Katie Sowers Makes History: One Play at a Time

On Feb. 2, the Kansas City Chiefs made history by winning Super Bowl LIV after a 50-year championship drought. However, it was the losing team, the San Francisco 49ers, that made headlines for making a different type of history. The San Francisco 49ers offensive assistant coach, Katie Sowers, is the first female and openly gay coach to perform on football’s biggest stage.

Prior to working for the 49ers, Sowers played eight years of professional football for the Women’s Football Alliance, spent five years as the athletic director of the City of Kansas City, and spent 2016 working with the Atlanta Falcons as a coach and scout. Hired by the 49ers in 2017 as a seasonal offensive assistant, Sowers worked her way up to her current position where she helped the team rank second in rushing and points during the regular season.

While her resume remains impressive, gaining her experience proved to be more of a challenge than the jobs themselves.

"As I was finishing college, I actually got turned down from a volunteer coaching job because I was a lesbian," Sowers told OutSports in an interview. "I was told 'because of your lifestyle, we ask that you do not come around the team.'"

The adversity faced by Sowers in the sports industry is not unique, as women for generations have fought for opportunities and respect in the athletic community. Microsoft aimed to highlight the struggle of many women in sports through Sowers and her historic Super Bowl appearance.

The Microsoft “Be the One” campaign released a Super Bowl commercial that not only highlighted Sowers’ road to success, but also included a call to action for future women to be trailblazers in their professions. In the commercial, Sowers describes her passion for football and coaching from a very young age but struggled to see herself as a participant due to a lack of female role models.

“I never saw an opportunity in football because I never saw a female coach before” said Sowers. “People tell me that people aren’t ready to have a woman lead, but these guys have been learning from women their whole lives.”

While many people may view the commercial as just another Super Bowl advertisement, Microsoft’s campaign execution and timing allowed it to reach a larger audience and educate them on both their brand and the issue at hand.

Many people who don’t avidly watch the 49ers and just watched the Super Bowl for social reasons may not be familiar with the history Sowers was making in her profession. By airing the commercial in the middle of the Super Bowl and crafting the commercial in such a way that it acted as more of an inspirational and educational video than an advertisement, they succeeded at associating their brand with a progressive movement.

As a former athlete and current coach, the Microsoft campaign and Sowers’ story struck a chord with me. Like Sowers, I grew up with very few female coaches to look up to as there were few women coaching my sports and virtually no female coaches associated with the boys sports my brother was involved in. I viewed ESPN as “TV for boys” and steered away from watching it because I felt my interest in the sports shown on ESPN (predominantly male) weren’t meant for me to enjoy. As a softball catching instructor, stigmas and hesitation about females involved in male sports limited me to only teaching young women as opposed to any athlete willing to learn the position.

One female sports broadcaster in the commercial stated, “I am glad my daughter is old enough to see this and understand how significant it is.” If I had campaigns featuring inspiring women like Katie Sowers on my TV screen as a young girl maybe I would have felt different about my love for sports regardless of gender. Maybe I wouldn’t have limited myself to only coaching young women and recognized that my knowledge of catching was universal and could benefit all athletes.

Thankfully, while Sowers’ story is inspiring women everywhere, her story is not unique. There are young women around the world who found the Microsoft commercial as inspiring as I did and are now motivated to be a part of the change. They could for the first time in history turn on ESPN and see themselves in the face of a NFL coach and see there are new opportunities for women in the sports industry that weren’t there before.

“All it takes is one, all it takes is one,” said Sowers. “I’m not trying to be the best female coach; I’m trying to be the best coach.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xPn4DXIj5w