Ann Killion July 25, 2018 Updated: July 25, 2018 1:53 p.m.
Anyone watching closely could see that Katie Sowers was leaving a trail of visual bread crumbs behind her, which would lead right to her current position in the coaching offices of the San Francisco 49ers.
There were the photos of her and her twin sister with their all-time favorite Christmas gifts: stinky second-hand college football pads and helmets from the college where her dad coached basketball. There was the Christmas wish list with “Dallas Cowboys helmet” written on every line. There was the evidence at Sowers’ “dress like your hero day” in elementary school when — amongst all the little Laura Ingalls Wilders and astronauts — she was Deion Sanders (the Cowboys version of Sanders, not the 49ers).
Hammon “was the reason that made me think I could coach in the NFL,” Sowers said recently, after a talk at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. “Until you see it, you don’t even think of it as an option.
A year after that post, the Arizona Cardinals hired Jen Welter as a training camp assistant. Within two years, Sowers had landed an internship with the Atlanta Falcons.
A year later, when the Falcons’ hot young offensive coordinator headed to the 49ers, Kyle Shanahan invited Sowers to apply for the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.
Now, Sowers is starting her second full season with the 49ers. The football-obsessed young girl, from a small Mennonite community three hours outside of Kansas City, followed her path straight into the NFL.
49ers assistant coach Sowers has a few words for her younger self who had a football dream.
Before that, she was a formidable player in a women’s professional football league. Her uniform from those days hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But her trailblazing as a coach could prove more impactful.
“To be honest, I don’t think of myself as making history,” Sowers said.
But she is, on two fronts. Not only did she become the second full-time female coach — following Kathryn Smith at the Bills — she also became the first openly gay NFL coach when Outsports.com wrote about her last year. She’d been out for years, but happened to acknowledge it publicly.
Both groundbreaking prongs of her story have been accepted easily by her colleagues at the 49ers.
Garcon said he and Sowers bonded over their birthday — they will turn 32 one day apart in early August. He’s met her twin sister Liz. As far as the revelation of her sexuality?
Sowers said Brian Hoyer, the team’s starting quarterback at the time, came by her office and told her he had read the article and thought it was cool. And other people have reached out to commend her for being open, including a male former NFL assistant who is gay but felt he could never come out.
Working for the 49ers, in a progressive community, is an added bonus to her dream job.
“Coming to a place that’s so progressive and knowing that I didn’t have to worry about the culture, that it was a place that was going to support me, was a benefit,” she said.
Sowers didn’t come out to her family until she was in college. She was concerned about acceptance in that small conservative Mennonite community of Hesston, Kan., and didn’t want to be a subject of town gossip.
She’s found nothing but acceptance from her family and community. But when she sought a volunteer coaching position at Goshen College, where she played basketball, she was told by her former head coach, “We don’t want you around the team.” Heartbroken, she Googled women’s football and started playing for a team in Michigan.
After moving back home to Kansas, and working as a college admissions counselor (one reason her speaking skills are so impressive), while still playing football, she coached youth basketball. The fifth-grade daughter of former Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli was on her team; Pioli became her mentor and when he landed in Atlanta, he offered her an internship.
Before she came to the 49ers, Sowers had a chance at other jobs. She knew one of them wasn’t right when some of the team members wondered where they would put her desk.
Shanahan has created a culture where everyone’s opinion is valued and where he doesn’t presume he knows everything.
San Francisco 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers watches players run through drills at the team’s training facility in Santa Clara last year. Sowers, 31, the team’s first female assistant, is also the NFL’s first openly gay coach.
The 49ers first preseason game last season was in Kansas City, and Sowers thought it marked the end of her internship. She packed her stuff and planned to stay in Kansas after the game.
“But they told me, ‘You’re not going home, we have plans for you,’” she said.
Sowers tracks and charts plays on game days in the coaching booth. She breaks down film and works on the field during practice. This year she will have the added responsibility of diagramming the running plays, on a computer program, which are given to the team each week when the game plan is put in.
LaFleur said he’s never seen Sowers in a bad mood, never seen her not working hard.
This season, three more women will be added to coaching staffs, in Buffalo, Baltimore and Carolina (where, infamously last season, Cam Newton laughed at a female reporter when she asked a question about receiving routes). Pretty soon, it might not be big news when a team hires a woman to help coach.
And the image of Sowers in her coaching gear is one of the markers that little girls can follow on their journey.