'The Conversation Still Needs to Happen': Chizik

Heartland coaching legend Lori Chizik unearthed an old article she wrote 28 years ago when going through her files during the current COVID-19 lockdown. 

It detailed how she and another coach were the only two female head coaches in the WNBL and the year she left there became none. 

28 years later and Chizik believes there’s still a mountain of work the basketball community can do to encourage greater involvement in the coaching space for women and girls. 

“There hasn’t been a significant increase,” Chizik says. “The other comment I made in that article was we needed a lot more females in the junior coaching ranks and to make that statement 28 years ago and now we’re still talking about it…I mean it’s improved somewhat but the conversation still needs to happen and it’s still really important.” 

Chizik will be speaking to aspiring female coaches on a South East Melbourne Phoenix-hosted free live webinar on Tuesday 29 September as part of the Phoenix Festival program.

Her coaching credentials speak for themselves; an assistant coach at the Olympics with the Opals, head coach of Nunawading and Bulleen in the WNBL, heavy involvement at the Dandenong and McKinnon basketball associations, and was the first female to be an assistant coach in the NBL.

Chizik is a true trailblazer for women in basketball and can’t wait to impart her knowledge on networking, sacrifice, self-development and persistence to inspire the next generation and break down potential barriers in the online chat. 

“I’m passionate about it because I’ve had an amazing career in coaching basketball and I’ve had to go through some barriers but it’s been really great and I want other females to be able to experience that,” she says. 

“The biggest message to me is that we need more females in there as role models because you can’t be what you can’t see. We’ve got to start somewhere where young females can see, ‘look there’s female coaches there, I want to do that’. If you can’t see people doing that then there’s no aim for the young females. 

“We need to start to get more coaches at the bottom level and at the top level, then that will filter from top to bottom right through.” 

A key message Chizik pressed during her time as an assistant coach in the NBL and reiterates today is the need to see female coaches as coaches first, not female coaches. 

She also stresses the opportunity for women to be considered in more leadership roles as vital given the general participation through junior ranks especially is close to evenly spread between boys and girls. 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE FREE LIVE WEBINAR WITH LORI CHIZIK

For Chizik, if she can inspire even one aspiring female to take the leap into attacking basketball coaching head on, her time is more than worthwhile. 

“In basketball we can do much better and hopefully there’s some things I can talk about (in the webinar) that spur people on to take some action,” she says. 

“It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, it’ll take time but I think now is just such a great time to be putting these ideas out there because of the groundswell of girls in sport, women in sport and women in leadership roles. 

“If we can get caught up in that swell and take up some affirmative action, now is a really good time.” 

Sam Bunn for Phoenix Media (16/09/2020)