Last year when they saw that I was a football player, it didn’t matter if I were a guy or a girl. Looking forward, the pool of applicants to choose from will potentially be broadening in scope to include an entirely underrepresented population in the coaching side of sports – women.
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“He’s been a Pro Bowl tight end”, Arians said of adding Gresham to the roster. “One of the messages for our football team is not to let other people outside of us define who we are, good, better or indifferent”. She then joined the marching band at West Texas A&M University just so she could attend football games. “It’s about the idea of how football teams are run”.
Welter is not oblivious to the significance of her appointment. It’s a league that has a female commissioner, as well as a handful of women in ownership and management. “Coaching is nothing more than teaching”.
She played rugby at Boston College but football was her first love.
Then there’s Shirley Benson, an Edmonton firefighter who grew up an avid CFL fan, but didn’t start playing until she found a local women’s team at age 40. She won two gold medals with the U.S. team at the global Federation of American Football women’s world championships.
From there, a high school boys’ team in Westlock, Alta., made her its offensive line coach and assistant offensive co-ordinator for the past five years.
That quote caught the attention of Jen Welter, who at the time was working with a team in an indoor football league. Secondly, there never seems to be the need to give this kind of public reassurance when a man is appointed as coach of a women’s team.
The league will welcome its first female official, Sarah Thomas, this season. Originally from Florida, she has been all over the news of late, heralded as the first woman employed on an NFL coaching staff. The job, helping to instruct inside linebackers, is hers for the duration of training camp and could lead to a full-time position with the Cardinals.
“It was a significant moment”, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of Welter’s hiring in Arizona. She’s got the right stuff, the right attitude. Most do apprenticeships for years before landing permanent positions.
But Welter said the players are just as passionate and eager to learn as those she has worked with on the Revolution.
“I wanted to open that door”, Arians said.
It’s the second such barrier to be broken in the NFL this year. When female reporters entered dressing rooms later in the decade, often first with resistance from players and other media members, the dynamic changed instantly, in many ways.
“I didn’t even dream that it was possible”, she said at news conference at Cardinals headquarters Tuesday.
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Bruce Arians, the head coach of the Cardinals who recruited Welter, said she would bring much to the team and that her hiring did not reflect any agenda or image burnishing.
