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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Coaches voice concerns
Some make sexual
orientation an issue during recruiting trips
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JONATHAN
HARNISH/daily bruin senior staff |
| UCLA women’s basketball coach Kathy
Olivier has had to deal with an increasingly competitive
recruiting environment where coaches allegedly out
others as lesbians. |
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| By
Seth
Fast Glass
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR
STAFF
sglass@media.ucla.edu
While the recruiting process
has changed over time, the lengths to which coaches will go to
entice recruits has not.
Years ago, the perception existed
that college coaches lured prized high school recruits with material
gifts and financial benefits.
The NCAA hammered down on such
violations by creating much stricter recruiting laws designed to
limit the contact between coaches and recruits.
Today, the
concern of what a coach can offer a recruit is rivaled by the unease
of what a coach can tell a recruit.
Never having dealt with
it personally, UCLA women's basketball coach Kathy Olivier has heard
in her sport's circles that coaches have outed other competing
coaches as lesbian in order to obtain an edge in landing a recruit's
services.
"I've had people talk to me about that, and I've
heard that it has happened," Olivier said.
"If some coaches
think that's going to make them look better in a recruit's eyes, I
think they'll do anything they can, and I don't think that's a good
place to be."
How effective such a strategy is able to
persuade a recruit one way or the other is uncertain. Yet Ronni
Sanlo, director of UCLA's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
Resource Center, has heard that coaches who adopt the approach of
capitalizing on another coach's sexual orientation have been
relatively successful.
"I was talking to a women's
basketball coach at another university and she said that it's very
common for recruiting to be affected if a lesbian coach is open
about her sexuality," Sanlo said. "As a result, (the competing
coaches) get the recruit because some parents do not want their kids
playing for a lesbian coach."
Since there has been a trend
of parents exerting a greater influence in determining where their
child goes to college, coaches must not only sell their prospective
recruit of the team's potential, but the recruit's parents of the
team's atmosphere.
As a result, according to Jay Coakley, a
sociology professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado
Springs, coaches are flaunting their moral values to female
athletes' fathers in order to get a leg up on the competition. The
subtle strategy of catering to a father's likelier trust of male
coaches in female sports, Coakley says, has attributed to the
success of Connecticut's women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma.
"If you look at most women's athletes, the person who has
become their agent is their father," Coakley said. "When it comes
time to look for schools, it is their father who is most involved.
"Some coaches make it very subtle. There's never any
explicit mention of sexuality. It's always something about the
wholesome climate or religious beliefs."
Olivier believes
that coaches who out other coaches and players are not doing so out
of ill-will. In women's basketball, a sport that has garnered
increasing media coverage and fan popularity over recent years,
Olivier feels the coaches who already have established that
competitive edge have both eyes fixated on the expanding financial
possibilities in their sport, and will protect their position at all
costs.
"I think it comes up because of the business, it's
huge paying jobs now, you're making big money and I think coaches
resort to anything to get a player," Olivier said. "Without the
horses, you're not going to be very good."
With reports from Adam de Jong, Jeff Eisenberg, and Bryan Chu,
Bruin sports senior staff.
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