Get off the woke train. The Surf staff is all very qualified to coach the top level of ECNL talent. They draw talented players from all over SoCal and they make them better. It doesn’t matter the sex of the coach…if you have the coaching pedigree, Surf doesn’t care whether you are male or female. If Stony Casey wanted to work there, I’m sure she would fit in just fine. Rob Becerra‘s actions were inexcusable. Several female coaches have come and gone over the years and now have the “top” team in the age group at clubs like Sharks. If those coaches were good enough to have the top team at Surf, that would have happened. Whether the coach is male or female, it makes no difference…players (NWSL, YNT, or D1 college) get outstanding exposure at Surf. If you know anything about club soccer and your daughter grows up in a program, you are gonna have 3-4 coaches over her decade with that program. You have no say whether those coaches are male or female unless you hop clubs for a specific coach. If you want your daughter to play at the next level, Surf is a nationally recognized gold standard. It is true world wide—there need to be more top level female coaches, Surf is not alone in its lack of diversity. Standing by for incoming….bash away.
Claiming Surf is doing something wrong just because its top coaches are men misunderstands cause and effect. Would it be nice if there were more qualified women? Maybe, although youth soccer coach is a low-paying terrible job for all but a handful of people compared to just about anything, so I'm not sure more women coaching youth soccer really does much for equality or women's rights the way some people seem to think.
There are some very simple reasons why there are so few qualified women youth coaches. (1) Virtually all qualified women coaches coach college instead, where there is some actual money, job security, prestige and potential. Any woman with a brain and ability will take the college track over being a pro kiddie soccer coach. There just aren't many women left after those who are most committed to coaching soccer have taken jobs in the college pipeline. (2) Very few women look at kiddie soccer coach as a real job, and they shouldn't. Virtually every single young woman in the U.S. who has any clue about soccer also has a college degree, which they are squandering by coaching youth soccer. (3) Certainly there has been awful stereotyping and underestimating women's abilities as a whole historically, which has deterred many women from trying to become great youth soccer coaches. But if someone is going to accuse any particular club of discriminating, they need to prove it instead of assuming that a lack of women coaching at a club must be proof of discrimination. They need to identify who has applied, what their credentials are, and how they stacked up to those who were actually hired.
In other words, looking at how few women soccer coaches have been hired at Surf tells you nothing without knowing how many women have applied and what their qualifications are compared to those who got the jobs. I can't tell you much about individual hiring decisions at Surf historically, other than I can say I don't know of any woman - or man for that matter - who is more qualified than Deza to help girls use soccer as a means to get into a top-level school and also maybe get some scholarship money. Even if there are, they did not apply for the position at Surf.