Prior to this season, Caitlin McCallan didn’t believe her football coaching career would get this far.
But now as an assistant wide receiver coach for the Carleton Ravens football team, she said there’s a brighter future for her in the sport.
“This has been my dream forever, I just never thought the opportunity would come so easily and so soon,” she said.
In June, the Ravens announced the coach apprenticeship program for women. Its purpose is “to identify and support women, non-binary, or Two Spirit women … who demonstrate the desire for coaching.”
For the program’s inaugural season, the apprentices are McCallan, assistant offensive line coach Taylor Matthews and football operations and defensive assistant Liya Equbagzi.
Equbagzi was previously a gameday lead with the Ravens sports business club and sought a more involved role in sports operations.
Both McCallan and Matthews previously coached with the Cumberland Panthers girls football program and wanted to take their passion for coaching to a higher level.
“I’ve learned a lot here,” Matthews said. “It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose at times because there’s a lot of volume and a lot of people involved in a system like this.”
Each apprentice is assigned to a specific Ravens coaching staff member and completes various weekly duties such as film review, leading drills at evening practices and game planning for upcoming matchups.
All three apprentices praised head coach Corey Grant for his leadership and establishing the program.
“Corey is a great head coach, it’s been a great experience with him so far,” Matthews said. “I always feel like he knows what to say and when to say it.
“The coaching staff has really helped me,” Equbagzi said. “They don’t make me feel like I’m ‘less than’ just because I’m getting started.”
Before arriving at Carleton, Grant established a women’s apprenticeship program with the McMaster Marauders football team, which he said was inspired by the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
While the football world watched on as Tom Brady and the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in 2020, Grant noticed their staff’s diversity. He said the Buccaneers staff showed him the need to change football from being a male-dominant sport to a male-prevalent sport.
“I thought, ‘Why not?’ Why can’t we do it here?’” Grant said about bringing the program to his own teams.
Grant said some of his strongest teachers and role models have been women and he wanted his players to be coached by a staff that is a “reflection of society.”
“[The program] is important because somebody opened the door for me,” Grant said. “I want different ideas and different ways of communicating with our players and each other.”
While Grant has played a key role in providing opportunities for the three apprentices, they also credited Nadia Doucouré, who became the first female coach in Carleton’s team history last year.
Now coaching with the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks, Doucouré inspires the apprentices as she continues to pave a path for female coaches.
“It means a lot to see someone who looks like me doing something that’s not very common,” Equbagzi said. “It makes me feel that if she can do it I can do it.”
She said being close in age to the players can create a dynamic in which the players see her as a peer instead of an authoritative figure.
However, McCallan and the other coaches said the players have been exceedingly professional overall.
“The players understand that this is their job just like this is my job,” McCallan said. “I’m coming here to work and to compete.”
Aside from their own ambitions, the apprentices also acknowledged their role in inspiring young females to take up new opportunities in football.
“Speaking to players from the girls’ program in Orleans, they are so motivated to see a woman succeed at this level in football and know that there’s more for them when they’re done with their community football careers,” Matthews said.
Although McCallan named BC Lions defensive assistant coach Tanya Henderson as proof of the diversifying cast of football coaches across North America, she said the idea of female coaching still isn’t mainstream.
“That instinct to associate women with coaching isn’t there yet,” McCallan said. “But the change is happening at the higher levels and I’m hoping that continues to trickle down.”
Grant said he wants the program to act as a springboard for the apprentices and coaching staff to succeed in whatever they aspire to do in their futures.
“They’re doing a great job, all three of them,” Grant said. “The players, from my point of view, are respecting them as coaches and I’m excited to see their growth and where they take this further.”
“My experience here has been absolutely life-changing,” McCallan said. “It’s made me realize I won’t be satisfied in life unless I do something like this for the rest of it.”
Featured image by L. Manuel Baechlin.
