The University of Chicago men’s soccer team won the NCAA Division III national championship on Saturday, led by first-year coach Julie Sitch.
Sitch is the first woman to lead an NCAA men’s soccer team to a national championship.
Why is that a big deal?
In winning the title, Sitch’s success helps dismantle the fallacy that women can’t lead (or that men won’t follow a woman). The Maroons beat Williams College 2-0 to win the title, completing a historic, undefeated season, 22-0-1.
There are women who coach men’s teams, though not very many. According to the NCAA’s 45 Years of Title IX report, women hold just 4.6% of head coaching positions across all divisions of men’s teams in the NCAA.
Credit: University of Chicago
“The more we can see it, the more we can envision women in these (coaching) positions,” Sitch told Medill Reports earlier this year
Opening opportunities to women will help prove that coaching is about coaching, not gender. “For me, it doesn’t make a difference if it’s men or women,” she said. “I just want to get the best out of these athletes, help them pursue their dreams and goals, and my culture for that doesn’t change.”
Sitch is a home-grown talent
At suburban Oswego High School, she was Illinois Gatorade Women’s High School Soccer Player of the Year in 2002. At DePaul University, she broke the school’s career records in goals and assists. She was the 2003 Conference USA Player of the Year and was a 2005 All-Big East first-team selection. She made the Under-21 U.S. National Team and played professionally until 2015.
She took up coaching in 2015 as an assistant on the University of Chicago women’s team, which reached the NCAA semifinals in 2016 and the national championship game in 2017. She took over as the University of Illinois-Chicago head coach from 2018-19 and in 2020 joined the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL as an assistant coach.
In April, she was named head coach of the University of Chicago men’s team.