Your Stories

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: High School
Sport Played: Cheer
Your Story: My coach played favoritism by race and the relationship she had with the kids’ parents. Even though other team members had better skills, her favs were chosen as captains and were always front and center.

Gender: Male
Grade Level of Event: High School
Sport Played: Tennis
Your Story: My coach threw a racket on my head during a drill. So basically, I was working on my volleys (lawn tennis) during a session and I was missing quite a lot. My coach was upset and just lost his cool and threw a racket at me. I did get better after that, but according to him my volleys still suck.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: 2nd–8th grade
Sport Played: Figure Skating
Your Story: My coach was emotionally and verbally abusive. She yelled at me and told me that no one liked me. She told me at the age of 9 about her sexual assault and domestic abuse relationship. She lied to my parents. She body shamed me once I hit puberty. She crossed many ethical boundaries, such as inviting me to be in her wedding party and having me sleep over at her apartment multiple times. Later in life I developed depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder due to the abuse I endured from her.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: 9/10 grade varsity
Sport Played: Cheer
Your Story: My coaches have favorite players.  One of those constantly belittles me, makes fun of me, calls me names, told me I should be eating less.  I told my coaches about it and they told me to suck it up.

Gender: Male
Grade Level of Event: Lifitime
Sport Played: Football
Your Story: I haven’t experienced any traumatizing experiences with any coach but I wholeheartedly believe that most coaches used harsh language at kids and hitting our helmets   It is what changes boys to men.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Multiple
Sport Played: Competitive Cheer
Your Story: As a parent and cheerleading coach myself, I have witnessed cheerleaders be verbally abused about their skill set, body and performance by their coaches. I’ve seen young girls shrink inside themselves as a result of how they were talked to or treated. The verbal abuse created the opposite effect of what participating in the activity meant to create.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Little League
Sport Played: Football
Your Story: As a parent, I watched little league for years. Over the years I’ve seen coaches grip up kids and yell at them for mistakes adults would make too. I know it’s also about discipline, but sometimes these guys get to rough for little kids. Where it no longer becomes fun. I hate seeing kids cry because an adult treated them like they suck!

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: High School
Sport Played: Cheerleading
Your Story: There was a coach that verbally abused the team. She would cuss and yell for simple missteps in the routine. She made every nervous and uncomfortable. She would even get into the girls’ faces to invoke a fight.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: Freshman-Senior Varsity
Sport Played: Varsity Cheerleading
Your Story: I had a coach who would have us run and condition for a long period of time before having us run our routines. Her decision left us so tired that we were not sharp, which would induce more conditioning. The practice would follow right after school and be between 2-3 hours. After seeing us, the football team agreed that these workouts were tougher than theirs.

Our routines caused us injury because we were so tired from the conditioning. We would show up to finals bruised, broken, and limping and then she would ridiculed us if we did not come in first.

Eventually the love of the sport was lost. I think she saw “first place” as her only job while the rest of us saw it as an extra-curricular activity. To her, success was the trophy while for us, success was the experience of teamwork.

Gender: Female
Grade Level of Event: 3rd-7th
Sport Played: Gymnastics
Your Story: I had this coach who would scream and scream at us for hours. He would also take away our water. He would make us practice through injuries and sickness. He would get so mad if you skipped one practice. He would also make us do skills that we have never done before and if you didn’t land it, he would flip out and make you run until you puked. When he was spotting you he would grab on really tight, causing huge bruises. He would spot us and made us so uncomfortable. He would touch us down there. It was a toxic ass place. I hated it there so much.