancesco, “Jennings v University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” 1280. 292 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 2.

Goorevich 85 or pervasive to create a hostile environment.”293 For Jennings to show that Dorrance and UNC violated Title IX, her case had to show that:

(1) she was a student at an educational institution receiving federal funds, (2) she was

subjected to harassment based on her sex, (3) the harassment was sufficiently severe or

pervasive to create a hostile (or abusive) environment in an educational program or

activity, and (4) there is a basis for imputing liability to the institution.294

When considering a Title IX case, courts look at a variety of circumstances, such as the age difference between the victim and harasser, the role difference and power dynamics between the victim and harasser, the type of harassment and the frequency, the general atmosphere in which the harassment took place, and whether the harassment effectively “deprived the victim of educational opportunities and benefits.”295 The victim has to prove to the court that the harassment led to “a concrete, negative effect on the victim’s ability to participate in a program or activity.”296

Legal scholar Deborah Brake has argued that Title IX is an insufficient tool to challenge widespread sexual harassment and abuse in intercollegiate athletics.297 Specifically, Title IX demands that the victim prove that sexual advances were unwelcomed. Brake argues that this requirement fails to recognize the extreme power dynamics between an athlete and a coach, as clear proof of the acts being “unwanted” may be difficult to obtain.298 The athletic environment inflates the gendered power dynamics; the coach “assumes a role that is irreplaceable if the athlete wants to progress in the sport” and often controls the athletes’ place on the roster, playing

293 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 7. 294 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 2. 295 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 2. 296 Majority Opinion, Jennings v. Univ. of NC 482 F.3d 686; 2007, pg. 2. 297 Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 396. 298 Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 396.

Goorevich 86 time, scholarship money, access to future opportunities, as well as deeply personal aspects of the athletes’ diet, academic patterns, and social life.299 Due to the powerful opportunities that the coach holds for the athletes’ future, athletes are often unable to leave the relationship, facing “a choice between continuing an unwanted relationship and jeopardizing their opportunities in sport.”300 Because of this inability to leave the coach or the sport in the event of exploitative sexual relationships, it is often difficult to provide evidence that a “coach’s advances were unwelcomed.”301 Therefore, Title IX is a flawed tool for remedying patterns of sexual harassment and abuse in athletic settings as it fails acknowledge the unique circumstances and vast power dynamics within intercollegiate athletics. By demanding clear proof of unwelcomeness, Title IX, inadvertently protects coach-athlete sexual exploits.

Institutional responses to coach-athlete abuse have yet to address a key factor in coach- athlete abuse: patriarchy in athletics. Brackenridge argues that there is a “wide range of organizational responses to sexual exploitation” and “no consensus on either the origins of the problem or the best course of intervention” by institutions.302 Additionally, sports organizations often minimize, deny, and delay reports, representing of a “pattern of institutional sexism that effectively suppresses female agency and supports the heterosexual male orthodoxy in sport.303

In her examinations of institutional responses to abuse in the UK, Brackenridge finds that athletic organizations either adopt personally-rooted or structurally-based explanations for coach-athlete abuse. Personally-rooted policies allow the organizations to absolve themselves of responsibility for abuse, focusing instead on getting rid of deviant individuals. The personally-

299 Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 405-6. 300 Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 408. 301 Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 415. 302 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 169. 303 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 174.

Goorevich 87 rooted approach turns attention “onto mythical monsters who become the target for the policy.”304 A dependence on exclusionary methods, such as criminal record checks, screenings, and rigorous interview procedures, all define the personally-rooted structure.305 Despite creating

“high gates” to keep perpetrators out of sport institutions, the personally-rooted structure is flawed as organizations fail to recognize “that they may already harbor coaches and others engaged in sexual exploitation, or that their ‘normal’ sport cultures may actually facilitate exploitative relations.”306 Personally-rooted solutions do not address the reality of gendered power imbalances that lead to increased risk of abuse. Structurally-based explanations “attribute blame to procedural failures.”307 These responses go a step further than personally-based ones, but still do not question the cultural practices within an institution, like patriarchal power.

