Natalie Balleto is not afraid to be the only woman in the room. In fact, it only encourages her to be the leader she is today and she hopes to pass on her strength to her athletes.
Natalie Balleto, Mount Mary University’s first women Athletic Director (AD), started off her career as an Assistant AD in 2018. After her predecessor moved on, the opportunity to move higher up in her career was something she couldn’t pass up.
Balleto is the only women in the Blue Angels conference to have the title of Athletic Director. Her determination to continue her career in Administration and her love for volleyball as a coach and a veteran athlete drove her to overcome her many battles in a male-dominated profession.
Not only has Balleto made a name for herself as an AD, but she had quite the history as a volleyball coach. Balleto began her coaching career with the Great Lakes Volleyball Club out of Racine, Wis. as head coach of the boys’ team.
Before long, Balleto crawled her way to an assistant position for two seasons at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, an NCAA Division II school, on the women’s team. After that, she moved on to Earlham College in Indiana as the head coach for the men’s volleyball team and the assistant for the women’s team. Shortly after that, she assisted at Lewis University.
Balleto finally found a home at Cardinal Stritch University for 8 years. While at Stritch, she turned around the program that had a losing record before she joined. Balleto made it to the NAIA National Championship Tournament two seasons in a row. After her time expired there, she decided to move closer to home and that’s when she heard Mount Mary was looking for a full-time volleyball coach.
Being one of the only female coaches at Mount Mary means a lot of things to Balleto. While she’s had her good moments as the only woman in her department, she’s also had her bad. “College athletics, in general, is very male dominant just from the coaching side, and when you move up from an administration side, it’s even more male dominant,” Balleto stated.
In fact, a report done by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics and Sports (TIDES), shows exactly what kind of impact that has. As of 2019, women hold 8.6% of the head coach positions of men’s Division I teams. Women held 10.6% of the positions in Division II, and 12.2% in Division III. Not only that, but for women’s teams, women hold only 40.8% of all head coaching jobs.
“I’ll get 15 resumes from men to one resume from a woman. That’s just the pool of athletics, and that’s how male dominant coaching is,” Balleto said.
She recognizes that there are not a lot of women working in sports. In her entire career for as long as she can remember, Balleto only had male Athletic Directors or worked with men as a player and Graduate Assistant.
She’s never had the luxury of working with a woman, even in her current position.
Finding female mentorship is certainly rare, but Balleto hopes to change that within her department. She encourages women who want to start their career in coaching or in athletics, in general, to just go for it. She states that there will never be a right time to make a change; it has to start now.
“I think being comfortable being the only woman in the room is pretty necessary because that quite often is the case. And knowing that I deserve a seat just as much as anyone else is also important,” Balleto said in regards to her hardships in the workplace.
She wants to encourage others to be confident in their abilities and know that it’s okay to be scared, but never back down from a challenge. To this day she works hard to be a leader for, not only her athletes, but for the entire campus. She wants to show that she’s living proof that women can not only do the impossible, but they can turn a male-dominated profession into a shared profession.
About the Author
Aislinn Strusz
Aislinn is a senior at Mount Mary University who plans to graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in English with a New Media Writing Concentration. Amongst many things, her main focus in writing is in helping the LGBTQ youth accept their sexuality and expressing her love of sports.
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