The rare reality of women coaches in boys sports

What you probably already know: It’s incredibly rare for women to coach boys or men in sports. In school-based sports, men account for nearly 75% of all coaches of either gender, according to a 2022 National Coach Survey Report on youth sports coaches. Ebo Hanning gets it, more than most. During her almost three decades as a (Seattle) Queen Anne Little League coach, Hanning estimates she’s coached 600 kids, mostly boys. Hanning played Queen Anne Little League baseball starting at age 8 because girls didn’t have softball as an option back then. It wasn’t unusual, she recalls, for girls to be on a Little League team with boys, often accounting for almost half the roster. She began her coaching “career” at age 13 and briefly coached softball but was more familiar with baseball so she began to focus exclusively on that sport.

Why it matters: Deep research on youth coaches is rare and even more so for women coaching boys. The National Coach Survey Report, published by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, alongside Ohio State University’s LiFEsports initiative, surveyed more than 10,000 youth coaches across the United States and found that men are twice as likely as women to coach the opposite gender, while women are also more likely to stop coaching. Women coaches, however, were rated higher for teaching life and leadership skills; creating a positive team environment; and supporting mental wellness behaviors. Male coaches, on the other hand, were given “significantly” higher scores on fundamentals and game strategy, the X’s and O’s.

What it means: Men still account for the vast majority of coaches in women’s sports. At the youth level, only 26% of head coaches are women. At the NCAA level, only 18% of female coaches worked for men’s teams in 2025, and only 6% led NCAA men’s teams last year out of nearly 9,300 teams. It’s interesting to note that, prior to Title IX in 1972, women coached more than 90% of women’s collegiate sports teams, but that number has plunged to 41%, though it’s rising. The Women in College Coaching Report card notes that, at select NCAA D-1 institutions, women coaches still face a “complex and multi-level set of barriers and bias.”

What happens next: Hanning has also served on the Queen Anne Little League Board for 20 years, managing team logistics, communications and scheduling. She says she’s rarely, if ever, experienced any kind of overt discrimination or pushback because of her gender, though she admits she “definitely gets some of the old boys’ network sometimes.” She often jokes with parents at the beginning of seasons that they’re probably wondering why some middle-aged woman with hoop earrings is coaching their kids. “As soon as the parents realize this has been a part of my life for longer than anything, it’s no longer a discussion,” she says. “You can read the room.”