Brackenridge argues that a proactive approach that redefines gendered power imbalances is key to an ideal anti-harassment policy. In a proactive stance, everyone in an organization, especially those in positions of authority, would “accept and understand the consequences of their own behavior,” such as their place in gendered power structures.308 Proactive approaches, where regulations and policies are embedded in the governance of the organization,309 recognize that sexual exploitation is not a result of individual deviance or procedural failures, but is instead a “symptom of the entire cultural system of sport,” which is built on male, heterosexual hegemony.310

304 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 169. 305 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 169. 306 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 169. 307 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 169. 308 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 170. 309 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 184. 310 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 181.

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A review of several institutional responses to abuse scandals shows that organizations have yet to prioritize gender as a factor in preventing harassment and abuse. I examine the

USOPC’s U.S. Center for SafeSport and the NCAA informed by Brackenridge’s anti-harassment checklist: first, sport organizations must have an “equity policy” that addresses gender.311

Second, while reporting mechanisms, background check processes, bans on offenders, and anti- harassment education courses are important procedures, organizations that do not examine internal cultural conditions, including gendered power imbalances, will leave sexual exploitation unchallenged.312

The USOPC has been at the center of the issue of sexual harassment and athletics due to the highly-publicized Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics (USAG) case. Larry Nassar had been a

USAG team medical official from 1986 to 2015, when he abruptly retired.313 At the time, USAG gymnast Maggie Nichols reported discomfort with Nassar’s conduct towards her. Instead of immediately reporting the allegation directly to law enforcement, USAG officials delayed for over a month and allowed Nassar to quietly “retire” from USAG.314 In 2016, the Indianapolis

Star published an investigative report detailing abuse allegations against Nassar by former gymnasts under his care at Michigan State University. Nassar was arrested on counts of first- degree criminal sexual conduct and child pornography possession in 2016.315 Since 2016, over

311 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 196. 312 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 238. 313 Jen Kirby, “The sex abuse scandal surrounding USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar,” Vox, May 16, 2018, https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/1/19/16897722/sexual-abuse-usa-gymnastics-larry-nassar-explained. 314 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Senate Olympics Investigation: The Courage of Survivors, A Call to Action, prepared by the Offices of Senator Jerry Moran and Senator Richard Blumenthal, July 30, 2019, 29, https://www.moran.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c/2/c232725e-b717-4ec8-913e- 845ffe0837e6/FCC5DFDE2005A2EACF5A9A25FF76D538.2019.07.30-the-courage-of-survivors--a-call-to-action- olympics-investigation-report-final.pdf. 315 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 29.

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300 women and girls have come forward with allegations of abuse by Nassar.316 On January 24,

2018, Nassar was sentenced to 175 years in prison. There was national outrage over USAG’s systemic failure to protect its athletes; officials at the USOPC and individual sport governing bodies concealed their negligence, resisted enacting reforms, and protected their own reputations over the health and safety of the athletes.317

The Nassar case, along with the emergence of other instances of athlete-abuse at sport national governing bodies, such as at USA Swimming and U.S. Figure Skating, prompted

Congressional “attention and action” to investigate sexual abuse in Olympic sport institutions.318

Previously, Congress had minimal intervention in Olympic sports. The Ted Stevens Olympic and

Amateur Sports Act became law in 1978, which set the objectives of the USOPC as well as allowed the USOPC to designate one governing body, a national governing body or NGB, per sport.319 USAG and U.S. Swimming are examples of NGBs that are under the jurisdiction of the

USOPC. In January 2018, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade and Consumer Protection initiated an investigation of the systemic failures that allowed for sex offenders like Nassar to commit crimes unchecked.320 Between April and October 2018, the subcommittee held four hearings examining the role of national governing bodies in protecting athletes, analyzing past policies and practices in athlete-abuse reports, developing improved procedures to combat athlete-abuse, and investigating anti-abuse efforts throughout the Olympic movement. The hearings included testimonies from abuse survivors, coaches, and current and former USOPC officials. The

316 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 28. 317 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 2. 318 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 29. 319 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 27. 320 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 2.

