ABOUT JEN
I spent years wondering whether I belonged in the room. Eventually, I stopped asking.
More than three decades in high school athletics have given me plenty of opportunities to lead, get things wrong, start again, find my voice, and learn from people who challenged the way I thought.
Some lessons came from leaders I wanted to emulate. Others came from experiences I knew I never wanted to repeat.
All of them shaped me.
This is some of what I’ve learned along the way.
I Have Been Standing Outside Rooms for a Long Time
My father coached football for more than twenty years. Some of my earliest memories are of Saturdays at the football field.
I loved game day.
I loved getting up early. I loved the routine and the traditions. I loved watching everything come together. I loved being around the team and being part of something bigger than me.
There was only one place where I wasn’t part of it.
The locker room.
Because I was a girl, I wasn’t allowed inside.
So while my father talked strategy and prepared his team on the other side of that door, I sat in the hallway with a book and waited.
At the time, I accepted it. That was simply where I was supposed to sit.
LOOKING BACK, I SEE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
I loved being part of that world, but I also learned early that there would be rooms I wasn’t invited into. Not because I hadn’t earned my way in. Not because I didn’t belong.
Simply because I was a girl.
Decades later, I’ve spent much of my career walking into rooms where women were still the exception.
Maybe that little girl sitting outside the locker room prepared me more than I knew.
I learned to walk into the room when the door opened.
I learned to stay when I was the only woman there.
And eventually, I learned something even more important.
ONCE YOU HAVE A SEAT,
YOU START LOOKING AROUND
TO SEE WHO ELSE NEEDS ONE.
That is where so much of my leadership began.
MOST OF WHAT I KNOW ABOUT LEADERSHIP,
I LEARNED THE HARD WAY.
I didn’t become the leader I am because I always had great leaders showing me the way.
I learned what it feels like when decisions are made without you. I learned what happens when trust is assumed instead of earned. I learned how silence from a leader leaves people wondering where they stand. And I learned how much people remember the way a leader made them feel when things were hard.
Those experiences changed the way I lead.
I started asking more questions and listening longer. I learned that people need to know they matter before they ever have to ask.
I didn’t learn leadership from getting everything right.
I learned by paying attention to what I never wanted to repeat.
I have made decisions I’m proud of and others I would handle differently today. I have learned from great people, difficult moments, unexpected failures, championship celebrations, hard conversations, and plenty of mistakes of my own.
Over time, the work has taken me beyond my own athletic department. I mentor other athletic administrators, serve in state and national leadership, and founded the Global Community of Women in High School Sports.
But the work keeps bringing me back to the same place.
I want the people and places I serve to be stronger because I was there.
WHERE THE WORK CONTINUES
Most of my days are still spent alongside students, coaches, families, and colleagues.
That is where the work keeps teaching me. In a conversation. In a difficult decision. In giving someone another opportunity. In trusting someone else to lead.
ATHLETIC LEADERSHIP
I founded the Global Community because I wanted women working in high school sports to have something I often wished I had earlier in my career.
Connection. Support. People who understand the work.
Today, women across the country and beyond are learning from one another, mentoring one another, sharing opportunities, and building relationships through this community.
My role is no longer about having all the answers or leading every part of it.
It is about creating the space, then trusting other women to step forward and lead too.
GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF WOMEN IN HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS
THE WORK BEHIND THE WORDS
For more than three decades, I’ve worked in education-based athletics, most of those years leading athletics at an all-girls school.
I am a Certified Master Athletic Administrator and have served in state and national leadership roles throughout my career. I also founded the Global Community of Women in High School Sports to help women connect, grow, and sustain one another in this work.
The lessons I write about here didn’t come from a leadership textbook. They came from doing the work.
Certified Master Athletic Administrator (CMAA)
2020–21 Missouri Athletic Director of the Year
NFHS Citation Award recipient
Founder, Global Community of Women in High School Sports
I still have questions.
I still change my mind.
I still get things wrong.
And I am still paying attention.
Because the longer I do this work, the more I understand that leadership is never something you finish learning.