Of the 16 teams under the West Virginia University athletics umbrella, there were only two female head coaches: Nikki Izzo-Brown, who heads the women’s soccer team, and Christy Bryan-Davis, who coaches the cheerleading squad.
Now, we can proudly bump that number up to three.
On the final day of Women’s History Month, WVU announced Dawn Plitzuweit, affectionately known as Coach P at her previous school, would take over the women’s basketball team from Mike Carey, who announced his retirement after the season ended.
We are pleased to welcome her to Mountaineer nation, and we look forward to what she will achieve.
See, we have high hopes for Coach P. She had an impressive track record at South Dakota, including reaching the Sweet 16 this past year. But we’ll leave Sports to explore her impressive list of accomplishments. Our sincere hope is that Plitzuweit will be to women’s basketball what Izzo-Brown has been to women’s soccer.
Izzo-Brown built WVU’s women’s soccer program from scratch in 1995. Since then, she has produced two FIFA cup participants, two Olympic bronze medalists, a slew of All-Americans and 30 players who have gone on to play professionally. She has a winning history that includes 10 regular season titles and seven tournament championships, including earning the Big 12 championship title in 2018.
If Plitzuweit can pull off even half of what Izzo-Brown has for WVU, Coach P will be a fantastic addition to the university’s coaching staff.
Besides that, it’s been a little over 20 years since the women’s basketball team last had a female coach. And, historically, women have been shut out of leadership roles in women’s sports. In 2019-20, women only led 42% of women’s Division I athletic teams. In the WNBA, only two-thirds of head coaches are women, and in the Women’s Soccer League, male coaches outnumber female coaches seven to five.
Of course, the number of women coaches in male sports is significantly less. The NFL made history in 2021 with 12 women on pro-teams’ staffs — as assistants and interns. Don’t get us wrong — those 12 women worked hard, and then worked even harder to break through the glass ceiling, to get where they are. In a list of “11 female coaches who made history” from Concordia University Chicago, only two of them were head coaches for a men’s team across a variety of sports (a third was general manager).
The fight to get and keep women in sports leadership roles can’t stop until women are head coaches. Particularly for women’s sports, but yes, even for men’s teams, too. If a man can coach a women’s team, why can’t a woman coach a men’s team? (Besides sexism, of course.)
Nicole LaVoi, author of Women in Sports Coaching, says it best: “Research shows that same sex role models positively influence self-perceptions. They challenge stereotypes about gender and leadership and offer diverse perspectives, insight and advice to their athletes. One hundred percent of male athletes have had a male coaching role model during their athletic careers, to their benefit; young women likewise need and deserve more same-sex role models.”