Goorevich 90 subcommittee concluded that the USOPC “failed to uphold their purposes and duties to protect amateur athletes and other young women and girls from sexual abuse.”321 There was very little discussion of gender in the hearings.

The ultimate conclusion of the Congressional investigation was the 2017 Protecting

Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act (SafeSport Act) and the 2020

Empowering Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act. These pieces of legislation strengthened

Congressional oversight on sport national governing bodies. The most significant feature of the

SafeSport Act is that it “requires any adult who is a member of an NGB in the U.S, or interacts with a minor at an NGB’s facility or at any event sanctioned by an NGB, to report any incident of sexual harassment and abuse to law enforcement within 24 hours.”322 This means that personnel within an NGB have a legal duty to immediately report instances of sexual harassment or abuse or face a fine or imprisonment of up to one year.323 The SafeSport Act also “authorized an independent entity, the U.S. Center for SafeSport (the Center), to investigate and enforce against abuse in amateur sports and to clarify the USOPC’s role in protecting athletes.”324

Having an agency independent from USOPC or NGB influence is important in protecting athletes and ensuring their concerns are heard. Congress provides funds to the Center to help protect independence from the USOPC. The SafeSport Act “also requires the Center to develop training, oversight practices, policies, and procedures for NGBs and Paralympic sports organizations (PSOs) to prevent abuse of amateur athletes.”325 To date, scholars have mixed

321 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 4. 322 Anne Marie Burke, “Raising the Bar: Increasing Protection for Athletes in the Olympic Movement from Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport 31, no.1 (2021): 88. 323 Burke, “Raising the Bar: Increasing Protection for Athletes in the Olympic Movement from Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” 88 and Alexandria Murphy, “Better Late Than Never: Why The USOC Took So Long To Fix a Failing System For Protecting Olympic Athletes From Abuse,” Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal 26, no. 1 (2019): 195. 324 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 27. 325 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee, Senate Olympics Investigation, 27.

Goorevich 91 reviews on the Center’s effectiveness.326 The Empowering Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act grants Congress the power to dissolve the board of directors of the USOPC in the event of further failure to protect athletes from abuse.

The U.S. Center for SafeSport does recognize power imbalances between coaches and athletes as a risk factor for coach-athlete abuse, but errs in overlooking the importance of gendered power disparities. As determined by the SafeSport Act, all sport organizations under the jurisdiction of the USOPC are required to submit to the authority of the U.S. Center for

SafeSport. The 2020 “SafeSport Code for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement” can provide us with insight on the policies and procedures followed by sport organizations to combat harassment and abuse. Given that gendered power imbalances are a root cause of coach-athlete abuse, it is alarming that gender is rarely mentioned within the SafeSport Code. When defining

“power imbalances,” the Code states that the level of power imbalance depends on many factors:

The nature and extent of the supervisory, evaluative or other authority over the person;

the actual relationship between the parties; the parties’ respective roles; the nature and

326 According to legal scholar Anne Marie Burke, the Center received 5,000 reports of sexual harassment, sanctioned 627 individuals, and permanently banned 279 individuals from participating in USOC programs. As of December 2019, the Center’s publicly available database of all sanctioned and banned individuals listed 1,218 names. The Center’s educational guides and training courses for athletes, parents, and athletic personnel have been completed by more than 1.6 million individuals since March 2017. Despite these numbers, some scholars are skeptical of the Center’s progress. Legal scholar Alexandria Murphy states that while education programs are important to recognize and prevent exploitative behaviors, the Center and SafeSport Act do not provide “specific guidance on limiting one-on-one interactions,” which is where the highest risk of coach-athlete abuse is located. Furthermore, legal scholar Diane Koller states that more congressional funding is needed for the SafeSport initiative to be successful. Currently, the Center largely depends on external donations to operate. As Koller states, if the Center continues to focus on fundraising then it will jeopardize the Center’s mission. See Anne Marie Burke, “Raising the Bar: Increasing Protection for Athletes in the Olympic Movement from Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport 31, no.1 (2021): 89-90, Alexandria Murphy, “Better Late Than Never: Why The USOC Took So Long To Fix a Failing System For Protecting Olympic Athletes From Abuse,” Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal 26, no. 1 (2019): 190, and Diane Koller, “A Twenty-First-Century Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 20, no.4 (2018): 1058-9.

