Hot Time For Women In Sports-Related Jobs
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley is a winner: An Olympic gold medalist in 1984, she won the 100-meter hurdles. She was a gold medalist in the 1983 Pan American Games, an eight-time national champion and a 15-time All American.
At the Olympics last year in Atlanta, she was one of eight athletes who carried the Olympic flag into the stadium.
Today, at 36, Mosley, who has a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, is director of the Arco Training Center, a U.S. Olympic training center, in Chula Vista, Calif.
Mosley has worked in the private sector and for the government developing software and hardware systems for defense contractors. In 1991, she made the switch to the business side of sports when she became regional director for sports marketing for Special Olympics International.
In 1993, she became program director for the marketing division of the Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games.
And last January, Mosley, who grew up in Woodbridge, Va., and was an outstanding athlete and scholar there, took her present job. She manages a 150-acre, warm-weather facility and has a $3 million yearly budget and 35 staff members.
Mosley works with female and male athletes in track and field, archery, canoeing, kayaking, cycling, field hockey, rowing, soccer and tennis. And Mosley, who not surprisingly is highly motivating, wants other women, not only athletes, to be winners by going for jobs in sports.
“The time is right because there’s a momentum for women’s sports right now,” Mosley said. “It started in 1995 with all the excitement about the Final Four of women’s college basketball. In 1996, six women’s teams won gold medals in the Olympics in addition to all the individual medals. And this year, the success of the new Women’s National Basketball Association showed the popularity of women’s sports. No one can argue about that anymore.”
The jobs available, says Mosley, “have a wide range. They include coaching, sports medicine, sports science, sports technology, personal trainers, sports marketing, sports administration and athletic directors.
“And they include jobs that can be done anywhere, but are more fun in a sports setting, such as academic advisers, marketers, public relations, lawyers, accountants, facilities managers, food-service managers and agents.”
Mosley adds that there’s plenty of room for growth: Women make up 49.4 percent of all coaches, 32 percent of sports marketers, 8 percent of sports agents and 7 percent of sports journalists.
Unfortunately, the percentages of minority women in sports-related jobs are extremely low, according to Mosley.
There’s also the chance to earn good salaries. “Professional athletes, sportswriters, broadcasters and agents range up to six figures annually,” Mosley said. “Jobs in sports science and medicine start at $85,000. Sports psychologists earn from $17,000 to $65,000, depending on their college degree.”
Don’t tell Mosley you know nothing about sports; it’s no excuse. “A lot of men, not necessarily athletes, see they can have a sports career off the playing field, affect athletics in a positive way and be part of the excitement,” she said. “Surely, women can do the same thing - in both women’s and men’s sports.”
The point she wants to make, Mosley stressed, “is you don’t have to be a champion athlete. It’s an asset, but if you love sports and have a specific set of expertise, you can apply it to good and growing jobs in sports.”
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