Trailblazing hockey coach Katie Allen: “Be bold, and don’t succumb to the worries and doubts about the things you don’t have”

Katie Allen knows exactly what it takes to succeed at the highest level.

At Sydney 2000, she was part of the Australian hockey women’s team that secured Olympic gold on home soil after a 3-1 victory over Argentina in the final. It followed two World Cup victories in 1994 and 1998 and cemented her place as one of the greatest players of her generation.

Since those glorious playing days in which she racked up 182 international caps, the Adelaide-born former player has moved into coaching and made headlines over the past year when she became the first female head coach of Real Club de Polo de Barcelona, a Spanish team that plays in the highest hockey division in the country, the Division of Honor League.

It was a trailblazing appointment that broke longstanding barriers for women in sport, and Allen is enjoying her time in her new environment.

Read on for the Olympics.com interview with Allen where she talks about what it takes to be a top coach, the legacy she wants to leave on the game, and her advice to women who aim to follow in her footsteps.

Katie Allen’s history of breaking down barriers in hockey

Allen’s appointment as head coach of Real Club de Polo de Barcelona in August 2022 isn’t the first time she’s broken the mould. When working with the Victorian Insitute of Sport, she took on the role of coach of the Camberwell Men’s Premier League team, making her the first female coach of a men’s team in Victoria, Melbourne.

But rather than seeing herself as a pioneer at the time, the 48-year-old is keen to stress how natural the move was for her.

After starting her working life as a physical education teacher, she transitioned into part-time coaching roles with junior and state teams before coaching in the Insitute of Sport and eventually alongside long-time Camberwell men’s coach Andrew Henderson.

“I was an assistant with him in a volunteer capacity because I was full-time with the Victoria Institute of Sport,” Allen explained an exclusive interview with Olympics.com from her new home in Barcelona.

“I just stayed with them for five years and eventually when I finished with the Victoria Insitute of Sport, to change from that I took up the head coach role, as Andrew [Henderson] was finishing after 10 years. So it was probably a natural thing with my own development.”

Katie Allen: “You’ve got to open yourself up to feeling those doubts, feeling like maybe I’m not going to be up to it"

While Allen views her progression as a coach as a natural process, she is part of a very small group of female coaches across sports who have been given the role of head coach in the men’s game.

Even looking at the women’s hockey tournament of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, only two of the head coaches were female, with both of them - two-time Olympic gold medallists Katrina Powell (Australia) and Alyson Annan (Netherlands) - hailing from Australia.

These types of statistics put Allen in an almost unique position to comment on what needs to change to see more women installed in the top leadership positions in the game.

“I think part of it is about an openness of teams, clubs or organisations to look more broadly and look at who are - across both genders and different countries and states - the best people we can look for.

“And I think a lot of that’s around time and knowledge and the people that are out there. It’s an openness to look more broadly and not just at people you know.

“Often if people you know are guys and maybe you played with then it’s naturally easier to go to the people you know, and that happens to be more guys in that sense.”

But away from the shortcomings in the recruitment process in the sport, Allen has some advice for the women who are looking to make the move into coaching roles.

“I think women are generally hesitant - and I’m saying generally, it’s not always the case - or maybe reluctant to put themselves forward in these situations. You do definitely feel a lot of doubt about, ‘Am I capable of doing that? Do I have the skills to do that?’

“You’ve got to open yourself up to feeling those doubts, feeling like maybe I’m not going to be up to it. I’ve felt like that in every role I’ve been in but I think it’s about getting past that and just going, ‘Look, this is something I’m interested in’, so give it a go!

“Be bold, and don’t succumb to the worries and doubts about the things you don’t have.”

Katie Allen: New role, new challenges but experience counts

Allen’s coaching career has taken her to the upper echelons of both the men’s and women’s game, including a role as national assistant coach with the Australian women’s hockey team, the Hockeyroos, and her current position as head coach of RC Polo.

And there’s no doubt about the credentials of someone who has succeeded in the pressure pot of an Olympic final - an experience she takes into her more recent roles in the dugout and on the training field.

“As a coach, you realise just how hard it is to win any game, let alone an Olympics and [multiple] games in a row with that pressure, so I think now I appreciate it more,” she says of her Sydney 2000 Olympic victory that made Australia the first women’s team in history to win back-to-back Olympic golds.

Even now, she looks back on those playing days and can call upon the qualities and character players need to succeed at the highest level.

“It’s an understanding of what it’s like and how hard it is,” she says. “And I think the commitment it requires and the difficulty of the game.”

She also points to the importance of being able to empower players to make the most of their own opportunities through their dedication to their sport.

“[It’s about] how important it is to communicate clearly with people about where they’re at and help them get the best out of themselves - to really put it back onto them to drive their own development.

“All the coaches I had along the way were very much empowering me to get on and improve and take charge of my own development, but also be part of a team and really know your role.”

Katie Allen’s legacy in sport

Allen’s position as a pioneer in sport can't be questioned, however there is much the sporting world can gain from broadening the traditional horizons of the role of women in leadership positions. For Allen, it starts with the realisation that “coaching can be done in different ways and by different people. [We need to] open the coaching world to that difference… to look at things differently and having different characters involved in the game.

“It’s not just about the ranting, upfront, loud, super extroverted coaches, I think there are different ways and different people that can be involved.

“And women coming forward and actually putting themselves out there for as many roles as possible just to broaden the cohort of people that players are exposed to.

“I think that’s really important for education and for equality as well.”