Katie Sowers. Empowering. Brave. Inspiring. If you haven’t heard of her yet, you will now. Katie Sowers as an offensive assistant coach for the National Football League team the San Francisco 49ers. Katie Sowers is the 49ers first female coach. Not only is it remarkable that she is only the second woman in history to coach in the National Football League, but she will also be the first self-identified female to coach in the Superbowl.
Katie Sowers grew up in Hesston, Kansas, and started playing American football at the early age of eight years old. After her high school years, she graduated from Central Missouri with her Bachelor’s degree. She continued her education at Central Missouri University with a Master’s degree in Kinesiology.
After receiving her Master’s degree in 2012, she went to play football in the Women’s Football Alliance, where she played for the Western Michigan Mayhems and the Kansas City Titans. In 2013, she helped the United States Women’s National Football team with the IFAF Women’s World Cup in Finland. She continued to play football at the national level until she received an injury to her hip causing her to retire early.
Even though the hip injury took her out of playing the game, it didn’t stop her from being involved. Right after her retirement, she joined the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons in the summer of 2016. While there, she was a wide receiver intern, then eventually promoted to an intern scout. In June of 2017, Sowers went to the San Francisco 49ers to join their coaching team as a season offensive assistant. After 2 years of working seasonally, she was promoted to the full-time position of an offensive assistant coach. At the beginning of the 2017 season, Sowers came out as lesbian and became the first coach to come out as LGBTQ+. In the past 100+ years of the NFL, only 13 players have come out as gay or bi-sexual after they had retired from the game. Having Sowers come out and be her true self on one of the biggest platforms in America shows a lot of courage and fearlessness.
Being the second woman in NFL history to coach football is incredible. American football is a male-dominated sport and very few women throughout the nation play. Many times, young girls do want to get involved in football, but they are discouraged by peers and sometimes even their family members. Sowers is a role model that any young child can look up to whether they want to play sports or not. Sowers had to go against the tide and overcome many obstacles to get to where she is today. And today, she stands at the head of one of the best teams in the NFL.