Sports coaches push their athletes hard to excel, but for some on the receiving end of the push, it can look more like abuse than motivation. The question of how coaches treat high school athletes moved out of the gym this week when the Toronto Star and CTV aired allegations that coaches at St. Michaels University School in Victoria were verbally and emotionally abusive to some of their players. The story focused on basketball coach Ian Hyde-Lay, who once coached NBA star Steve Nash.
The allegations began in 2012, when a group of parents complained to the school that coaches were swearing and being emotionally abusive. Several investigations were done, including one by the Teachers Regulation Branch, and the school says the reports all cleared the staff.
One of the investigation reports, written by a lawyer, said most students were not offended by the swearing. It found nothing that was deliberately abusive or demeaning.
Sports psychologist Alan Goldberg described the report as a whitewash. He said a teacher who swore at students that way would be fired. Why should the rules be different for coaches?
It鈥檚 a good question at a time when schools and governments are campaigning against bullying.
In workplaces of all kinds, verbal abuse and intimidation were once seen as part of a manager鈥檚 toolkit for getting more or better work out of employees. In recent years, it has become unacceptable in most workplaces, and even most branches of the military have toned it down.
Coaching seems to be an exception.
A study in the U.S. in 2005 found 36 per cent of coaches who were interviewed admitted yelling angrily at players for making mistakes. They were coaching children from Grade 5 to Grade 8.
The traditional reaction to complaints about abusive coaches is: 鈥淚f you can鈥檛 stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.鈥� Anyone who wants to compete at a high level must expect to be pushed hard by coaches. Competitive sport is not about participating, it鈥檚 about achieving.
Being physically strong is only part of the equation. To excel, athletes must also have mental and emotional strength. Some thank tough coaches for forcing them to perform better and realize their potential.
While all those things are true, it does not necessarily follow that coaches who scream abuse at their players are creating stronger athletes. Sports psychologists have long concluded that supportive coaching delivers better results. A report in 2013 published by the American Psychological Association said: 鈥淐oaches who provide high levels of encouragement, support and autonomy are more likely to foster positive psychological responses in their athletes and ultimately lead to higher levels of performance.鈥�
High school players might be terrific athletes with great drive and discipline, but they are still children.
Studies of adolescent development suggest they pay more attention to the emotion of a message than to its content, so yelling at young players humiliates them without conveying the information the coach is trying to get across.
St. Michaels said the parents and students who keep bringing up the allegations appear unwilling to acknowledge that the investigations have found no wrongdoing by the coaches and that the school has created a new code of conduct.
Although the story about St. Michaels has raised the issue, that school is just one example. Other schools and other coaches treat young athletes the same way, with little more than gut instinct to suggest it works.
It鈥檚 in the best interest of schools, coaches and students to question old assumptions.
Our traditional view of effective and appropriate coaching requires careful examination and solid research. A foul-mouthed coach on the sidelines might be doing more harm than good.
