Katie Sowers on #WeKeepPlaying
Katie Sowers discusses how and when she decided she would be a Football coach and the road to becoming the offensive assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers.
Video Transcript
KATIE SOWERS: One day, a woman will be hired as a coach of a men's professional team, and it will not be a headline.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Katie Sowers, offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers.
I first started playing football when-- as early as I can remember. My twin sister and I would play every single day after school. We would love to beat up on the boys. From a young age, I always kind of thought that football was not for girls, so it was never anything I considered, until I found it later in life and kind of had a second chance at my first love, which was football.
It wasn't until I started playing tackle football and then saw Becky Hammon in the NBA when it all of a sudden hit me that, you know, I could do this. And I posted on my Instagram back then, when I was coaching an eighth grade football team, and I said, NFL, I'm coming for you. And little did I know that that was, you know, actually going to happen.
When I first walked into the facility as an NFL coach, it was one of those surreal moments where-- you know, it was like there were flashbacks of everything that I hoped for, had worked for. Looking back, I always knew it was going to happen, as cheesy as that sounds. Whether it was the belief that got me here or whether it was just true confidence in myself, I'm not sure.
Those times of, you know, when I had just hoped I was going to be a coach to then walking through the doors and knowing that it was happening, it-- you know, it's something that I think we all strive for in our lives, no matter what it is, whether it's an NFL coach, whether it's a teaching position. And it's those moments where you realize everything you've worked for was worth it. The more we look at struggles as building blocks, the more successful we'll find.
It's not how women lead men. It's not how men lead women. It's how we lead people. I truly believe that the more that we allow people to be themselves, the more success we find as a community. Me, personally, I always just loved football, so to prove not only to myself, but to everybody, is that you can love something, and, regardless of what society says is normal, you can reach for it. The more that I can show that to younger generations, not just young girls but young boys, that's my why. That's what keeps me going.
I think the future for women in sports is that, one day, a woman will be hired as a coach of a men's professional team, and it will not be a headline. It will be normal. And the kids who are growing up right now will wonder why we ever even talked about this, why this was ever even an issue, why we ever even questioned that a woman could lead men.