Setting Expectations
Set the expectation for positive team dynamics and model the characteristics and behaviors you’d like your athletes to exhibit.
Set a tone/culture of acceptance - Girls can feel like outsiders when walking into a wrestling room. One of the most important things you can do as a coach is to set a welcoming, positive, and inclusive tone.
Male wrestlers will look to the coach to gauge how they should react, so showing the team that girls are wanted there is vital. Do not tolerate negative comments.
Set the expectation that your seasoned female wrestlers will support incoming female wrestlers.
Any perception of a potentially unwelcoming culture will decrease the likelihood that a girl will come back into the room. A team can never show too much kindness and acceptance to a person who wants to be a part of the team.
Show acceptance through actions as well as words. Everyone in the room has to follow good intentions with positive interactions in order for those good intentions to make a real impact.
Girls have a strong desire to feel a part of the team, that they fit in, and that the team has a meaning and mission bigger than their own. Go out of your way to make them feel included and valued. Girls are strongest when they invest in their team or a common goal.
Often, the way to earn boys’ respect is to show them your credentials or to show them that you can beat them at wrestling. Coaches must earn girls’ trust before they can gain respect. Coaching begins after you’ve earned mutual respect.
A coach who does not invest in their female athlete will negatively affect her experience. Care about these young ladies; they will see through you if you don’t care.
Learn how to be a transformational coach rather than a transactional coach. Learn more about transformational coaching from NFHS: https://www.nfhs.org/articles/defining-our-purpose/
Social Connectedness is Part of the Equation
Intentionally building a positive team culture will mean your athletes will focus on wrestling rather than distractions.
Positive team culture extends to social media presence as well. Positive or negative perceptions of your team are formed through individual and group social media content. Talk to your athletes about positive social media posts, interactions, and personal safety as they interact within social media, email, text & online.
Girls may join the team initially for social connections.
Welcome them into practice by setting aside the first 5-10 minutes before practice or even in the warm-up to chat and catch up. Girls catching up might look different than boys catching up - don’t be surprised to see them doing something like braiding each other’s hair. It’s their way of connecting. They’ll be much more focused in the practice if they get that communication out of the way early on.
Promote positive teammate interactions
Teach how healthy professional relationships work. Both boys and girls need to understand what boundaries are and how to maintain them in working environments, whether it’s part of your wrestling program now or in the workplace later in life.
A casual observer should only see all teammates treating all teammates with respect at all wrestling-related events and spaces.
No one should be able to tell which two wrestlers are best friends, which two dislike each other, which two are dating, or which two have recently broken up. All wrestlers and staff can easily learn to put the program ahead of emotions during wrestling time, and this is an expectation you can set with them.
Girls tend to protect the space from new girls joining the program.
Jacque Davis explains more on this in her story, How She Wrestles With Credibility.
If you already have a girl on the team, encourage her to make space and encourage newer girl(s); help her see the benefits of adding more female teammates.
Implement leadership training, especially if some of the experienced girls have only been on guys’ teams.
Shine Theory - The Shine Theory brings out the best in female interaction: collaboration over competition. In wrestling, girls recognize that their individual success—and other female wrestlers’ success are interdependent.
Encourage your girls to push each other on the mat and support one another off the mat.
No Drama/Conflict Resolution
When drama does happen, don’t avoid it. (Have the team talk with or without the coach.)
Make sure female athletes talk it out as long as it takes so that cliques don’t tear apart the team.
“Coaching girls made me a better boys coach because it was easy to ignore the ‘person-athlete’ when I perceived that boys’ emotions and trust were not a factor, because boys are often silent about emotions.” -Coach Eric Everard, Colorado.
Resources
US National Team Coach, Terry Steiner on Coaching and Coaching Women
NFHS Article
https://www.nfhs.org/articles/defining-our-purpose/
Shine Theory
https://www.shinetheory.com/who-created-shine-theory