WAG What if your gym hired an abusive coach?

[donoharm]

This is not tough coaching. I have no problem with tough coaching.The allegations against these coaches include mocking athletes about weight, forcing them to train on injuries, making inappropriate comments about their bodies and personal lives, and on and on. I mean, 8 athletes left a collegiate gymnastics team. 8!!

This is not tough coaching. I have no problem with tough coaching.The allegations against these coaches include mocking athletes about weight, forcing them to train on injuries, making inappropriate comments about their bodies and personal lives, and on and on. I mean, 8 athletes left a collegiate gymnastics team. 8!!

8 from the incoming class from 2012. There were others prior to that and I believe others after that but I'm not positive why the others left. The 8 from the incoming 2012 class were the first recruits for those coaches and let's just say it was pretty quickly off the rails. Injuries, eating disorders, mental breakdowns and they were top JO athletes accustomed to tough coaching and results driven coaching. It didn't make sense how they all fell apart in college. All the red flags should have been obvious. The common thread between their accounts and those of many athletes from the prior few years at that school and the decade before at the other school was clearly the coaching staff. The coaches and some team members wanted us to believe each of these 11 or so athletes had issues. I never bought into that byline. One year there were only 11 scholarship athletes on the team come competition season (there are 12 available) and I believe there were only a total of 12 or so total left on the team. That's one of the smallest rosters ever. The stuff really hit the fan when an asst coach lodged complaints and said she was being mistreated as an employee and was concerned for the athletes. In the end, several of the remaining athletes complained to adminsitration. Because personnel records are closed, we will never know the reason the associate head coach resigned or why the head coach was fired but most of us believe the writing was on the wall. You would think if their approach was going to change it would have happened after their first college contract was supposedly not renewed when they had a fresh start at the other school.

 

[seenitall]

What would you do if your gym hired coaches with a known history of abuse? This happened at our gym. By known history, I mean you can google the coaches’ names and read multiple legitimate news articles. They are Geddert-type abusers.

Without googling the coaches’ names or really listening to your kids about what’s going on in the gym, I’m not sure how the parents would know. Maybe they don’t care? The newly-hired coaches have been seen coaching at meets, so they must have recently gotten USAG certified, despite their past. I’m sure that shocks no one.

So, would you google the new coaches’ history? If you found a history of abuse, would you instantly leave? Would you stay? Should you warn people when there’s a history of abuse? Expect them to figure it out on their own?

We left, alone with a couple of others. Most stayed. No one broadcasted why they left.

I admire your decision to leave. What I have learned over my many years experience with my daughters' gymnastics is that in many locations, choices for parents about where to send their child can be limited and they feel they have no choice but stay. But that decision ultimately still has consequences. If you look at why your child is doing gymnastics and what you want them to get out of gymnastics, you have to consider how this type of coaching will affect them in the long run. If you think your kid is tough and your kid can take it, I would encourage you to Google Penn State Gymnastics abuse for some perspective. You will see that the impact and damage that was done to young adult women was something that many of those gymnasts have not been able to get over and continue to deal with their effects, as you can read from their accounts. There are numerous accounts from not only Penn State gymnasts but also gymnasts from Auburn that were coached by the same couple. If you believe that an institution like Penn State would look after your daughter if she competed there, you would be sorely mistaken. Penn State has done everything possible to cover up their program's abuse and are hoping that what happened while this couple was coaching there will just fade away and they will never be held accountable for what happened. I am happy that these coaches were removed and the remaining gymnasts have a chance to have a good experience under the new coaches. They deserve that. But if you do the Google search, you will see that Penn State has never acknowledged any abuse and never explained why the coach was fired other than it was a personnel matter with no further comment - so neither its culture nor administration has changed . So as a parent, if you don't do your due diligence, nobody else will. I will close by saying that I spent hours at Karolyi's gym watching Bela and keeping my opinions to myself till I told my daughter that I was ready to leave when she was ready to leave - and we left shortly after that conversation with no regrets to this day. And I have a daughter who found gymnastics success without the Karolyis who also became a successful gymnastics coach whose a real advocate for positive coaching techniques and Safe Sport Policies. Hopefully, things are beginning to change for the better because social media like this makes it harder for abusers to hide their behaviors.

 

[TumbleTimes4]

I’m just curious why their names aren’t mentioned. I am new to the sport and I think if there are abusive coaches out there, they need to be named so parents like me aren’t walking blind into a situation.

 

[bogwoppit]

If we name the coaches we basically out the OP. That can cause huge problems.

 

[TumbleTimes4]

If we name the coaches we basically out the OP. That can cause huge problems.

Understood