I noticed the feedback, as written up in The India Categorical 5 days in the past, by India girls’s area hockey head coach Janneke Schopman, and knew she was not going to be within the job for lengthy:
I take a look at the distinction at how males’s coaches are handled between me and the boys’s coach, or the women and the boys’s group, simply basically. They by no means complain they usually work so exhausting. I’m not saying, I don’t know, I don’t know why and I shouldn’t converse for them so I received’t.
I really like them. I believe they work so exhausting, they do what I ask, they wanna be taught, wanna do new issues however for me personally coming from the Netherlands, having labored within the USA, this nation is extraordinarily troublesome as a girl, coming from a tradition the place, yeah, you possibly can have an opinion and it’s valued. It’s actually exhausting.
Yesterday, Schopman introduced her resignation from the job after the group didn’t make the Paris Olympics and with the Eves in sixth place within the FIH Professional League.
Schopman, after a adorned profession as a participant, profitable a gold medal and an FIH World Cup, grew to become a coach, first within the Hoofdeklasse in her native Holland, then as a nationwide group coach. She got here to america in 2014 to teach the U21s, then grew to become the pinnacle coach of the senior girls’s nationwide aspect in 2017.
All indications had been that Schopman was very a lot a participant’s coach and knew the sport nicely. The unlucky factor is that she had come to the group when it was faltering from its top-4 standing after the 2014 World Cup. The U.S. missed out on qualifying for 2 consecutive world-level tournaments (2020 Olympics and 2022 World Cup) for the primary time in this system’s historical past. And when the U.S. misplaced by one aim to India in two-game total-goal collection in 2019 for that Olympic berth, Schopmann was behind the bench.
In an odd karmaic twist, Schopman resigned and have become the analyics coach for India’s girls in January 2020. A 12 months and a half later, India had a Cinderella run within the Tokyo Olympics, whereupon head coach Sjoerd Marijne resigned to spend extra time together with his household.
Schopman took over as head coach, and, in one other karmaic twist, needed to face america on house soil in one of many two last-chance qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympics. And within the opening sport of the match, the States would beat India 1-0 on Abby Tamer’s aim within the sixteenth minute.
India would end second in its pool, however would undergo two powerful defeats to shut the match. The penultimate sport, the match semifinal, noticed India and Germany tie 2-2, then Germany would win within the seventh spherical of a penalty shootout. Two days later, India misplaced 1-0 to Japan, falling on the closing step of Paris Olympics qualification.
In an extra karmaic twist, Schopman’s closing sport earlier than her resignation announcement was a 2-1 shootout win after a 1-1 draw in opposition to — you guessed it — america.
Make of that what you’ll.
