Planting seeds: Women look to grow ranks as NFL coaches (2024)

With the force of a linebacker sacking a quarterback, Katie Sowers will smash a gender barrier Sunday by becoming the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl.

The 33-year-old is in her first year as an offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers, who square off against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV in Miami.

Thanks to an influx of candidates, including some with ties to Pittsburgh and the Steelers — along with a liberal hiring approach taken by NFL decision-makers over the past five years — the belief in the tight-knit women’s football community is that Sowers won’t be the last female coach to chase the Lombardi Trophy.

Bruce Arians, the former Steelers offensive coordinator, started the movement in 2015. As coach of the Arizona Cardinals, he hired Jen Welter as a training-camp coaching intern. Since then, seven women have worked as full-time assistants and 15 as coaching interns in the NFL. This season, four women were full-fledged coaching assistants.

Sowers is the most visible and high-profile coach of the bunch, with her groundbreaking story featured in a national TV commercial for the Microsoft Surface Pro 7.

“There is certainly a lot of media attention around her, and it will only serve our objective to normalize women in football,” said Samantha Rapoport, whose job as the NFL’s senior director of diversity and inclusion includes creating opportunities for women coaches. “Because, the next time this happens, it won’t be as big of a deal, which will be a good thing.”

In 2017, the season after she returned to the NFL after a stint working for USA Football, Rapoport created the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, an annual symposium designed to connect women working in collegiate football programs with NFL head coaches and executives for potential jobs in coaching, scouting or other front-office positions. The forum also places women in NCAA Division I football programs, and Rapoport estimates that 86 women have gotten positions since the program’s inception.

“That’s a lot of growth in a small period of time, and we’re excited about that,” Rapoport said. “But we also know this is just planting the seed. The long-term proposition is normalization.”

Two products of the forum have found work with the Steelers.

Stephanie Balochko, a former player and assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Passion women’s football team, spent four seasons as a training camp coaching intern. She also interned in the team’s scouting department in 2018.

Kasia Omilian spent the 2017 and 2018 training camps working in the Steelers operations department. Her goal is to become an NFL general manager.

Passion opens doors

Sowers entered the league before the forum got off the ground. A former women’s player, she was coaching a youth basketball team in Kansas City in 2013. One of her players was the daughter of Scott Pioli, the Chiefs’ then-general manager, who now is an executive with the Atlanta Falcons.

In 2016, Sowers was hired as the Falcons wide receivers coaching intern for training camp. She remained with the team as a scouting intern through the Falcons’ run to the Super Bowl that season.

When offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan left Atlanta to become the 49ers head coach, he brought Sowers along as a seasonal offensive assistant. He hired her full time this year.

“Doors were open for her, and she took advantage,” said Lisa Horton, a record-setting quarterback for the Passion and the team’s offensive coordinator who once coached Sowers in the women’s world championships. “When you surround yourself with good people trying to move the sport forward, good things happen. What she’s done doesn’t surprise me at all. She’s passionate about football. To have that kind of opportunity is awesome.”

Horton attended the first two Women’s Careers in Football Forum conferences. But, as a vice president for the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh, she is content to remain coaching on the grassroots level with the Passion and for national and international women’s teams.

“Would I love to (coach in the NFL)?” Horton said. “Absolutely. It’s just not feasible for me.”

The Passion, which counts Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris as a co-owner, helps the Steelers conduct their annual women’s camp at Saint Vincent College, which is the route Balochko used to land a spot with the organization as a training camp coaching intern.

The hope is that more women can follow her path.

“We’ve had good, positive interactions with the Steelers,” said Teresa Conn, Passion coach and co-owner. “I’m not sure either of us has pushed the limits of how we can link further, but we are open to it.”

The Steelers were at the forefront of hiring women staff members, hiring Ariko Iso as the NFL’s first female athletic trainer in 2002. Sonia Ruef just completed her 10th season as a member of the Steelers’ training staff.

“The Steelers obviously have a rich history in all diversity,” Rapoport said.

A former women’s football player, Rapoport joined the NFL in 2003 as a marketing intern, then left after nine years to help grow the sport for female players at USA Football. In that role, she interacted with Passion coaches and players at various clinics and tournaments, even taking team members to the White House in 2010.

Building a pipeline

Rapoport was brought back to the NFL in 2016 to help grow the sport for women and minority candidates. The forum will be held in Indianapolis next month for the second year in a row so NFL owners, coaches and executives at the annual Scouting Combine can interact with women candidates.

The forum focused recent efforts on recruiting coaching candidates to work in the college ranks. Three women found full-time work as coaches at the Division I level this year.

“This is not just about getting women jobs in the NFL,” Rapoport said. “It’s about building a sustainable pipeline with a group of women that can feed the NFL in the future.”

Rapoport said 55% of women who will attend the forum this year are women of color. The program helped place Salli Clavelle, who works for the 49ers, and Jennifer King, a former Carolina Panthers coaching intern who is the first African American woman to coach at the D-I level. She is a quality control coach at Dartmouth College.

“We spend each year after the forum scouring the country for women to put in these positions who have come recommended to us or who we have sought out,” Rapoport said. “We try to find the right fit based on what we’ve heard from GMs and head coaches as to what they are looking for from entry-level coaching and scouting talent.”

The biggest proponent of Rapoport’s work is Arians, who broke the gender barrier by hiring Welter in 2015. When Arians came out of retirement in 2019 to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he hired two women coaches: Lo Locust as assistant defensive line coach and Maral Javadifar as assistant strength and conditioning coach.

“It’s time,” Arians told reporters last year. “I’ll be happy when it’s not news anymore.”

Setting an example

In a way, Balochko has Arians to thank for her summer job with the Steelers at training camp. In 2015, when Arians hired Welter in Arizona, Balochko took notice. She emailed administrators in the Steelers front office as well as every member of the coaching staff.

Omar Khan, the team’s vice president of football and business administration, and defensive line coach John Mitchell responded within a day.

Balochko was among the Passion contingent helping conduct the women’s football clinic at Saint Vincent that summer, and she met with Khan and Mitchell that weekend.

“Coach Mitchell was interested and wanted to help out, but he said they couldn’t do anything that season,” Balochko said. “But he wanted me to keep in touch with him all year.”

Balochko did.

She scored an invitation to the 2016 training camp, where she worked as a coaching intern who helped conduct drills for the Steelers defensive linemen. Her position remained intact after Karl Dunbar replaced Mitchell as defensive line coach in 2018.

“I’m treated just like if I was on the regular coaching staff,” Balochko said. “I help break down film, we talk about players, and I get practice schedules ready.”

Whenever time permits in the regular season — Balochko is a firefighter and paramedic in Bedford, Ohio — she makes the two-hour commute to Pittsburgh to help out at Steelers practices.

Like Horton, her former Passion teammate, Balochko’s aspirations of working as a paid NFL coach are tempered by her work status. She is five years away from being eligible for her full pension from her work in Bedford. Taking a position that has such a high turnover rate isn’t attractive at this point in her career. Last winter, she turned down a chance to coach in the upstart Alliance of American Football, which shuttered midway through its first season.

“I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing,” Balochko said. “If I don’t make it to an NFL team, I’m fine with that. I’m going to continue to coach and grow women in the sport, set a good example so people aren’t afraid to bring a woman on board.

“I want to set a good example for people who might be coming up behind me, try to leave doors open for them.”