She stayed away for all of two weeks.

But when Washburn University opened again after the holiday break in January 2004, Jennifer Hastert was back in her office going over class schedules, finding time for practice and finalizing various other details prior to the upcoming tennis seasons.

Her son Noah — born Dec. 16, 2003 — slept on the floor in his car seat for a couple of hours each day as mom transitioned back into the collegiate coaching world.

“It was balancing guilt with work,” Hastert said. “As much as you get your maternity leave, when you’re a head coach, there is really nobody else to do what you do.”

Even with impeccable planning (she had Noah right as school let out for the semester break, and the tennis season doesn’t start until late February), Hastert still spent as many as five days a week away from her 4-month-old son, accepted that some weeks the daycare supervisor spent more time with her son than she did and had to pass Noah off to her parents, who live in Iowa, before a few road trips.

When Hastert and her husband, Steven, had fertility problems trying to conceive a second child, it became clear that scheduling birth around tennis wouldn’t be possible this time. Hastert found out she was due Aug. 18, the first day of class. And when the NCAA changed Washburn’s region, meaning longer road trips to Oklahoma and Texas, Hastert decided it was time to stop the balancing act.

She stepped down as Washburn’s tennis coach — the only woman in the MIAA to coach a men’s team — after nationals last month.

“Looking at the possibility of never being able to have another child and looking back at how much you missed out on your first, you have to make it count because the time flies by fast and you don’t get it back,” said Hastert, whose husband’s job selling medical supplies made her transition from coach to full-time mom possible.

The number of women in the coaching applicant pool is dropping, and the ones who do get into the profession aren’t staying in it as long as their male counterparts. The average collegiate coaching career for a woman is about 10 years.

The 24/7 nature of the modern coach, where the season blends right into the recruiting period, makes it tough for any parent to juggle his or her responsibilities. However, if the statistics are any indication, it proves a bigger inhibitor for women.

“I can look back on a year when I am done and count on two fingers the number of weekends that I was not involved in volleyball,” said Central volleyball coach Peggy Martin, who attributes her 33-year career to being single. “When you have a family, it has to be much harder than for somebody like me. It has to be very frustrating for young women who want to start a family and go into coaching. They just decide to do something else.”

Ironically, the low number of female applicants also are a sort of tribute to the success of Title IX. When someone like Martin started out in coaching in 1976, there weren’t nearly as many career options for women as today.

“When I was growing up, you were going to be a teacher, nurse or secretary,” Martin said. “Now, the young women who are going through our programs can be anything they want.”

Why go into coaching when a woman could make more money, travel less and work fewer hours in a less-stressful career? It’s not that qualified women don’t want to coach, but equality has brought better options to the table.

“A lot of the women who started it for the love of the cause took on a lot of responsibility, and some of them decided they didn’t want to make a lifetime commitment,” said Sallie Beard, Missouri Southern’s athletic director who started four programs for the Lions in the ’70s. “You look at the women who have stayed in coaching, many, many of them are single. Is that a matter of choice or the sports culture doesn’t give them the freedom to find a partner?”

Of all the coaches, administrators, athletic directors and university presidents the News-Press interviewed for this story, none thought that conscious discrimination played a role in the lack of women coaching at the collegiate level today.

Dr. Dean Hubbard, president at Northwest Missouri State, said that all things being equal, the Bearcats always prefer to hire a female to coach women. But of Northwest’s eight women’s sports, only two have female head coaches.

Truman athletic director Jerry Wollmering estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of the applicants he sees for that university’s coaching vacancies are men (It’s also worth noting his wife stepped away from coaching to raise their family). Beard placed that number of female applicants at her school anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent.

With an overwhelming majority of men in the applicant pool, it’s no wonder the coaching trend is heading in its current direction.

“I don’t believe there is anybody out there who doesn’t want women coaching women,” Martin said. “It’s a no-brainer, but obviously we aren’t pursuing the jobs.”

Added Dr. Linda Carpenter, co-author of the Women in Intercollegiate Sport study, “I was talking with someone a year or two ago from the Wall Street Journal. He said women have something more in their life than sports. Maybe they are just wired different.”

Now that tennis is over, the biggest thing in Hastert’s life is her two children. She is determined not to miss out on those formative years. Hastert knows she won’t return to coaching before both her kids are in school. And even then, she might stay away for good.

“I have no idea,” she said. “If the right opportunity arose, I might consider it.”

Sports reporter R.J. Cooper can be reached

at rjcooper@npgco.com