India ladies’s hockey group coach Janneke Schopman has hit out at Hockey India for what she says she sees as preferential remedy that it offers to the lads’s group and mentioned that she did not really feel “valued and respected” by her employers. Schopman made the feedback moments after India’s victory over the USA by way of tie-breakers in an FIH Pro League on the Birsa Munda Stadium on Sunday.
Janneke Schopman was a part of Sjoerd Marijne’s teaching workers which led India to a historic fourth-placed end on the Tokyo Olympics. (PTI)
Schopman mentioned that she didn’t really feel valued ever since she first arrived in India as an analytical coach on the workers of then-head coach Sjoerd Marijne. She mentioned that she has usually seen a distinction in how she is handled in India in comparison with different male coaches. “Very hard, very hard. Because, you know, I come from a culture where women are respected and valued. I don’t feel that here,” Schopman is quoted as saying by the Indian Express about working with officers in Hockey India.
Discover the fun of cricket like by no means earlier than, solely on HT. Explore now!
The Indian ladies’s group had didn’t qualify for the Paris Olympics later this 12 months. Schopman had earlier been a part of Marijne’s teaching workers which led them to a historic fourth-placed end on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, lacking out on a bronze medal by the barest of margins. “Even when I was the assistant coach some people wouldn’t even look at me or wouldn’t acknowledge me or wouldn’t respond and then you become the chief coach and all of a sudden people are interested in you. I struggled a lot with that,” she mentioned.
Schopman, who gained gold with the Netherlands on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and earlier coached the USA ladies’s group, mentioned that working in India is “extremely difficult as a woman” coming from the international locations she has labored in earlier than. “I look at the difference at how men’s coaches are treated… between me and the men’s coach, or the girls and the men’s team, just in general. They (the women players) never complain and they work so hard. I shouldn’t speak for them so I won’t. I love them. I think they work so hard, they do what I ask, they wanna learn, wanna do new things,” Schopman mentioned.
The Dutchwoman mentioned it turned clear to her that preferential remedy is given to the lads’s group after the latter’s failure to qualify for the quarter-finals of the World Cup final 12 months which India hosted. “I just know that when the World Cup didn’t go well for the men’s team, all focus was on them. Since February 2023, all the focus was on the men’s team,” she mentioned.
“But for me personally, coming from the Netherlands, having worked in the USA, this country is extremely difficult as a woman, coming from a culture where, yeah, you can have an opinion and it’s valued. It’s really hard,” she said. Schopman however said that HI president and former India captain Dilip Tirkey has been supportive, as has the governing body’s CEO Elena Norman. “If you asked my family, I should have left after a year. In hindsight, I should have left after the Commonwealth Games because it was too hard for me to manage,” she mentioned. Asked what was the toughest bit, she mentioned: “The fact that I feel – I don’t even know if it’s true – that I am not taken seriously.”
Source: www.hindustantimes.com
