Reimagine Youth Sports. How the Women’s Coaching Alliance are Developing Future Leaders

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, women’s access to sports has increased with gusto. In the 50+ years since, we’ve seen the explosion of female teams in all kinds of sports, from basketball and softball, to soccer, swimming, and lacrosse. From 1973-2018, the percentage of girls playing high school sports increased from 24.2% to 42.9%, proof that young women want to play! Girls of middle school and high school age not only have more access to sports in general, but a wider variety of sports to choose from as well.

Yet one statistic has barely changed: only about one in four youth coaches is female.

While young women are flocking to sports for the slew of physical, mental, emotional, and social benefits, there’s one area where we can do better—and that's growing the number of female coaches who look like them. The tricky part is, how do we start building this pipeline?

The Women’s Coaching Alliance sees it as one of the greatest untapped leadership opportunities for young women.

Founded by former healthcare executive Pam Baker, WCA believes coaching youth sports may be one of the most powerful - and overlooked - ways to develop the next generation of women leaders. Through its Coach Today, Lead for Life™ program, young women are trained, mentored, and paid to coach recreational youth sports, gaining real-world leadership experience that extends far beyond the playing field.

As Baker puts it: "We're not just developing coaches. We're developing women who know how to lead."

From the very beginning, sports were encouraged throughout Pam Baker’s childhood. She was able to dabble in soccer and tennis. And growing up on the east coast, she watched New York Giants football games with her dad, and gathered to watch big tennis tournaments like the US Open and Wimbledon. She has memories of crisp autumn mornings on the pitch with her dad as her soccer team’s linesman, cementing the belief that sports are another way for families (and friends) to spend valuable time together.

Those lessons followed her into a successful 20-plus-year career leading organizations across healthcare, biotechnology, and digital health. 

Over more than two decades leading organizations across healthcare, biotechnology, and digital health, Baker spent years helping teams navigate change, build trust, and achieve ambitious goals. It wasn't until much later that she realized the leadership qualities she valued most in the workplace - communication, adaptability, empathy, resilience, and the ability to inspire others - were the very same skills great coaches develop every day.

She just didn't know yet that coaching youth sports would become the vehicle for developing the next generation of women leaders.

Doug’s favorite sports were basketball and football, leading him into coaching his daughters’ teams.

Once she became a mom, sports were a mainstay in the family. Her husband Doug was an athlete. Basketball and football were his favorites, but it was his coaches who were the greatest influences in his life. Their impact inspired him to coach nearly every team their twin daughters joined. But every season he found himself asking the same question:

"Where are all the women coaches?"

Realizing that girls would benefit from having female coaches and despite the rise of girls participation in sports, female coaches remained surprisingly scarce. Each year Doug came up short when recruiting female coaches for a variety of reasons - some were too busy, but others simply considered themselves unqualified to coach. 

When Doug passed away unexpectedly in 2020, their community wanted to honor his legacy. They established a fund with the local parks and recreation department to support something he cared deeply about: creating more opportunities for women to coach and more opportunities for kids to play sports.

What began as a tribute soon became something much bigger.

The Real Barrier Wasn't Ability

Having coaches that look like them can have a profound effect on younger generations of girls thinking they’re capable of being a coach as well.

Pam quickly ran into the same issue that Doug did when it came to women coaching and heard the same responses over and over.

"I've never coached before."

"I'm not qualified."

"I'm not sure I'd be any good."

The hesitation sounded familiar. After years of leading teams in corporate America, Baker had watched countless talented women hesitate to apply for promotions, volunteer for stretch assignments, or put themselves forward until they felt completely prepared.

Meanwhile, she had watched plenty of men easily step into opportunities before they knew everything. The difference wasn’t capability—or even experience. It was the willingness to step forward before feeling ready. It was courage. 

Confidence isn't something you wait for. It's something you earn by stepping into challenges before you feel completely ready. And courage, Baker believed, isn’t something you either have or you don’t. It grows through practice: by taking the first step, navigating the uncertainty, and discovering that you can handle what comes next. Confidence follows. That's when the idea behind the Women's Coaching Alliance began to take shape. Doug happily volunteered to coach a sport he never played, so what’s the missing piece when it comes to getting more women into coaching?

As Pam began asking people what made someone a great coach, she kept hearing the same qualities associated with strong leaders: the ability to communicate, make decisions, build trust, adapt when things don’t go as planned, and take responsibility for others. Coaching wasn’t simply connected to leadership. It was a place to practice it—in all its very real messiness.

Then came the question of where that practice could make the greatest difference. Moms already had full plates. Retirees had other plans. But high school athletes had knowledge of the game, younger players who would look up to them, and a lifetime of leadership still ahead.

What if young women could begin building courage by coaching younger kids—stepping forward before they felt completely ready, with the training and support to discover that they were more capable than they knew?

That question became the beginning of the Women’s Coaching Alliance. 

Giving high school female athletes the chance to coach youth teams has had a multitude of benefits on every level.