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duration of the relationship; the age of the parties involved; whether there is an aggressor;

whether there is a significant disparity in age, size, strength, or mental capacity.327

Notably, gender is not listed as a contributing factor to the vast power imbalances between coaches and athletes.

Not recognizing gendered power as a risk factor for athlete-abuse, especially abuse of female athletes, means that male, heterosexual hegemony goes unchallenged. Additionally, in both the Congressional Olympic investigation and in the SafeSport Code, dismantling gender imbalances between coaches and athletes is never considered a solution to athlete-abuse. While it is important to clarify and strengthen reporting and enforcement mechanisms, as the SafeSport

Code does, neglecting to consider how the culture of athletic organizations historically and systematically subordinates women means that sexual exploitation of female athletes will persist.

In addition to skepticism over the effectiveness of the Center’s procedures, scholars argue that the SafeSport Code and SafeSport Act do not address cultural roots of sexual harassment and abuse in sports. In a critique of the SafeSport Act, legal scholar Diane Koller asserts that

Congress needs to move beyond simply improving reporting mechanisms to properly combat sexual harassment in athletics. For instance, Koller suggests that Congress amend the Amateur

Sports Act to adopt provisions that “aim to enhance athlete health and well-being,” especially in areas of “concussion management, coaching, and sports medicine,” as well as “provide clearer and wider protections for all types of whistleblowers.”328 Significantly, Koller regards the

SafeSport Act’s neglect of gender imbalances in sports as a major flaw; she recommends that

327 U.S. Center for SafeSport, SafeSport Code for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement (Denver, Colorado: 2020), 6. 328 Diane Koller, “A Twenty-First-Century Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 20, no. 4 (2018): 1031.

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Congress “require that women athletes are treated equitably.”329 Legal scholar Alexandria

Murphy similarly argues that real change needs to occur within the culture of sport by shifting athletic institutions’ focus from “medals to protecting children.”330

As the NCAA is not part of the USOPC, they are not under the jurisdiction of the U.S.

SafeSport Code, The SafeSport Act, or the Empowering Olympic and Amateur Athletes Act.

Instead, the NCAA allows individual member institutions to develop and adhere to their own anti-harassment policies as well as to Title IX regulations.331 The NCAA can offer recommendations and model policies, but they have not historically forced institutions to adopt particular policies or procedures in regards to sexual violence.332 The only NCAA policy regarding sexual violence that NCAA institutions must obey by is the “NCAA Board of

Governors Policy on Campus Sexual Violence,” which was established in August 2017. This policy demands that each intercollegiate athletic department attest annually that 1) coaches, athletes, and administrators, are “informed on, integrated in, and compliant with institutional policies and processes regarding sexual violence prevention;” 2) “institutional policies and

