“…To this day, we still don’t have more women coaching in college basketball than we do men.”
Cheryl Reeve, the head coach of the Minnesota Lynx WNBA team who was seen wearing a “trans kids matter” shirt at Sunday’s game against Indiana Fever, complained in a recent podcast appearance about men taking women’s coaching jobs. This comes as Fever player Sophie Cunningham has been applauded for supporting protecting women’s sports from male players.
Reeve said in an interview with Good Game with Sarah Spain in late July, “We had more women coaching college basketball before Title IX. After Title IX, when it became more important and more investment, that was code for, well, that’s a man’s job… and so to this day, we still don’t have more women coaching in college basketball than we do men.”
“So that same thing, apply that same thing when two years ago we lost seven WNBA coaches, right, they got fired. Because all of a sudden this money, you know, became more—the WNBA blew up. Valuations of franchises, right? In comes the NBA folks again who had cast this aside for many years, and they come again, right, now they want their franchises back and that sort of thing. It’s more important again, and then we have more men. Then we have NBA people.”
She later added, “I would love for the NBA to have a larger pool for their head coach candidates and for them to be with women of color, et cetera. We got to keep working at it. I believe we need a task force for women of color that we need to get on this right away, and we can’t let this happen. Some version of the Rooney Rule, in addition to a rule that we put in a few years ago where we had to have a former player on our front-of-bench staff.”
Reeve wore the “trans kids matter” shirt to Sunday’s game, where her team, the Lynx, faced off against Indiana Fever, on which is guard Sophie Cunningham. The Fever player has been in the headlines in recent weeks over her support of protecting women’s sports from biological male competitors.
Speaking with reporters ahead of the Sunday game, which the Lynx won, Reeve said regarding the trans sports issue, “I come from a space of inclusion. The narrative that I think is problematic is to suggest that transgender athletes are the biggest problem in women’s sports. This is what’s bothersome. There is a faction of people in our country that are making this a massive issue.”
Reeve said she thought that the topic required “nuance,” especially when it came to competitive sports beyond puberty. She said, “That’s where I say common-sense people get together and you find common ground. To find a way to be inclusive. The answer isn’t ‘no.’”