Today I woke up to this article on Swimswam. To summarize, a ten-time conference coach of the year, and her assistant coach, is abruptly let go one week ahead of their conference championship. A terse statement from the school says everything and nothing about what actually happened. In the comments section, another career reputation is circling the drains.
That’s the last I’ll talk about the situation because, as is often the case, I don’t know what happened. I want to address two things that i’ve found frustratingly absent from the general conversation regarding coaches and abusive behavior, which is the insinuation people are making about this situation in the comments.
Before I make my point, let my clear my throat thusly. I feel like I have the street cred to say what I’m about to say. I’ve been writing about abusive behavior in the sporting world for coming up on two decades. I’ve seen coaches do some awful things in my lifetime and I’ve been way too close for comfort to some of the worst offenders in our sport.
In my day to day work, I often find myself talking about motivation. There is a simple direct way to motivate people that is often the default: fear. Fear works in terms of reducing the incidence of a particular type of behavior, but it has one major problematic side effect in my opinion.
That is, while it reduces a specific behavior by tying grave consequences to that behavior, it often makes the overall situation globally worse. So what I see in our attempts to address abuse in the sport of swimming is that we have gone the simple route. We have made the punishments much harsher for those that are caught stepping out of line.
I don’t disagree with this, but it’s not enough on it’s own. What’s missing is a real interrogation of what is going on with coaches. You might argue that the percentage of coaches sanctioned for abusive behavior is too low, but I would respond that it is way too high of a percentage of total coaches.
Think of it like this, if I told you that only 1% of airline pilots were flying drunk would you say “that’s a really low percentage!” or would you be petrified to fly?
I have a theory, and a way to actually improve the general behavior of coaches without relying on intimidating them into compliance. We need administrators, parent boards and whoever else to take a hard, empathetic look at the environment that their coaches are operating in. We need to improve the day to day life of coaches.
The final 20%
A few weeks ago on my podcast I had Loughborough High Performance coach Mike Peyrebrune on. He was discussing the crucial differentiator of athletes being able to finish the final 20% of a long course 100m swim.
There are perhaps a hundred athletes in the world that could manage to hang with the best in the world for 80m, but for the final 20m the wheels come completely off. Their technique suffers, they become sloppy, their arms like wet noodles flailing in the water.
Now consider a coach. Many coaches are excellent motivators and educators of young people. But when they are pushed to the absolute extreme of their capabilities, they get sloppy. They may say things that are hurtful, or act out capriciously. They, like the athlete, are flailing.
Now, when an athlete fails in the last 20m, do we think the best way to fix that is to mete out harsher and harsher punishments? Should we just scream at them about how bad they are and never let them swim again? No, that is precisely the type of coaching we are trying to change. Why then, are we making the coach the only person that it is still acceptable to act abusive towards?
Seriously, ask yourself the question. Are there any consequences for administrators in athletic departments who act poorly towards coaches? Have you ever heard of one being sanctioned? Are there consequences for parents that act abusively towards coaches? Do athletes have to fear that if they elide the truth about a coaches actions and put that coaches career in jeopardy that they will face any repercussions?
Their should be clear standards of behavior, and consequences for violating those standards, across all levels of sport. We should also consider though whether that behavior might be better addressed by changing what we are expecting of coaches.
From the very beginning of writing about this, I have tried to understand and influence the culture around coaching. I don’t believe that coaches act abusively in a vacuum. We have a culture that enables it. Although we’ve made clearer standards for what is acceptable behavior and moderately improved at doling out punishment, we haven’t actually addressed a sporting culture at which coaches are now the focal point for abuse.
Weaponization
I could stop there, but I feel compelled to add one point. I’ve noticed, probably grudgingly, that allegations against coaches have become increasingly weaponized in the “Safe Sport” era. Once a system was created for intimidating coaches, it quite naturally followed that it would be used by some for sanctioned attacks.
Because the current system is woefully inadequate at actually investigating claims, we end up in a situation where only two kinds of coaches get sanctioned. One is people who have committed transgressions so egregious that there is little to investigate. The other is coaches who lack the ability to defend themselves against spurious claims.
In the middle, when I speak to my colleagues I can see the fear. Coaches that are ethically and morally upstanding nevertheless are consciously trimming their sails. They are coaching less honestly. That lacking honesty is really hurting athletes, who are not stupid and mostly subconsciously know they aren’t getting the truth.
When I was studying for my masters we listened to a mother talk about her kid that played little league baseball. The kid was objectively not good. He would come to this mother, dejected. His mother, as many parents might instinctually do, would reassure him that he was actually good.
But she realized eventually what she was communicating. That her son was trying to deal with the challenges of life, and she was telling him those challenges didn’t exist. Athletes need coaches to be tough, they need them to be honest, now more than ever.
It is only with this counterbalance that a coach can actually deliver some positive encouragement and have it land. Athletes know when you’re an honest broker, and only when you’re willing to deliver a straightforward critique will they actually trust your earnest acknowledgement.
So that’s what’s at stake. For coaches to be effective we must do more than intimidate. Fear and punishment should be the last resort to address coaching behavior, not the first option.