329 Koller, “A Twenty-First-Century Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” 1065. Title IX has driven the expansion of women’s athletic opportunities. Koller argues that as Title IX only applies to educational programs that receive federal funding, Congress should implement separate gender-equity provisions that apply specifically to the USOPC, NGBs, and other athletic institutions not covered by Title IX. See Diane Koller, “A Twenty-First-Century Olympic and Amateur Sports Act,” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law 20, no.4 (2018): 1065- 8. 330 Murphy, “Better Late Than Never: Why The USOC Took So Long To Fix a Failing System For Protecting Olympic Athletes From Abuse,” 184-5. 331 As legal scholar Deborah Brake asserts, Title IX is a weak tool to combat coach-athlete abuse. See Brake, “Going Outside Title IX to Keep Coach-Athlete Relationships in Bounds,” 396. 332 The NCAA has the power to impose sanctions on institutions or athletes that do not comply with NCAA policies, like failing to maintain a specific grade point average, signing a professional sports contract, or participating in sports wagering. Sanctions can range from fines, reductions in the number of scholarships, suspension from post- season competition, erasure of past championship wins, and even disqualification from future competition. In evaluating the NCAA’s responses to sexual assault, legal scholar Jayma M. Meyer finds that the NCAA has historically relied only on guidelines and resolutions that do not offer specific penalties for failures. Meyer argues that the NCAA should have comparable consequences for violations of policies regarding sexual violence as they do for policies that govern other eligibility rules, like amateurism. See Jayma M. Meyer, “It’s On The NCAA: A Playbook for Eliminating Sexual Assault,” Syracuse Law Review 67: 360-1.

Goorevich 94 procedures regarding sexual violence prevention and adjudication, and the name and contact information for the campus Title IX coordinator are readily available within the department of athletics, and are provided to student athletes;” and 3) “All student-athletes, coaches and staff have been educated each year on sexual violence prevention, intervention and response.”333

Schools that do not comply with this policy are “prohibited from hosting any NCAA championship competitions for the next applicable academic year.”334 To support institutions in meeting these goals, the NCAA published “Sexual Violence Prevention: An Athletics Tool Kit

For a Healthy and Safe Culture” in August 2019. The “Tool Kit” provides a checklist for athletic directors to guide them in meeting sexual violence prevention goals as well as suggestions for educational materials. Significantly, the “Tool Kit” cites “sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and power — or dominance — based relationships” as “the core of sexual violence.”335 Although insisting that a “culture change” in athletics is “essential” to combat sexual violence, the “Tool Kit” does not provide strategies or examples for athletic administrators to initiate this necessary culture change.336 Despite this flaw, the “Tool Kit” and

2017 NCAA Board of Governor’s Policy are important first steps in addressing the prevalence of sexual misconduct in intercollegiate athletics.

The “Tool Kit” and 2017 Policy, however, do not specifically address coach-athlete sexual exploitation. In 2012, the NCAA Office of Inclusion consulted Deborah Brake and

Mariah Burton Nelson to develop a model policy for preventing sexual relations between

333 National Collegiate Athletics Association Sport Science Institute, Sexual Violence Prevention: An Athletics Tool Kit for a Healthy and Safe Culture (Indianapolis, IN: National Collegiate Athletics Association, 2019), 33. 334 National Collegiate Athletics Association Sport Science Institute, Sexual Violence Prevention: An Athletics Tool Kit for a Healthy and Safe Culture, 33. 335 National Collegiate Athletics Association Sport Science Institute, Sexual Violence Prevention: An Athletics Tool Kit for a Healthy and Safe Culture, 4. 336 National Collegiate Athletics Association Sport Science Institute, Sexual Violence Prevention: An Athletics Tool Kit for a Healthy and Safe Culture, 13.

Goorevich 95 coaches and athletes. This report directly addresses the gendered power dynamics that permeate many coach-athlete abuse cases. While the SafeSport Code neglects the importance of gender in a coach-athlete power relationship, Brake and Burton Nelson directly state that “male coaches have a presumptive authority and legitimacy that contributes to the power imbalance in the coach-athlete relationship, laying the ground rules for allegiance to whatever the coach demands,” including harassment and abuse.337 Going beyond banning sexual harassment, Brake and Burton Nelson’s proposed policy prohibits any amorous relationship between any coach and any student-athlete, regardless of age or consent.338 Brake and Burton Nelson consider any sexual relationship between a coach and a student-athlete to be unethical and inevitably harmful to the athlete and to the coach’s team.339

