Des Moines East's Renate Rice makes history as first female football coach in the school district

Des Moines East assistant football coach Renate Rice is a student of the game.

The 44-year-old mother recently returned to school, enrolling at Grandview to earn her sports management degree. But Rice has been around sports for decades. She grew up loving football and even played the game as a child. Despite her passion, there were roadblocks that prevented her from participating in football as long as wanted.

Those obstacles never stopped her, though, at least not completely.

Because in August, the Des Moines Public Schools announced that Rice would make history as part of head coach Tyrone Tyler’s staff. Rice is believed to be the school district’s first female football coach.

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“Throughout my career playing and coaching football, I always wanted to be the first female coach in the state,” Rice told the Des Moines Register. “That’s been my goal. That’s what I’ve worked to. That’s why I played all the years. That’s why I’ve had all the injuries.”

An early start — and end — to her football career

Rice is used to firsts.

She was involved in a variety of sports — basketball, softball, tennis, track and volleyball — from a young age.

When she started playing football in seventh grade, to her knowledge, she was one of the first girls to go through the Little All-American Football League. But when she went to move on to eighth grade football, her father was hesitant.

“My dad wouldn’t let me play anymore,” Rice said. “He was like, ‘Oh, the boys are going to tackle you and all that stuff.’ I wanted to, but he wouldn’t let me play. So, I just kind of shoved it away.”

Rice’s time in the game came to end, at least in youth sports. She focused her attention on her other sports before graduating from Des Moines North in 1996. She attended Des Moines Area Community College, got a degree in automotive technology and put sports on the back burner for a while.

While she still loved football, Rice found her way back to sports through other avenues. She got into coaching through her daughter’s softball team. Football came back into the picture with her son, and Rice helped coach his team when he played in the Inner City Urban Development Sports League.

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But coaching stints weren’t the only way that Rice returned to the game she loved.

Getting back to the game

“Back in 2007, my best friend saw there was a team here in Iowa called the Iowa Crush, and she signed up,” Rice said. “Then, when she realized it was actually full-on tackle, she took her name off, put my name, called me and was like, ‘Hey friend, you got tryouts on Saturday.’”

A friend’s mistake turned into a 12-year career with the Crush. Rice won three All-Star rings and a championship with the team, but a helmet to the knee briefly pushed her into coaching.

Then, another opportunity to play presented itself.

The Women’s National Football Conference was founded in 2018, and a team in Nebraska was created. Rice took a chance with the program, the highest-rated first-year team in the league at the time. She played one season as an offensive and defensive lineman with the Nebraska Nite Hawks.

“I drove to Nebraska three times a week to play there for a season,” Rice said. “And then came back and started focusing more on my coaching career.”

Rice knew there would come a point when she couldn’t play football anymore, so coaching was the next logical step. There was no way in her mind, after playing sports since she was four years old, that sports wouldn’t be a part of her life.

“This is what I do,” Rice said.

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And as she rekindled her playing and coaching careers in football, her father’s tune about her participation in the sport has changed.

“He thinks it’s pretty cool,” Rice said. “It’s his bar conversation now. Just, ‘There’s my daughter, she’s the first coach.’ He takes pride in it just as much as I like to make him proud doing it.”

Coach Rice finally lands her dream job

Tyler took over as East’s head coach in January. He came into the position with a lot of his coaching staff already decided, since he’s spent almost a decade coaching the Des Moines Blaze with some of his assistants.

But an opportunity at Waukee opened for one of his coaches – whose sons grow up in that district. That left Tyler with an empty position to fill. He looked through the candidates that applied and wracked his brain for additional coaches who might be interested. That’s when he thought about an old friend.

“I thought it would be perfect for her because she loves football,” Tyler said. “I don’t look at it as a female thing. She’s a coach and she loves the game. And she’s a student of the game. So, for me, it was an easy choice.”

Tyler was no stranger to Rice’s journey through football. His father and her father were friends, and they’d known each other growing up.

When Rice was still playing, she says Tyler was a mentor to her. She came to him with anything from advice on starting a minor league women’s team to finding referees.

“We’ve been around football together for a long time,” Rice said with a laugh.

When Tyler reached out to Rice, she didn’t even hesitate. She was ready to fulfill that goal she'd been working toward since childhood.

“I said ‘Yes,’” Rice said. “I knew whatever he was gonna say, it would be a yes because I knew it had something to do with football, and I knew it had something to do with being here.”

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Tyler says she brings a different perspective to the game, but that’s not different than any of his other coaches. He likes how she questions him on things because he says it makes him better. She’s a hands-on coach, ready to jump in drills and show players the necessary corrections.

As for East’s players, Tyler knows that Rice is just another coach to them. The kids get that she understands the game, and she comes to practice with over a decade of playing experience under her belt.

Rice’s history-making position has made Duke Williams Stadium the place to be the past couple weeks. But the new assistant coach hopes that all the attention on her can translate into team success.

“I think it gives (the players) some motivation to do well because now they know people are watching, when before they maybe didn’t feel like people really cared about them,” Rice said.

“We’re a team, and I’m part of that team. It can’t be centered around one person. It’s always us, we, them. There’s no ‘I’ in team. This is a team effort.”

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines East's Rice becomes district's first female football coach