Abstract

One female’s experience of becoming a coach demonstrates how a misogynistic coaching culture contributes to an undervaluing of female coaches’ abilities and reinforces the status quo within the coaching profession. By offering one female coach’s perspective on the coaching culture as experienced through a crafted mentorship program, her story embodies the uncertainty of most apprentice coaches as they transition to advanced coaching. She found herself moving between her academic notions of what constitutes advanced education and the male mentorship traditions that continue to define the coaching practicum. This single-subject case study is the antithesis of a progressive practicum experience, highlighting disruptions and instances of failure within the practicum. This research should raise awareness about the anxieties, unique to female practitioners, inherent in the coaching profession and establish alternate perspectives within coaching culture about the true nature of the profession.