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Wisdom for the Coach’s Wife on strengthening your marriage and family

At the 2010 AFCWA Convention, Kelly Smith presented on ways to help strengthen your marriage and family. We received requests for her handout, so here is the handout from her session. Also on Facebook, we have started a discussion on ways you and your coach strengthen your marriage. We'd love to hear your ideas.

Study on Football Coaches Wives

Being married to a coach isn’t always easy.  It’s interesting, exciting, and even fun; but it is rarely easy.  Three researchers, Janet Hope, Liddy Hope and Sally Hope are trying to find out what it is like to married to a college football coach.  To do this the Hopes have surveyed and talked to almost 300 coaches’ wives; they presented their preliminary findings at the 2008 conference in Nashville.

In 2010, for the second year in a row Dr. Janet Hope, Dr. Liddy Hope and Sally Hope presented a session at the AFCWA convention where they shared findings from their recent study of the wives of college football coaches. This year’s presentation in Orlando was entitled, “The Sunshine of Your Love: The Reality of Being Married to and Loving a Coach”. This presentation focused on the division of labor within coaching marriages, recognizing and managing the reintegration periods in the life of a coaching family, and the positive attributes of the coaches and their wives. CLICK HERE to view the powerpoint from this presentation. 

The Hopes will be speaking at the 2011 AFCWA convention on the subject of “Life in a Fishbowl” – the pros and cons of the media, fans, messageboards, and public life.  In an effort to gather additional information on these components of a coaching wife’s life, the Hopes would like to encourage AFCWA members to fill out the following questionnaire: LIFE IN A FISHBOWL. For a Word Version: Click Here

The focus of the Hopes’ presentation in Nashville in 2009 was the coping skills of women married to coaches.  The researchers explained that wives are coping with a variety of issues: time, money, job stress, unemployment, parenting, housework, moving and more. According to the Hopes wives have developed six different coping strategies when faced with these issues; flexibility, strategic planning, support systems, taking care of self, independence and acceptance.  The full presentation is available in the PowerPoint presentation at the link below.

Football Coaches Wives Study

 

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