Although acknowledging a root of athlete sexual exploitation — male, heterosexual hegemony in athletics — the NCAA does not mandate institutions to adopt this policy, reflecting an ambivalent approach towards combating coach-athlete abuse. Additionally, the model policy merely bans sexual relationships between coaches and athletes due to the extreme gendered power imbalances, but does not offer solutions or procedures to facilitate the dismantlement of male hegemony and women’s subordination in athletic culture. While an improved, proactive approach to sexual exploitation, the NCAA should seek out larger cultural transformations, such as increasing the number of women in leadership roles, to end pervasive sexual harassment.

Echoing Sally Kenney’s argument, the presence of women in a historically male-dominated space is radical enough to challenge hegemonic masculinity and women’s marginalization.

337 Deborah L. Brake and Mariah Burton Nelson, Staying in Bounds: An NCAA Model Policy to Prevent Inappropriate Relationships Between Student-Athletes and Athletics Department Personnel (Indianapolis, Indiana; NCAA, 2012), 16. 338 Brake and Nelson, Staying in Bounds, 36. 339 Brake and Nelson, Staying in Bounds, 8.

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The Drake Group offers another proposed policy to help combat sexual abuse and harassment: adopting and implementing a Coaching Code of Ethics.340 The Drake Group is a non-profit, advisory organization made up of college academics and activists whose mission is to

“defend academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports [and] create an atmosphere on college campuses that encourages personal and intellectual growth for all students.”341 The Drake Group proposes reforms to the NCAA on topics such as academic integrity, athlete compensation, and athlete safety. In a 2016 report entitled, “Athletic Governance Organization and Institutional Responsibilities Related to

Professional Coaching Conduct,” the Drake Group found that rules or policies relating to coach misconduct are non-existent; “the coaching profession is without clear and consistent standards and that absent such guidelines, too many coaches … are crossing the line that separates good practice from harm to athletes,” such as Anson Dorrance.342 Additionally, similar to Brake and

Burton Nelson, the Drake Group acknowledges that “the athletics subculture can still be a sexist environment dominated by male athletes and coaches.”343 The NCAA currently has “no rules related to coaches’ verbal or physical abuse of athletes or bullying.”344

The Drake Group proposes the creation of a “Coaching Code of Ethics that specifically defines unacceptable behaviors in the areas of physical abuse, romantic, sexual and social relationships, sexual harassment, mental and verbal abuse and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, gender, or sexual orientation.”345 The fact that the Drake

340 Lopiano et al., The Drake Group Position Statement, 2. 341 “Vision, Mission and Values,” The Drake Group, accessed March 30, 2021, https://www.thedrakegroup.org/about/vision-mission-and-goals/. 342 Lopiano et al., The Drake Group Position Statement, 2. 343 Lopiano et al., The Drake Group Position Statement, 9. 344 Lopiano et al., The Drake Group Position Statement, 9. 345 Lopiano et al., The Drake Group Position Statement, 2.

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Group provides a Coaching Code of Ethics as a solution to athlete harm signifies a return to the

AIAW’s ideas of transformed, non-exploitative, athlete-centered athletic models. While it is valuable that advisory organizations like the Drake Group propose the creation of ethical guidelines for coaches and acknowledge the persistence of sexist harm in athletics, the Drake

Group is powerless to implement these measures. The NCAA has yet to take any action to the

Drake Group’s proposal of creating a Coaching Code of Ethics. Additionally, while a Coaching

Code of Ethics is important to establish acceptable standards of athlete-safety, the Drake Group does not offer measures to combat the prevalence of masculine hegemony that is a root of authoritative and abusive coaching conduct. Similar to the hands-off approach practiced by the

NCAA by creating a “model” rather than mandated policy regarding sexual relationships, the

NCAA’s lack of action to create coach-conduct guidelines reflects a strong ambivalence towards athlete-safety.

