After 31 years of tracking the declining number of female coaches, Dr. Linda Carpenter — co-author of the annual Women in Intercollegiate Sport study — still finds reason for optimism.

The source of the renewal of her hope this year is the number of paid assistant coaches.

There are 838 more paid assistant coaches in the NCAA this year than there were in 2006, and the majority of those newly created positions are going to women (57 percent of assistants in women’s programs are female). In 1996, there were 3,573 paid female assistants in the NCAA. That number now is 6,308. In 2008, there are 1.7 more paid female assistants per school than 1998.

The NCAA implemented grant programs in which it pays a portion of a new assistant coaches’ salary for three years if the university hires a woman or minority. It’s a program Northwest Missouri State and Truman State have taken advantage of in the MIAA and could be credited with boosting those aforementioned numbers.

However, none of that data has curbed the declining percentage of female head coaches yet. But Carpenter believes that as more women get a taste of coaching, more will choose it as a career.

“If it is going to happen, it will happen because of the increase in the assistant coaching numbers,” Carpenter said. “I am crossing my fingers and toes that it will happen.”

Still, she thinks the NCAA and universities can do more to get women into coaching. Carpenter proposed a three-pronged approach.

Offer more money

More enthusiastically recruit women for coaching vacancies

Take a look at life-balance issues and ways to reduce the stress and time commitment of coaching, like shorten the recruiting period

Of those three suggestions, limiting the recruiting period seems like the easiest one to implement — a move by the NCAA that wouldn’t cost universities anything. Still, it potentially could create an advantage to the better-funded programs with more assistant coaches who can take greater advantage of the limited recruiting dates.

Jen Bagley, Missouri Western’s softball coach, favors trimming the recruiting season on a per-coach basis.

Still, it’s a tough sell to a profession that is constantly pushing forward for another competitive advantage.

“To sell a bureaucracy that is based on competition and trying to take every rule to the very limit and walk that line, the concept of let’s cut back so you can have a better quality of life. ... They have already bought into the lifestyle,” said Sallie Beard, Missouri Southern’s athletic director. “To pull it off, it has to reach far beyond just the women’s issue.”

Beard added that Southern’s programs — like men’s and women’s basketball — are equally funded, and while a disparity still exists in salary, often that can be attributed to men staying in the profession longer.

For example, four men’s basketball coaches in the MIAA have been at their respective schools for at least 20 years. On the women’s side, Emporia State’s Brandon Schneider is the longest-tenured coach, and he started in 1998.

When it comes to active recruiting, Jerry Wollmering — Truman State’s athletic director — said the Bulldogs target specific candidates for their job openings, offer similar perks for men’s and women’s coaching positions, and contact many institutions to get more females into the applicant pool. Truman has one female coach out of its nine women’s sports.

“I don’t think I have the million-dollar answer,” said Wollmering, who estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of his applicants are male. “It seems like that is the trend. Can we do more? If there is, I would like to know what those things are, I guess. I feel like we do everything here to get the best and most diverse pools we can.”

Dr. Dean Hubbard, Northwest Missouri State’s president, compared it to the lack of female professors in engineering. Northwest is actively recruiting females into its athletics and engineering programs without much to show for it.

“It’s the hand we’ve been dealt,” Hubbard said. “I wouldn’t suggest there is nothing we can do because I am always open to ideas. We can always improve the process, but it’s not obvious to me right now what we could do.”

Beard started her career in collegiate athletics 36 years ago as a physical education teacher-turned-coach at Missouri Southern. Along the way, she got married and had two children, finding that difficult and delicate balance of raising a family in her particular career field.

She credits her husband, Larry, with taking on a non-traditional role in their household at times during the past three decades to make that possible. It’s a reversal that she believes many people just aren’t ready to make in 2008.

“It reaches beyond the sports society. It reaches into the very fabric of our culture and what men and women expect of each other in relationships,” Beard said. “We are still in the process of changing our culture.”

No one seems to know how long that might take. So in the meantime, the NCAA might offer an additional internship or graduate program for women or a university could include an additional perk to a women’s coaching contract — little steps that can only slow the tide of a stronger trend.

Carpenter and her co-author will continue to conduct their annual study — one started with pencils and a chart and now tabulated on a laptop — and wait for the cultural attitudes to catch up with the technology.

Sports reporter R.J. Cooper can be reached at rjcooper@npgco.com