What to Do When Your Sports Kid is Bullied By Coach
Holly didn’t realize until it was much too late that her swimmer son was being bullied by his coach…
By the time Holly understood what was going on, her top-rated son quit his team and gave up his dream of being an Olympic swimmer. He was 16 and had been training for up to 6 hours a day.
Holly didn’t realize he was being bullied because she never really saw it. And her son never brought the bullying to her attention because it embarrassed him.
When it was too late, Holly learned that the coach would humiliate her son by requiring him to swim with 8-year-olds. He would ignore her son. He would kick him out of swim practice.
“My son was trying to manage this on his own. He was trying to shake it off. There was an embarrassment factor, especially since he was a boy and was expected to shake it off,” she says.
After her son quit his team, Holly, her husband, and her son decided to fight bullying in sports so that other kids would not endure what he had endured.
They fought the system for 1.5 years and won.
They began by going to the school and the swim club board, but were ignored. They took their story to the Sports Development Director for Indiana.
They then contacted the Athlete Protection Officer at USA Swimming, the governing organization for their swim club. USA Swimming said there was nothing it could do because there were no bylaws in place that defined bullying.
Then the coach threatened to sue the family. Holly and her family engaged a lawyer and continued to push for changes to the Code of Conduct at Indiana Swimming and USA Swimming.
And guess what happened?
Their efforts paid off. “In October we received notification from USA Swimming: Starting in 2012 USA Swimming has an official Code of Conduct regarding bullying.”
Carl Pickhardt, a Ph.D. psychologist and our bullying expert, says about this story, “What (this story) shows is that to confront and change bullying behavior of some secondary school coaches, you have to do more than take on the individual; you have to take on the athletic system, in this case on many levels.”
“This is hard and lonely work because your efforts as parents and students can be discounted. You can be labeled as complainers, babyers, and troublemakers for challenging the status quo.”
“All this said, in this case an enormous investment of persistence did apparently carry the day, one part of the system formally acknowledging and addressing the problem. Congratulations!”
You can listen to Holly’s story here:
Related Articles on Youth Sports:
- College Sports and Bully Coaches: Rutgers’ Rice Fired
- One Sports Mom’s Success Story: Dealing with a Bully Coach
- Should Parents Try to Reason with Bully Coaches?
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Good for you! It would probably never even cross my mind that a coach might be bullying my child. So glad to hear that you took a stand for your son and there is now a system in place to prevent bullying!
Unfortunately, this situation happens far too often in youth sports. My son has also went through the same experience. He has been harrassed and degraded. His friends were told to stay away from him and ultimately the coach cut him from the team. We too have been threatened with legal action after filing a complaint with the school. Since that time, we have sought our own legal counsel. Parents need to understand this is not acceptable or ok. Coaches are hired to coach, teach and encourage your child. Not degrade, bully or belittle. You do have a voice and you need to use it.
If the swim coach was doing it to one of his swimmers, he was probably doing it to other kids too. Good for the family for not letting him get away with it! There is too much of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude when it comes to bullying in sports because no one wants to be labeled as a whiner. Well sometimes it goes too far and it’s good to see someone stand up for themselves.