To celebrate 50 years of educating girls at 阿尔布开克学院, 校友 Council member Ted Alcorn ’01 is telling the stories of women alumni.
泰德·奥尔康2001年著
Catherine Gordon, Academy Class of 1977, the first woman ever to coach men’s professional soccer in the U.S., did not start coaching until she was nearly 40. 她的第一份工作很卑微, with the Dragons – the middle-school basketball and softball squads at Kent Place girls school in Summit, 新泽西.
在事后看来, it’s readily apparent that a person with Catherine’s natural athletic talents might end up mentoring generations of younger players, 但她花了几十年才看到这一点. And she’s uncertain she would have without her years at the Academy. “People could say ‘life-changing,’ but I think for me, it was life-saving, quite frankly.”
Catherine was admitted to the Academy as a 10th grader as part of the second coed class, where she made sports her unequivocal priority. She played basketball and field hockey, joined the softball program in its first season, and competed in high jump for the track team. (There was no women’s soccer team at that time.)
But academically, Catherine said, she was in over her head. She wouldn’t have graduated but for teachers who found unconventional means of bringing her along. When a summer school English class she was obliged to take with Mr. John O’Connor conflicted with a family vacation, he found another way for her to fulfill the requirements, 给他写信, 他改正后又寄回来了. “The teachers worked with you and never quit on you,” she said.
She was struggling in chemistry when the instructor, Dr. 哈利牧民, whose dog had recently given birth to a litter of puppies, joked that anybody who aced the next test could have one of them. “我相信了他的话，”她说. “It might have been the only time I got an A in chemistry.”
Following graduation (“I was maybe not 100% sure my diploma was going to be signed, 但事实的确如此。”, Catherine headed to college in Colorado but wound up spending an “inordinate” amount of time skiing, 而不是, and dropped out to work in restaurants. “That was kind of the beginning of starting to maybe grow up,” she said. 几年后, 她回到教室, now putting herself through a restaurant business degree at Purdue University, 她上院长名单的地方. “It’s amazing how much you learn when you’re actually paying the bills,” she laughed.
And she began noticing how skills – research and critical thinking – she’d honed, 在不知情的情况下, 开始为她服务. “Sometimes you don’t realize the gifts you’re given until years later.”
15年来, Catherine thrived in the food service industry and her life seemed to be headed up the corporate ladder. But her true love of sports was always there. So, in 2006, in what she describes as “a complete lane change, 有点像没有闪光灯,” she left the security of a predictable job to devote herself to coaching and her own business, employing video to help coach and recruit athletes.
从那时起, her resume spans all tiers of soccer, from DI to DIII college to semi-professional and professional. 在2013年的美国女子联盟中, 她帮助领导代顿, Ohio’s Dutch Lions from the back of its division to its top. But women still weren’t coaching men at that time, and she decided she wanted in. “I just thought it was important, because it wasn’t being done.” So the following year Catherine joined the men’s team as an assistant coach with goalkeeping responsibilities, “男孩们”很少有戏剧表演,她这样称呼他们. “If you knew your stuff, if you could help them achieve their goals. 他们不在乎“性别”.
这些天, Catherine has wound down her business and is easing into retirement, 尽管在美国的要求下.S. Soccer, she still teaches a course on coaching and is helping develop a curriculum for goalkeepers. 她不得不放弃自己的游戏, having sustained too many concussions during her career, but a friend convinced her to take up pickleball, which has proven an outlet for her hyper-competitive streak. And she and her partner adopted a dog during the pandemic and have been enjoying long road trips in their RV.
As she reflects on the thread running through her own life — of consistently trying to be a better version of herself — Catherine recognizes how it helped make her an able mentor for young talents. Even those who are, like her, a bit of a handful. “Every now and then I run into a kid who is a challenge to coach or a challenge to teach, 我说, “好吧, 这就是因果报应.’”