Ultimately, the end to sexual harassment in sport can only come with fundamental cultural changes to the masculine, heterosexual dominance in sports. While the SafeSport Code,

NCAA’s “model” policy, and a Coaching Code of Ethics proposed by the Drake Group are all commendable, systemic cultural shifts are not easily completed through anti-harassment policies and regulations. Similar to how Carole Oglesby and other feminist sport theorists call for a dismantlement of male-centric sport values in order to make athletics more empowering and inclusive to all athletes, Brackenridge sees “sharing power … [and] redefin[ing] the conditions of women’s involvement in ways that make them both welcomed and valued” as a solution to sexual harassment in athletics.346 Transforming the normative, masculine-defined system of coaching is one way to end coach-athlete sexual abuse and harassment. Brackenridge argues that

346 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 229.

Goorevich 98 the standard authoritative, dogmatic coaching methods, such as those espoused by Dorrance, emphasize “discipline and hierarchical authority that [has] facilitated optimum conditions for sexual exploitation in sport.”347 As an alternative, Brackenridge finds value in Gilligan’s ethic of care to propose an empowerment-based coaching approach that prioritizes athlete autonomy.348

A care-focused coaching method would emphasize not the athletes’ results, but rather their total development as a person who has a life both during and after sport.349 Athlete-empowerment, according to Brackenridge, deconstructs power imbalances, as a coach’s success is not dependent on his athletes’ performance, and protects athletes’ autonomy. Empowerment-based coaching, thus, “is perhaps the most effective method of preventing sexual exploitation in sport.”350

Building on Gilligan’s work on how women’s voices are often subordinated to men’s,

Brackenridge argues for “complete and sustainable changes in the way leaders construe the purpose of sport and the power-gender nexus within it.”351 Not only do leadership structures need to include more women in the ranks, through coaching and administrative positions, “it will be necessary for men … who rule sport to begin both listening and hearing women’s voices.”352

Brackenridge’s argument echoes those made by high-profile female Olympians; survivors of sexual exploitation view increasing women’s leadership in athletics as a solution to pervasive harassment and abuse.353 Disrupting the masculine-dominated gendered structure in sport leadership, thus, offers the most potential to challenge women’s subordination in athletics. It is essentialist and factually incorrect to assume that all women leaders and coaches will bring a

347 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 227. 348 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 230. 349 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 235. 350 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 235. 351 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 231. 352 Brackenridge, Spoilsports, 231. 353 Starr, “As USA Swimming Grapples with Sexual Abuse, Athletes Cite Lack of Female Coaches” and Pappas, “Female Athletes Need to See Puberty as a Power, Not a Weakness.”

Goorevich 99 care-focused approach to leadership that offers more protection to female athletes. However, as legal scholar Sally Kenney claims about female judges, the presence of more women in historically male-dominated spaces can bring radical change to disrupt gendered power imbalances.354

Conclusion

I appreciate everything, honestly … at the end of the day I just have to be so grateful for

it [the UNC soccer experience] and for you [Anson Dorrance]. Honestly, thinking about

the national team … you are absolutely the foundation of the success of women’s soccer

in this country. I know that for sure.355

How do we reconcile the contradictions within Anson Dorrance’s feminism? As the passage above, from world champion national team player Tobin Heath, suggests, Dorrance is credited with the success of women’s soccer in America. Supporting the inclusion and the achievement of women into a historically-masculine space, as Dorrance does, is a clear, liberal feminist act. However, Dorrance’s legacy and connection to feminism is much more complex.

Despite leading his players to high levels of athletic excellence, Dorrance often maintains male hegemony and female marginality in athletics. His coaching ideologies, popularized in his books and podcast, perpetuate gender essentialism, assumptions of women’s supposedly natural athletic inferiority, and heteronormativity. On the field, Dorrance’s “competitive cauldron” coaching methodology prioritizes supposedly-masculine values, while he repudiates anything considered

354 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 176. 355 Anson Dorrance, host, “Tobin Heath: Chapter 12 — The Competitive Cauldron,” Vision of a Champion Podcast (podcast). December 8, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, 38:34 - 40:55, https://www.earfluence.com/tobin-heath- chapter-12-the-competitive-cauldron/.