Creating a pipeline of young female coaches (and leaders) could be the solution everyone involved was looking for. 

Instead of teaching leadership in a classroom, what if young women could practice it?

Every week. With real responsibility. Real children. Real parents. Real teammates. Real challenges.

Coaching youth sports requires communication, organization, decision-making, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and resilience - the very skills employers consistently rank among the most valuable for future leaders. 

Rather than talking about leadership, The Women’s Coaching Alliance gives young women the opportunity to live it. Because leadership isn't learned through theory. It's learned through responsibility.

Female coaches gain valuable experience on the court, field, or pitch that will serve them well in the future.

Today, WCA recruits young women - primarily high school and college athletes - to become youth sports coaches in their local communities. After a competitive application process, coaches participate in WCA's Coach Today, Lead for Life™ program, an experiential leadership journey that combines youth sports coach training, leadership development, mentorship, and hands-on coaching experience. Each coach leads a recreational youth team alongside another young woman coach while receiving ongoing guidance from an experienced adult mentor. Coaches are paid for their work, reinforcing that their time, knowledge, and leadership have real value.

The most powerful leadership training isn't learned in a classroom; instead, it's experiential: full of hands-on doing, learning and growing. Mentors are always available for guidance and to help the young coaches learn from their mistakes—but also to point out what is going well. 

“They [the coaches] … deepen their knowledge and insight. It's less like everything is new coming at them. They're more, okay, I faced this before.”

Every practice, every difficult parent conversation, every unexpected challenge becomes an opportunity to build confidence, strengthen communication skills, and learn how to lead through uncertainty.

And because growth happens through repetition, coaches are encouraged to return for a second season, where those leadership lessons become even more deeply embedded. That is how confidence is built up, slowly but surely. Having faced an issue before means the coaches can lean on prior experience, and take those learnings with them into their everyday lives.

Female coaches gain valuable experience on the court, field, or pitch that will serve them well in the future.

One of WCA's core beliefs is that courage comes before confidence. The confidence to lead doesn't appear first. It grows every time someone steps into a challenge they aren't completely sure they can handle. Each season provides dozens of moments where coaches have to make decisions, adjust plans, solve problems, and communicate under pressure.

Those experiences accumulate. Eventually, situations that once felt intimidating become familiar. The confidence these young women develop doesn't stay on the sidelines. It follows them into classrooms, internships, college, and eventually their careers.

And it appears to be working.

Its graduates are already demonstrating what happens when young women are given meaningful opportunities to lead.

One coach completed her first season and then approached her local AYSO ( American Youth Soccer Organization) board, asking to join as a 17-year-old. The answer was no.Instead of giving up, she returned for another coaching season, gained additional experience, articulated the value she could bring, and approached the board again - this time, she was invited to join.

Another WCA coach discovered her high school's junior varsity softball team was about to be canceled because no coach could be found. Rather than accepting the situation, she scheduled a meeting with the athletic director and arrived with a PowerPoint presentation outlining why she should become the team's head coach. The school board approved her proposal, making her one of the first students to coach her own peers.

Another WCA coach discovered her high school's junior varsity softball team was about to be canceled because no coach could be found. Rather than accepting the situation, she scheduled a meeting with the athletic director and arrived with a PowerPoint presentation outlining why she should become the team's head coach. The school board approved her proposal, making her one of the first students to coach her own peers.

Neither story is really about coaching.

They're about initiative, courage, preparation, and believing you have something valuable to contribute. Those are leadership skills.

“I have every confidence that these young women will bring some incredible lessons to what they do when they are ready to start their careers.”

WCA isn't relying solely on stories to demonstrate its impact.

The WCA is expanding, but not at the expense of losing its primary focus: changing how women view themselves and what they can do.

WCA is partnering with the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota to better understand, and quantify, the leadership skills developed through coaching - creating stronger evidence for employers, educators, and communities that coaching is one of the most effective leadership development experiences available to young women.

What began as a community initiative has grown into an organization serving communities across Northern and Southern California, with expansion underway in New York.

WCA recently became the Official Community Coaching Partner of AYSO, creating opportunities to bring its leadership model to youth soccer programs nationwide. This means the coaching and leadership academy could be coming to a city near you.

For Baker, growth has never been about simply increasing the number of coaches. It's about changing how women see themselves.

"When young women coach," she says, "they don't just change the experience for the kids on their teams. They begin to change how they see themselves." And that may be WCA's greatest impact of all.

Comfortable athletic clothes from Goal Five that fit, feel good, and look good? Yes please.

As more young women step into coaching, having equipment designed specifically for them matters. Which is why the Women’s Coaching Alliance has also partnered with Goal Five, a company committed to creating high-performance apparel built for female athletes and coaches. Together, the two organizations share a belief that women deserve to be supported—not only with the right gear, but with meaningful opportunities to lead.

Whether on the field, on the sidelines, or in the boardroom, both organizations are helping more women step confidently into leadership.

Are you or someone you know interested in becoming a coach and future leader? Check out How to Become a Coach to learn more!