RANCHI: When China take on India at Women’s Asian Champions Trophy on Monday evening, it will be one of those rare moments in international women’s hockey when both the teams will be coached by women. While China’s head coach is Australian Alyson Annan, India is coached by Janeke Schopman of the Netherlands.
Apart from these two teams, currently only Australia’s women’s team has a female coach in Katrina Powell among the top-ranked nations.
Speaking on the issue, Annan was as blunt as possible.
“I think it’s a shame that there are not many female head coaches. I think more women should be involved. Something that now we have in our staff as well. Right now, it is an exclusive group but I would like it to be different,” said one of the legends of the game.
Although it’s completely absent among the other top ten teams in the world, there are some instances of female head coaches among some smaller teams. Cuba, playing in the Pan American Games currently, is coached by Mileysi Argentel. Also, the Ukraine women’s team is coached by Svitlana Makaieva.
Apart from them, there have been other women who have coached women’s teams in the recent past. Jennifer Wilson coached Scotland, Svetlana Ivanova was the head coach of the Russian national team, and double Olympian Caroline Nelson-Nichols was the head coach of the USA women’s team. Another instance is Tsoanelo Pholo coaching South African senior women’s hockey5s team and she has also been an assistant coach of the men’s team.
Asked what might be the reason for such a poor number of women’s coaches, Schopman said, “The underrepresentation of women coaches in field hockey teams worldwide I think can be attributed to limited opportunities in some cases. Another reason would be ambitions related to career, family and maybe prioritizing family over your career. The last thing would be the lack of prominent female role models in coaching and mentoring.”
She however believes this can change. “Fostering equal opportunities, promoting work-life balance and showcasing successful female coaches as role models probably could encourage more women to pursue coaching careers and maybe ultimately bridge the gender gap in the field,” added the India coach.
While things will hopefully change as far as women’s representation in coaching is concerned in the coming years, Annan, who earlier coached the Netherlands women’s team to multiple titles, has another radical idea to make the game better for women.
“I would take away the shootouts and I would play golden goal extra time, taking a player off every five minutes until it’s seven against seven. Let’s finish the game playing as we play and not go into shootouts,” added the double Olympic gold medallist, who once came to India in 2005 with Habitat for Humanity to build houses.
Since any such changes will be hard to come by soon, her focus for now will be on the match against India which, despite a changed squad, Annan wants to win.
It’s a rematch of the Asian Games semis and Annan wants to keep the streak going. China, after all, has been doing quite well in recent years and winning gold at Asian Games and grabbing a spot in the Paris Olympics is enough to prove that.