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“feminine,” such as an ethic of care. Off the field, Dorrance encourages his players to adhere to traditional, stereotypical femininity and heteronormativity. Despite claims of being a “difference feminist,” Dorrance’s feminism is better described as a “soft essentialism” with occasional liberal feminist declarations. Women, according to Dorrance, are only welcomed and respected in the athletic realm on masculine-defined terms.

But his significance does not end with what he writes and says. Dorrance’s players resist his simplistic assumptions of inherent gender differences. Mia Hamm, Crystal Dunn, Yael and

Gloria Averbuch, and Tobin Heath all push Dorrance’s ideology in a more feminist direction.

They challenge essentialist beliefs and imbue value into both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits in athletics. Dorrance’s players better exhibit the ideals sought out by feminist sport scholars, like Carole Oglesby’s androgynous sport.

Furthermore, Dorrance’s history of athlete-abuse is not just a matter of prevailing coaching styles; it also rests on systemic failures of athletic institutions to protect female athletes from discrimination. Title IX, the U.S. SafeSport Code, and the NCAA all addressed coaching abuse scandals without acknowledging the risks associated with male, heterosexual hegemony on female-athlete safety. By ignoring gendered power imbalances, current policies regarding coach- athlete sexual abuse and harassment reproduce masculine dominance and women’s subordination. An end to sexual exploitation in athletics would come with disrupting hegemonic masculinity by empowering more female leaders and athletes.

Ultimately, Dorrance epitomizes both the positive changes and stifling continuities within women’s sport history. A deeper understanding of the past offers inspiration for a re-imagined sporting future. For instance, the AIAW provided an alternative to the masculinist-model. In centering women’s experiences and prioritizing athletes’ rights, the AIAW illustrates that

Goorevich 101 athletics can remain competitive, but also be focused on athletes’ educational and personal growth as well as the moral and ethical purpose of coaching. Building from the AIAW’s example, we can develop a transformed sport environment would imbue athletics with both supposedly feminine and masculine values; relationality and competition, care and justice, subordination and dominance would all be equally found in athletics, giving space for all, no matter one’s identity, to experience sports’ physical, developmental, and psychological benefits.

One step toward dismantling male hegemony in sport is increasing the number of women in athletic leadership positions. While assuming that all women would coach and lead in a drastically more “feminist” manner than men is a harmful and false essentialist belief, more women in athletic leadership would not just provide greater role models for women athletes, but also has the potential to radically destabilize masculine power in athletics, as Sally Kenney argues.356 We can also challenge male hegemony in athletics by implementing care-focused coaching practices; athletic success should not come from just winning competitions, but also from athletes’ positive developmental growth. Adopting a Coaching Code of Conduct as well as an Athletes’ Bill of Rights, not unlike those created by the AIAW, can revolutionize the sporting environment to be more in tune with athletes’ safety and needs.

While dismantling male supremacy in athletics is undoubtedly a tall order, a simple first step can come through questioning the discourses, actions, and presentations of male coaches like Dorrance. While Dorrance’s track record has solidified his place in women’s soccer history, this thesis shows that his status as feminist father of women’s soccer deserves to be questioned; how can we consider Dorrance a “feminist” coach if he perpetuates a system of harm for female athletes? Refuting claims of Dorrance’s “feminism” also encourages us to prioritize questions

356 Kenney, Gender and Justice, 176.

Goorevich 102 about feminist coaching: What makes a feminist coach? How can feminist coaching ideologies benefit all athletes? Analyzing Dorrance can potentially employ all athletes and coaches with the tools to examine and correct their daily practices and push forward to a re-imagined sport world that is more inclusive, safe, and empowering, no matter one’s identity.

Goorevich 103

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