Jen Welter, a former collegiate rugby player who played 14 seasons of professional gridiron, is to make history as the first female coach in the NFL when she takes up an intern position with the Arizona Cardinals.
The Cardinals announced the hiring on Monday, saying they added Welter to their staff as a coaching intern during training camp and the pre-season.
She is thought to be the first woman to hold a coaching position of any kind in the NFL.
“Coaching is nothing more than teaching,” Cardinals coach Bruce Arians told the team’s Web site. “One thing I have learned from players is: ‘How are you going to make me better? I don’t care if you’re the Green Hornet, man, I’ll listen.’”
“I really believe she’ll have a great opportunity with this internship through training camp to open some doors for her,” Arians added of Welter.
Welter holds a master’s degree in sport psychology and was the first woman to play a non-kicking position in a men’s pro football league when she was a running back and on special teams for the Indoor Football League’s Texas Revolution last year.
Welter also won two gold medals playing for the US in the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship in 2010 and 2013.
Welter, who was to be introduced at a news conference yesterday, was an assistant coach of the Revolution this year.
After Arians said during the NFL owners’ meetings in March that he believed female coaches would break into the NFL “the minute they can prove they can make a player better,” the coach of the Revolution got in touch.
After meeting her, Arians said: “I thought she was the type of person that could handle this in a very positive way for women and open that door.”
Arians said he had spoken to veterans on the team about Welter’s hiring and “they were all very cool with it.”
“It’s not going to be a distraction in any way,” the head coach said.
New Taipei Kings guard Jeremy Lin on Friday was named the Taiwan Professional Basketball League’s (TPBL) Player of the Month, the first domestic player to win the award, while the Hsinchu Toplus Lioneers are to welcome their third head coach in less than a year. Lin averaged 22 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists over five games in October and last month, helping the Kings to second in the standings with a 4-2 record as of Friday. The Kings last night defeated the Lioneers 96-78 to move level with the top-of-the-table Formosa Dreamers (5-2), while in the night game, the New Taipei
TO NO AVAIL: The Denver Nuggets’ Serbian center Nikola Jokic surpassed his 53-point performance in the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix The Washington Wizards withstood a 56-point explosion from Denver star Nikola Jokic to beat the Nuggets 122-113 on Saturday and snap their 16-game NBA losing streak. Jokic, who won his third NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award last season, posted a career scoring high — surpassing a 53-point performance in game four of the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix and a 50-point regular-season best against Sacramento in 2021. The Serbian big man added 16 rebounds and eight assists, but it was all to no avail as Washington, buoyed by 39 points from Jordan Poole, won for the first time
Taiwan on Wednesday finished with 15 medals at the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Hong Kong, taking home four gold, five silver and six bronze medals across the age group divisions. Taiwan ranked third on the medal table after South Korea with 17 golds and the US with eight golds at the five-day competition. “Your athletes have proven themselves as the best in the world,” World Taekwondo president Choue Chung-won said at the closing ceremony of the martial art contest that was attended by a record 1,727 athletes from around the world. On the first day of the competition at the Hong Kong
Taiwan’s Lin Cheng-jing won a bronze medal in the clean and jerk in the women’s under-49 kg division at the 2024 IWF World Weightlifting Championships in Bahrain on Saturday. Lin won her first medal at a World Weightlifting Championships for lifting 107kg in the clean and jerk in her weight class, 2kg more than Rosegie Ramos of the Philippines. However, Ramos won bronze for the combined lift after topping Lin by 5kg in the snatch. Ri Song-gum of North Korea won gold in the division’s combined lift with a total of 213kg, while Xiang Linxiang of China took silver with
RSS