BURLINGAME, Calif. — Encircled by 30 or so teenage girls in the end zone of a high school practice field, Pam Baker provides the game plan for the day, breaks down the huddle and sends her charges to position-specific training stations.
From there, the Northern California former businesswoman and mother of two roams the field. She keeps a watchful eye on the instruction and action on this third day of her flag football clinic at Burlingame High School, just outside of San Francisco. Baker ensures that her coaches are adequately supported, and remains alert for any issues with athletes that may require one-on-one attention.
Yet she later declares about herself: “I’m no coach.”
You’d never know by watching and listening to her operate. And those closest to the 55-year-old Baker insist her denial couldn’t be further from the truth.
Four years ago, Baker never envisioned venturing into this world. She enjoyed a successful career in the healthcare marketing industry, and the closest she came to athletics involved sitting in the stands while her husband, Doug, coached their twin daughters.
Then tragedy rocked Baker’s world: In 2020, Doug died of pancreatic cancer at age 52. Wanting to find a way to honor Doug’s legacy, Pam left her marketing job in pursuit of a new mission. Now, aside from raising her teenage daughters, her life’s calling is providing Bay Area youth with quality coaching — but that’s only part of it. Her ultimate focus centers on recruiting and developing teenage girls into coaches, with the goal of giving them leadership skills that one day will translate to the corporate world.
“Coach today, lead for life,” is the mission statement of the Womens Coaching Alliance (WCA), the nonprofit organization Baker founded a little more than a year ago after two years of planning. Drawing from her own work experience and contacts in the business world, members of her community and influential members of NFL, MLB and NBA circles, Baker is building a platform and network she believes will positively impact lives. She hopes this work will extend well beyond the confines of her corner of the West Coast.
“It’s pretty extraordinary what she’s doing,” said Jane Skinner Goodell, the wife of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Baker’s former college roommate at Northwestern University, who now serves on the board of the Women’s Coaching Alliance. “If she was just starting a copy of what’s already being done in the nonprofit world in terms of getting girls to play sports longer, I think that would be great, and I definitely would support. But this is deeper and different (with) this layer of coaching and leadership mentors. … It’s just kind of brilliant and unique and that’s why she’s going to make a significant change.”
Initially, Pam Baker just wanted to find a way to honor the memory of her husband. Doug had long coached young athletes in their community while simultaneously striving to recruit more women into coaching positions.
Pam decided as a tribute to Doug, she would help coach her daughters’ teams. She had played a little soccer in her day but felt ill-equipped to coach. She began asking every coaching veteran she knew, “What makes a good coach? What makes the really good ones stand out?”
She also read books and articles on the topic and gradually recognized parallels between sports and the business world.
“I was reading about some of the famous coaches, and what I kept reading and hearing were the kinds of things that I would use to describe as a great leader,” Baker said. “That was my background — on the business side. And so I thought, ‘You know, they’re even using the same adjectives.’ And so when I had the opportunity to be an assistant coach for my daughters’ team, and I watched some of these coaches in action, the way they were engaging kids, the way that they were connecting with kids individually, the way that they would bring everybody together at the end of the game, that was great leadership, in my mind.”
That’s when the lightbulb flicked on.
She agreed with her late husband’s assessment that youth sports leagues needed more female coaches. About 1,600 children play sports through Burlingame Parks and Recreation, but the league could probably count the number of youth female coaches on one hand.
Baker asked herself: Why stop at recruiting moms?
Soon after, she proposed the idea of coaching to a group of girls basketball players. The teens expressed varying degrees of interest. But fear of conflicts with demanding and hypercritical parents held them in check. And that’s when that flicker of an idea turned into a raging fire of inspiration.
“As I sort of mulled that over, what I realized was, difficult parents are just like difficult fill-in-the-blank bosses, colleagues, direct reports, vendors, partners, you name it,” Baker said. “And if we could provide these young women with the experience of dealing with all of those challenges of coaching and leading, (and) doing it in a way where they had people that were supporting them, could we give them the early experience of dealing with difficult people so that they carry that with them into careers?
“I mean, it’s something I probably learned in my 30s or 40s. And I often think I would have been so much more effective if I had learned that when I was 18 or 20.”
And so launched the Women’s Coaching Alliance, which in the last year has turned 59 (and counting) San Francisco-area high school and college-aged girls into youth coaches for rec volleyball, basketball, cross-country, flag football and soccer. Another 40 girls have attended WCA’s leadership academy or other functions sponsored by the organization.
Baker is changing the landscape of her area’s youth sports community, and she hopes the work will someday extend across the country. She hopes that her model inspires other youth leagues and organizations to partner up for a similar approach.
The Bay Area isn’t unique when it comes to the scarcity of female coaches on the youth levels.
Roughly 75 percent of all youth sports coaches are men, according to data reported last year by the Aspen Institute, which annually analyzes national trends surrounding sport activities for children ages 6 to 18. And while it’s not uncommon to see men coach female sports teams, only 8 percent of women coach male youth teams most frequently, per the same study.
As she considered her own hesitancy to coach, and conducted her own research, Baker recognized that a lack of confidence most frequently holds women captive. Dads often think nothing of jumping in and coaching sports they have never played. But women often hesitate to coach even the most elementary levels of sports because of a lack of encouragement.
