In honor of women’s history month, the University of Rhode Island held their first discussion panel made up of the women ‘s sports teams head coaches here at the University on March 22.
This was the University’s first time holding a discussion panel where the head coach of each women’s sport is led by a woman. The coaches that spoke on the panel included track and field coach Laurie Fiet-Melnick and tennis coach Val Villucci, who both have decades of experience working as a head coach at URI. Head rowing coach Shelagh Donohoe is another coach who has spent a great deal of her career at the school, as she has worked 16 seasons with the rowing team.
The majority of the other coaches on the panel became a part of the school between 2019 and 2022, such as women’s lacrosse Coach Jenna Slowey (2022), softball Coach Whitney Goldstein (2021), women’s soccer Coach Megan Jessee (2022), volleyball Coach Angel Agu (2020), and women’s basketball Coach Tammi Reiss (2019).
All of the coaches on the panel come from different backgrounds which brings different experiences to the conversation.
“It was amazing listening to all of our women’s coaches,” Fiet-Melnick said.
Coach Fiet-Melnick has been head coach of the women’s cross country and track and field teams for the past 27 seasons. According to Coach Fiet-Melnick, she has seen the improvement the school has made over her years of coaching. She touched upon the fact that even though improvements have been made in the past years, she would still like to see changes going forward. For instance, she highlighted that she would like to see an outdoor track and field facility in the years to come. Coach Fiet-Melinick pointed out that because that is something she would like to see for her team, it does take a lot of advocating for an improvement such as that one to come into effect.
With her experience working as a coach, she has noticed factors in athletes’ lives such as mental health and social media that have become a more comfortable topic to talk about since she started coaching. She believed those two topics to hold a lot of weight on athletes now, that she spoke out about during the discussion.
In coach Fiet-Melnick’s experience, she has gone to sport meetings for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), where she has noticed the rooms are mostly filled with men.
“We have to keep advocating for equality,” Laurie Fiet-Melnick said.
One of the newer additions to the University’s athletic program, head women’s lacrosse coach Jenna Slowey, was also in attendance. Upon her arrival at URI, the women’s lacrosse team advanced from a club to a varsity sport. Slowey has helped to put the women’s lacrosse team on the map as the tenth varsity women’s sport at the University of Rhode Island.
Slowey raved about the panel and expressed her excitement from being included in the discussion.
“As a younger head coach, I was honored to be on the panel with coaching legends,” Slowey said. “It was really special being a new coach and being a part of a collaborative showcase.”
When asked to be part of the panel, Slowey shared that there was a list of questions that were planned to be discussed as well as questions from the audience afterwards. One main point Slowey knew she wanted to cover was the topic of confidence when it comes to women in higher positions. In her own experience, she explained how a woman showing confidence can sometimes be skewed as a woman being overly cocky.
Slowey went on to point out that society sometimes negatively looks at women who exhibit confidence.
“It is important to have confidence in your values and goals,” Slowey said. “As well as confidence in advocating for yourself”.
She wanted to emphasize the fact that women have to approach confidence by standing up for themselves and what they know is right. Slowey delineated the obstacles there are for women to reach the level of confidence they want to reach. She stressed the importance of women standing up for one another and how that factors into women being more comfortable being confident.
The audience at the discussion was filled with students, student athletes, colleagues, and people in the community who had the experience of listening to the first women’s head coach discussion panel at the University. Several of the coaches, like Fiet-Melnick and Slowey, felt empowered and saw a turning point as women in sports.
Focusing on what is to come for next year, many of the coaches that were a part of the panel conveyed their appreciation for the event. The coaches walked away from the panel with a positive outlook on the discussion, and it is something that the women involved like Coach Fiet-Melnick and Sloeweys would like to see at the university in future years.