Your Stories
When you tell your story
you become a voice for change
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Freshman
Sport Played: Women basketball
Your Story: I am on the woman basketball team at a university which is coached by a veteran coach. The relationship with the team have resulted in intimidation and fear amongst the players. I will not discuss playing time as I understand this is the coach’s decision. What I will talk about is the emotional abuse that the coach subjects the players too. I have no confidence in the AD and therefore, I want an objective entity to investigate this matter. I would suggest speaking with the players who are afraid that they will be targeted, play less or not at all .
Coach does the following:
- Encourage players to make fun of each other as well as she makes fun of players in front of each other.
- Not receptive to meeting with players who ask for more clarity.
- Inconsistent with her decisions and as a result, players are often left confused and not knowing what she wants.
- Targets players in practice, being mean and demeaning, and picks on players who don’t play or those who ask for clarity,
These are just some of the issues. I urge you to speak to the players as the coach is emotionally abusive. She shouldn’t be allowed to coach young women who she treats unfairly and destroys any confidence they have in themselves.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: 5th grade
Sport Played: Equestrian
Your Story: My coach decided that I would be a good fit for his next victim. years ago, when I was ten. My coach of two years decided to teach me a private that day. No one was near or around. The way he decided to teach me was to touch my body. He would continue to ask my mom to give me privates for the next three years to continue abusing me. We ended switching coaches a when I was 14 for unrelated reasons, 5 years later I have still not told any one.
Gender: Male
Grade Level of Event: High School
Sport Played: Soccer
Your Story: As a Sophmore in high school, my football coaches were verbally, mentally, and at times physically abusive (over a decade ago). I stated to my parents, “I do not understand why I have to be demeaned, called names, hit on the back of my helmet and insulted to play a sport I love, football. My coaches were horrible men who did everything they can to get me to hate the sport I loved. I promised myself that one day, I will be a football coach and I will never coach like them. Dream fulfilled, my template/philosophy for how I treat and take care of my athletes is exactly the polar opposite of those to people. Additionally, I love coaching so much that I went on to attain my master’s degree in coaching. Having discovered this website is a wonderful and perfect godsend. I have never told this story publicly. Thank you so much for this platform.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: College
Sport Played: Soccer
Your Story: I am a university faculty member. I had players on our Women’s Soccer team confide in me regarding the abusive coaching they were facing. This included body shaming, consistent threats of scholarship reduction, belittling/ignoring mental health concerns (including dismissing discussions of suicide by several athletes), and forcing them to play through injury to maintain their scholarships. I took their testimonial documentation explaining the abuse to my immediate supervisor, our Provost. A week later I was given a Performance Improvement Plan by our Provost and HR department and told to stop “wasting the administration’s time” with philosophical differences or false notions of expectations of athlete well-being. I was accused of trying to dismantle athletics and was told I needed to encourage and support the athletic staff.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Club
Sport Played: Volleyball
Your Story: When I was 10 years old my team got a new coach. He was mean and cruel to all the girls, but I feel like he hated me even a little bit more. He called us fat and lazy and we were punished when we lost or didn’t play as good as he wanted us to play. It was normal that at least one girl was throwing up during practice (we even had a rule about cleaning up the throw up bucket…). There were no boundaries and he often came into the changing rooms when were naked or under the showers. It didn’t take long until he also sexually abused me. I don’t know if he did this to other girls, but it seems likely. We went to some adults and said we wanted another coach, but especially our parents were happy with him because we won most of our games. He finally left our club when I was around 16 years old, but I still get flashbacks and panic attacks whenever I play volleyball.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Sophomore
Sport Played: Women’s Ice Hockey
Your Story: A college in New England
has continued to hide the abusive coaching on the Women’s Ice Hockey team. This head coach has had 9 players leave under her coaching in the last 2 years. Four student athletes including myself have been removed for false allegations, targeting, and false reporting in hopes of getting us kicked off the team.
She has treated the student athletes with pure disrespect and cruelty. The humiliation, targeting behavior and making us feel not welcomed has caused 5 players to step away on their own. She has made it very clear that she does not care about our mental health.
Nether does the college, as we have tried time and time again to seek help from them, but they continue to hide her behaviors and say there is nothing to be done.
Gender: Male
Grade Level of Event: Freshman
Sport Played: Rowing
Your Story: A private rowing club took 7 male athletes to the USRowing youth nationals last June, 2023, including 5 minors in the 15/16 age group. The minors were isolated, manipulated, verbally and emotionally abused by their coach, punished for speaking to parents or adult athletes. Any efforts to address the situation with leadership is met with an unwillingness to discuss the coaches. Parents are labeled as “disgruntled”, despite this being a pattern of coaching behavior, from multiple sources, with proof, over an extended period of time.
This behavior has been ongoing since the coach was hired In 2022. She has bashed athletes in front of each other, impeded college recruitment and financial aid, being hostile towards parents, failing to communicate issues. When I took these issues to leadership, they told me the coach’s behavior was unacceptable, measures would be taken, and to include them in future communication. No attempt was made to talk to my child and nothing was done. Any parents that attempt to speak up are met with obstinance, hostility, and ultimately their kids’ playing time is being threatened for not walking away quietly. The kids operate in fear, walking on glass, not daring to say anything for fear of being kicked off boats, races, or having college impeded by coaches. My efforts to speak up directly were met in exactly the same way.
Gender: Male
Grade Level of Event: College
Sport Played: Multiple
Your Story: I’m a college therapist-in-training who is near completion of my masters degree in mental health counseling. I have 13 university clients and 5 are female athletes on scholarship. All five come from different athletic programs and all five report cruel, coercive, and abusive relationships with their coaches. All five are afraid to speak up. All five are afraid of being benched or losing their scholarships. All five express symptoms similar to ptsd, such as depression, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, panic attacks and academic struggles related to the atmosphere of college sports. I’m at a state university in Texas and it seems that the attitude and treatment of college athletes is pervasive and students feel trapped.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Junior
Sport Played: Basketball
Your Story: He told me I was nothing. He said I was dumb — I’m not going to go anywhere in life. He’d use words that degrade LBTQ and us as girls with obscenities in practices and games. He personally called me a whore.
Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: 10th grade
Sport Played: Basketball
Your Story: I had a coach throw her keys at me when I didn’t like how I was playing in practice. She then cornered me in the empty locker room with the captain of our team, who was 2 years older, screaming and swearing at me that I was an “f—-ing cry baby!”
