As the first Black woman to serve as a coach in the history of Major League Baseball, Bianca Smith has heard the question too many times to count:
How can a woman possibly coach men?
“My response is, ‘Men coach women all the time.’ When a man gets a job coaching a women’s sport, nobody asks how.”
But Smith, 31, has another comeback that’s even more persuasive: Her teams win, and the players trust her.
Since being hired by the Boston Red Sox organization in 2021 to coach an affiliate team in Florida and a recent coaching assignment in the Arizona Fall League, Smith has built a winning record and learned the ropes of the minor league baseball system, putting her a step closer to her ultimate dream.
“A huge focus is to become good enough to be a Major League coach,” she said.
Smith will share more of her groundbreaking career with local audiences on Dec. 1 as guest of honor at a California State University, Bakersfield event to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark federal legislation that prohibits discrimination based on gender in education programs, particularly women’s athletics.
Cindy Goodmon, senior associate athletics director and senior woman administrator for athletics at CSUB, conceived of the event as a way to celebrate the seminal women figures who have served as coaches and athletes at the university and to shed light on the fight for gender equity in collegiate athletics.
“I was a little girl, 11 years old, when this legislation passed,” she said. “I remember standing in the kitchen and my mom looking at me and saying, ‘Cindy, this is going to change our world.’”
Title IX certainly opened doors for women athletes at CSUB, where former coaches Gloria Friedman and Kathy Welter as well as philosophy professor Jackie Kegley will be honored for their leadership and support of Roadrunner athletics.
Welter, who led the ’Runners to three national championships in softball, was quiet but focused, Goodmon said. “There were no barriers for her. She would work and never complain.”
Friedman was recruited in the early days of Cal State’s history by Rudy Carvajal, the college’s first athletics director. She served as coach for tennis and volleyball before being named the senior woman administrator, a role created by the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1981 to ensure that women hold positions of authority at all schools that compete in the NCAA.
“Gloria did not let anybody get in the way of accomplishing her goals or taking the program where it needed to go,” Goodmon said. “She was the pioneer of our athletics program as a female.”
A pioneer herself, Smith said she is happy to use her platform to help young women who dream of following her into a male-dominated world, though she is discouraged by the pace of progress.
“Purists are so proud this game hasn’t changed in over 100 years,” she said. “It makes it even harder to get in. In football, they make a rule change, people are up in arms, and then they forget once the season starts. In baseball, people never get over it. It takes a long time for changes to happen in this game.”
But when Smith is out with the players fielding fly balls or perfecting a swing, nobody’s talking about gender.
“The only time I ever really notice it is when somebody else points it out,” she said. “It’s usually not explicit. They say something and turn around and realize there’s a woman there and they normally wouldn’t say whatever they said in front of a woman. They eventually get to know me well enough to stop caring and just treat me like any of the other coaches. To me that's the most important thing, especially for players because I can't get the best performance out of them if they're always worried about saying or doing something to offend me. I want them to be comfortable being themselves and if they do say or do something that's inappropriate, they know that I won't go running to tell on them; I'll take them aside and explain why it was wrong and educate them.”
In fact, the only pushback Smith has experienced — though rare — has come from other coaches.
One memory stands out in particular. While working as director of baseball operations in grad school, Smith was watching a high school team finish up a game one day.
“Afterward, the coach comes up to talk to me and asked what I did, and I told him all that I was doing for the team," she said. "His response was, ‘Oh, great. When you graduate, I can hire you to make sandwiches for us.’ My mind went blank. I didn’t know what to say. My head coach was behind me and heard the conversation. He came up and said, ‘She’s way too smart to make sandwiches for you.’”
Smith noted that being rendered speechless is a rare occurrence. Her parents raised her to be bold and never let convention or the narrow minds of others hold her back.
“I give my parents full credit,” said Smith, who is staying at the Texas home of her dad and stepmom during the off season.
“My dad used to tell me to find what wakes you up in the morning. Mom said, ‘What’s your passion? Make a job out of it.’”
Smith inherited her love for the game from her mother, a diehard New York Yankees fan, who died of cancer in 2013, eight years before her daughter made history.
“The first time I truly started paying attention to the game was when I was 3,” Smith recalled. “It was one of my first memories. I journaled a lot when I was kid so I can go back to journals when I was 6, 7 years old when I was talking about baseball. My mom would joke that when I fall in love with something, I take my obsessions to the next level. She introduced me to the game, but the obsession is totally mine.”
Smith was delighted to learn that several eighth-graders will be in attendance at the Title IX celebration, thanks to sponsorship assistance of several CSUB supporters. She also will meet with the Roadrunner student-athletes before the event.
“I think I connect pretty well with young people,” she said. “That’s one thing I take pride in. When I was hired, I said that I don’t do media during the season because you hired me to coach. But I never turn away someone seeking advice on getting into the game.”
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)