Katie Sowers will make history next weekend as the first woman and first openly gay person to coach during the Super Bowl.
The 33-year-old is an offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers, who will face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, Feb. 2 in Super Bowl LIV. She’s also an alumna of two Mennonite colleges in the U.S.: Hesston College in Kansas and Goshen College in Indiana.
In the three-minute video below, Sowers talks about her lifelong passion for football, the woman who inspired her to pursue a career in the NFL and her response to people who call her a trailblazer.
Rebecca Stoltzfus, president of Goshen College, released a statement on Wednesday saying that the college is proud of Sowers. Stoltzfus also acknowledged the barriers Sowers faced related to her sexual orientation when seeking a volunteer coaching position at the college. (You can watch Sowers talk about her experience in this interview, starting at the 5:00 mark.)
Sowers is the second woman to hold a coaching position in the NFL. She started her football career after college as a player in the Women’s Football Alliance.
“My long term goal is to be a head coach and then move on to executive management,” Sowers said in a 2016 interview with Hesston College. “It’s not a typical path, but then again, nothing about what I’m doing is typical.”
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Katie Sowers, pictured with her mother at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California last month. Sowers is the second woman to hold a coaching position in the NFL. (Photo courtesy of Instagram.com/katesowers5)
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