Dr Sarah Leberman was a 2008 Fulbright New Zealand Senior
Scholar at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in Minneapolis, where
she researched the roles of women in sports leadership. Having recently
undertaken a return visit to the university, she reports on the progress
of her ongoing research collaborations.
Sarah Leberman
Sport is an important part of both the New Zealand and American social
fabric. The money available for sport in the USA at the collegiate level
is astonishing - see the photo of me in front of the new University of
Minnesota football stadium, built for eight home games a year!
My research was focused at the other end of the spectrum - volunteer youth
sport coaches, and in particular mothers, an underrepresented group in
sport. The data was collected during my time as a Fulbright Senior Scholar
at the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Centre for Research on Girls
and Women in Sport.
As I write this reflection I have just returned from three weeks back
in the US where I presented a paper on developing mothers as youth sport
coaches with my co-author from the Tucker Centre, Dr Nicole LaVoi, at
the North American Society for Sport Management’s annual conference
in South Carolina. I revisited Minnesota for ten days to continue the
research started in 2007, in addition to two other projects: one involving
newspaper coverage of the Beijing Olympics and the other on socially constructed
notions of leadership. Being back at the Tucker Centre was fantastic.
It is such an energising environment to be in, surrounded by people who
are passionate about the same things I am - girls and women in sport.
The four months I spent in Minnesota as a Fulbright scholar with my husband
Brett and our then five year old daughter Phoebe were a privilege for
us as a family and also for me professionally. We learned so much about
America that you never hear about. Our main concern before going was how
safe it would be living in a big city, coming from a small town like Palmerston
North. We need not have worried - it was safer than at home. Children
Phoebe’s age walked home from school unaccompanied. Bikes and toys
were left in the front yard for weeks on end and didn’t go missing
and our neighbours didn’t lock their garage and some did not lock
their houses. All through Halloween and Christmas, none of the amazing
displays around people’s houses and in front of shops were vandalized
in any way, and there were no boy racers!
Finding a school for Phoebe was a new challenge, but like everything else
we were so fortunate. The whole school was waiting for ‘Phoebe from
New Zealand’. Everything was ready, from the space at a table to
the locker with her name on.
Being in Minnesota over the winter was also great. We did things we cannot
do at home, like cross-country skiing and sledding on the local golf course,
ice skating at the free outdoor rink and learning to snowboard in the
middle of a city on a beginner slope at Lake Como.
But above all it was the people we met, who will be friends forever.
Our neighbours were the best - they have since been to New Zealand and
I stayed with them just a few weeks ago. Going back to the Tucker Centre
was like going ‘home’, as though I had never been away. I was
made so welcome, not just by my friends, but also the other staff.
So what of the research I was part of whilst at the Tucker Centre? We
were interested in the experiences of mothers involved in youth soccer,
given that less than 15% of youth sport coaches in the US are female.
Previous research has established that the number of female coaches at
the elite level in the US is falling, so we were interested to see what
was happening at the entry level. In New Zealand we don’t have figures
for the breakdown of youth sport coaches by gender, but we do know that
only four of the 46 coaches who went to Beijing as part of the New Zealand
Olympic team were women, so there is definitely room for improvement if
we are looking at issues such as role modelling.
We had an overwhelming response to our request for research participants
- 90 women responded to our call, of whom we interviewed 16 with children
who played youth soccer. Six had been collegiate athletes. Some coached
their own children, while others did not. The women talked about why they
did or didn’t coach, their motivations, their work and home responsibilities,
their notions of the ‘ideal mother’, the barriers they perceived
for mothers and women as coaches and the strategies they thought would
assist to redress the situation.
In terms of academic work, Nicole and I have a paper under review with
the Journal of Sport Management, looking at the issues of work-life
enrichment for mothers who work and coach. We are currently working on
a second paper focusing on the barriers and strategies the women identified.
Practically, Nicole has continued work with the Minnesota Youth Soccer
Association to engage more mothers in coaching, and I ran a women’s
coaching evening in conjunction with Sport Manawatu last year. The research
has also informed some of SPARC’s thinking around women and coaching,
which is pleasing to see.
For me, doing research is about making a difference in people’s lives
- it is by necessity therefore applied and grounded in people’s experiences.
Being able to spend four months at the Tucker Centre as a Fulbright New
Zealand Senior Scholar was an honour, and means more to me than words
can adequately express. It is a rare day when I do not in some way or
other think back to my time in Minnesota, but if I had to summarize the
experience I would say “He aha te mea nui? He tangata, he tangata,
he tangata.” (What is the most important thing? It is people, it
is people, it is people).
Sarah Leberman in front of construction
for the new University of Minnesota football stadium
