Diving coach Dallas Ludwick didn’t always know she wanted to coach, but when she started coaching and had immediate success, she began to realize that coaching could become her profession - even though those around her didn’t necessarily see it as a viable career.
“I’ve been coaching since I was 17 (and I was going to college at the same time),” says Ludwick. “Back then I would go to dinners with my family who are academics and doctors and in the sciences - basically a very white-collar family, and I would be asked all the time: ‘So, what are you really going to do for a living?’ or, ‘but what are you planning to do after coaching?’.”
Adding to the issue of being respected as a coach was Ludwick’s youth - when she first started attending international events with one of her athletes, Cameron McLean, she was only 22, and looked like she was under 18. “I was continually being asked what sport I was competing in. No one looked at me as if I was a coach!”
Ludwicks’ second high-level athlete was Kevin Geyson, who at 28, was relatively old for an athlete - at four years his senior, Ludwick often fielded questions about her age.
“When I arrived on the International scene, people would ask me all the time about my age and it always made me wonder ‘who cares about that?’. I think it was because I was a woman and pretty tiny that people just didn’t make the connection. In fact, my boyfriend would comment about how there were all of these super fit athletes up on the stage with their middle-aged coaches…and then there was me! I guess I just never looked like I fit in.”
That international coaching opportunity became available to Ludwick through a Women in Coaching (WiC) grant from the Coaching Association of Canada. “My Women in Coaching grant allowed us (Ludwick and McLean) to attend our first international competition where we got to be in the presence of Canada’s best junior coaches for a whole week. That was a turning point in my career and the WiC grant allowed me to have that opportunity.”
Now in the third year of the WiC National Team Apprenticeship Program, Ludwick has participated in other WiC initiatives, including the WiC Workshop which takes place in the spring every year - although she didn’t initially see the value in attending.
“I never realized how beneficial the workshops were before I went to one. Networking is a key component of these weekends. I’m in Winnipeg, so I’m fairly alone out here because it’s such a small community. So even though I don’t see these women all of the time, it’s still nice to know that I’m part of a bigger family - a family I didn’t even know I had! We give and get advice from each other, and we find common threads. It’s just nice to know that there are other women who are going through the same things as you.”
One of the trends Ludwick has noticed with women coaches over the last few years is the amount that are managing to juggle coaching with being a mother. “I’m at that age where all of my friends are having kids and I’m thinking, ‘am I going to have a family?’. I know my biological clock is ticking but I’m just too busy to hear it! Sometimes I wonder how I COULD have a family with this busy lifestyle and traveling so much. But I see women who do it. Having kids and still coaching, or having kids and coming back to coaching once their kids are in school. I think the choice is unique to each woman and how they want to fit coaching in with their personal ambitions.”
As a current national team coach, and head coach at the Manitoba Regional Diving Centre, Dallas Ludwick has certainly proven herself as a coach. Although she’s faced some challenges along the way, she’s always stayed true to herself, as illustrated by her experience at her first big international competition, where she felt like she didn’t quite fit in. That experience taught her some valuable advice: “I realized that I could do this job - and be successful - and I could do it MY way. I didn't have to be like all of those men to be successful at what I was doing. And I think that’s good advice for any new coach - just do what’s right for you!”
