Bullying in Sports

Growing up, I had always been involved in sports. I played basketball for about 10 years and soccer for about 15 years. I loved both sports but I liked soccer more. Both sports had taught me valuable life lessons and I made life-long friends. I had the same teammates for both teams since we were a small school so we were all close. But then things changed senior year that caused a lot of drama between the teams. The difference in my soccer and basketball teams was that in soccer, we were really good, basketball not so much. Especially senior year of basketball we did not play well as a team and in turn lost a lot of games. Us not playing well together was the result of abuse of power and "playing favorites." My coach was new that year and basically only got the job because his daughter was on the team. She was our point guard, was fast and skilled, and everyone liked her. But she had shady friends and got in legal trouble a lot with the police or the school. During our senior year, her father (our coach) decided that his daughter should still start and play after being suspended. She was supposed to be suspended for 4 weeks, but since she was the coach's daughter she came back early after just a week and a half. Our coach also not only favored her over everyone else, but he made the season brutal. He was rude, sexist, and totally abused his power. He made girls cry, benched people for no reason, and that eventually made another girl and I quit because we could not deal with it anymore. In his position as head coach, he abused his power and took advantage of his position to express his views upon us. So I witnessed and experienced being belittled by not only an adult, but someone who worked in a school and dealt with the same thing he was doing to us. He never let our assistant coaches say anything or help out, so they knew what was going on too. They eventually went to the athletic director about it, but the athletic director was a good friend of our coach so nothing ever came of it. So not only was our coach corrupt but the whole system and administration was. Girls on the team felt scared, unsafe, and unsure about themselves because of this situation. It all started when he got hired in the first place for the wrong reasons and he had the wrong intentions. He only wanted to make his daughter look like a star and couldn't care less about the rest of the team. Eventually players, parents and other faculty members decided to take it all to the school board and finally he was asked to resign, but of course it was after he gave his daughter All-Conference honors for the season. Thankfully others will never experience that and I wish I had stood up to him earlier than I did. Not one of us deserved his abuse of power and it ultimately broke up friendships and caused a rift in us in the upcoming soccer season. It was a big loss for everyone because as stated in Women and Sport in the United States, "athletic competition can increase self-confidence and self-esteem," (Schultz, p. 67) and those of us who went through this experience had the complete opposite effect. I am just happy that high school girls now will never have to go through that pain and anger that many of my teammates and I did.

Schultz, J., O'Reilly, J. & Cahn, S. K. (Eds.) (2019). Women and sports in the United States: A documentary reader. (p. 67). Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.