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Why Coaches Bully and What to Do

By TrueSport, 10/17/17, 10:15AM PDT

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Tips for helping your athlete deal with harmful, old-school coaching techniques

If hurtful words directed at your athlete are coming from a coach, do you know what to do?

Surprisingly, coach-on-athlete bullying situations are not as rare as we'd all like to think.

JC always loved to run. She pinned on her first race bib at age six and in middle school and was recruited to train with the high school’s junior varsity team. When she finally entered a suburban Denver high school, she was ready to see how well she could perform. “I wasn’t the star of the team, but I was a strong runner who qualified to run at state meets,” JC says.

JC’s body didn’t react well to the strength training regimen the head coach had the team on — she sustained chronic knee injuries — and she knew she wasn’t in the favored-crowd of athletes he liked to coach. But she powered through, letting her love of running trump how she was being treated.

At a track meet her junior year, the wind and rain were relentless. Still, the meet went on, and JC’s relay team won their race. Excited by winning in such trying circumstances, she asked her coach for feedback. “I don’t exactly recall all he said: the idea was that he expected more from me because I was captain of the team,” she says. “But I definitely remember the final words that came out of his mouth: ‘You suck.’”

Coach-on-Athlete Bullying Is Not Uncommon

If such hurtful words coming from a high school coach’s mouth feel jarring to you, you’re not alone. But bullying situations like this are not as rare as you might think.

“Coach-to-player bullying is more prevalent than we’d like to admit,” says Randy Nathan, MSW, and author of Bullying in Sports. “It’s primarily allowed because old-school coaching styles still prevail. Win at all costs. Focus on the scoreboard. Very few coaches will forfeit a game to give a twelve-year-old a chance to play.” He adds that, while no sport is immune to bullying, male-dominated sports like football and baseball tend to have more incidents of inappropriate behavior.

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About TrueSport

TrueSport® is a grassroots movement born and powered by the experience and values of USADA–the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. The TrueSport® mission is simple and bold: to change the culture of youth sport by providing powerful educational tools to equip young athletes with the resources to build the life skills and core values for lasting success on and off the field.