Last winter, Clint Alexander got a call from Greg Jacobs, the head of Woodberry Forest’s science department, asking him to speak with a teaching candidate about potentially helping out with the football program.
“I said what’s his name?” Alexander said. “He said ‘Abbie’.”
Former NASA engineer Abbie Ryan joined Woodberry Forest’s football staff this fall as the squad’s tight ends coach and she’s believed to be the first female position coach in Central Virginia. She’s been an avid football fan since early in her life when she had to stand up for the Pittsburgh Steelers in a sea of Cowboys fans in her native Texas back before Super Bowl 30.
“It was the year we moved to Dallas (from Houston) and my dad is from outside Pittsburgh so I had my big Steelers shirt and every other kid in the class is wearing Cowboys stuff so I had to defend the Steelers all day,” Ryan said. “I’m a stubborn person so once I did that I was in with the Steelers, that was my team.”
Ryan worked in NASA’s jet propulsion lab as a mechanical engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston since 2009 in the propulsion and power division, on fuel cells in particular. She worked the last eight shuttle missions from mission control’s Mission Evaluation Room. During that time though it became evident that she loved engineering more than being an engineer.
“I’m more of a people person, I’m a caregiver by nature,” Ryan said. “I didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities at the end of the day to feel like I had helped someone. NASA is great about outreach and my bosses in particular were really great about allowing me to go into classrooms to work with kids to teach them about NASA. It just kind of got to the point where I was enjoying that aspect of my work, that 10 percent, more.”
That led her to pursue teaching, and eventually brought her to Woodberry Forest’s science department, where she’ll teach math and two sections of an engineering course. When Jacobs asked her what activities she’d help with, she wasn’t really sure. She wasn’t sure her softball background transferred to baseball and they eventually started talking about football because she was missing a Steelers playoff game for the interview. Jacobs suggested she try to help with the football team.
“I was like ‘Would they have me?’ and he was like ‘they let me help out, why not’,” Ryan said.
She met with Alexander the next day and talked about, among other things, leveraging the sweep to the sideline. Ryan saw Alexander on campus at lunch later that day and he told her if she wanted to help with football, he’d be thrilled to have her on staff.
“That to me, it says a lot about Woodberry,” Ryan said. “If you’re interested and passionate and enthusiastic about something they’ll let you do it, they’ll let you run with it.”
Ryan played a lot of flag football in college at Rice University and contact women’s flag football which helped her build out a knowledge base and made her even more passionate about the sport. That passion and in-depth knowledge was evident from the first day she stepped on the field as part of the Tigers’ staff.
“She was full of energy and enthusiasm and she taught me the whole playbook,” said Woodberry tight end Connor Koch, who hadn’t played tight end until this fall. “I learned all the plays and concepts in a short amount of time. She’s been really good at teaching me all the intricacies of the position, she’s been a great addition. I love having her around and I know everybody on the team feels the same way.”
She’s coaching a position at Woodberry that includes UVa commit John Kirven and another high profile prospect in sophomore Kyle Bilodeau. The fact that Alexander — whose squads have consistently been one of if not the best in VISAA Division 1 since he turned the Tigers around — trusted a first year coach with that duty says a lot about her acumen.
“She’s been a wonderful addition, she really has a passion for football,” Alexander said. “She worked hard in the summer, she really knows her material. You’re talking about a NASA engineer so she really is good at studying and so she really hit the ground running.”
She follows just a handful of other female football coaches in the state including the first female assistant, Nancy Fowlkes of Cox High School in Virginia Beach who became the school’s running backs coach after an incredibly successful stint as the school’s field hockey coach. Closer to home, Lisa Haney served as a quality control coach at Monticello on Jeff Woody’s staff. Nationally, Natalie Randolph became the first female head coach nationally when she took over at Washington D.C.’s Coolidge High. Earlier this year, Jackson High in Miami hired women’s professional football player Lakatriona Brunson, Florida’s first female high school head coach, the fifth female head coach hired as a head coach since Randolph took the Coolidge job in 2013. Eight-man coach Amy Arnold in Arizona is another pioneer. Ryan is no stranger to operating in a male-dominated profession, as engineering has a large gender gap issue that still persists. In 2010, just 18.1 percent of engineering bachelor degrees awarded in the United States were earned by women.
She also has the unique perspective of having attended an all-girls school for six years growing up, which has helped her adapt to Woodberry quickly.
“It’s actually really similar to the all-girls environment,” Ryan said. “Where it’s the same is the vulnerability and the camaraderie on the team when you don’t have the opposite sex hanging out you can kind of be yourself a little bit more and I see that in the boys.”
Alexander, who prides himself on being open to different approaches, perspectives and ideas, said that Ryan’s incorporation into the program was almost immediate.
“They saw that she knew what she was talking about and I think her being a female lasted two minutes in the first practice and then she was just the coach of the tight ends,” Alexander said.
For her part, Ryan is hoping eventually it doesn’t take any time at all because it shouldn’t be a big deal. Representation is an important part of breaking down any barriers or breaking into any new field. When people see someone of the gender, their race, their socio-economic situation in a certain position, it opens up possibility.
“I’m hoping it gets to the point where it’s not that interesting,” Ryan said. “You see men coaching women’s sports all the time and you don’t blink an eye. One of the biggest things that I got from an all-girls school was that knowing that girls could do anything. They could be the class clown, they could be a student body president, they could run the yearbook, they could be the best athlete. When you see it, it just enforces it. I do think it’s important to show it and eventually it’ll be so ingrained and ‘yeah, yeah, women can do it’.”
She’s doing her part to show it now, and perhaps that’s opening the door a little wider for the next person who wants to follow in her footsteps.
