As many of you know, I am not only a Sociologist, but a soccer coach-having coached at the youth, high school, collegiate, and semi-pro levels. As both a sports fan, and a coach, this has been a tough week for me. It started with the horrific allegations from Penn State, about child sexual abuse, and a group of coaches and administrators that turned a blind eye. Beyond the horrible nature of the crime, what made it worse for me was the role of these coaches. I have coached since 1991, when I started coaching my younger brother Victor’s Summer League Soccer team for St. Ignatius while I was at University of Chicago. When we are entrusted students or players as teachers/professors/coaches, there is an unspoken sacred trust. There is a trust in us that we will not only teach or coach how to be a sociologist or a soccer player, but to help reinforce norms and values, such as hard work, sportsmanship, and doing the right thing. In addition, as teachers and coaches, we are trusted to ensure the welfare of our students and players—physical, mental, and emotional.
Those of us that excel at being teachers and coaches create bonds well beyond “I teach, you learn.” You can create bonds that last a life time, because of how you impact someone’s life. I still keep in contact with many of my former players from when I was at Gunn High School, both as a JV girls coach and a Varsity Boys coach. Now I get to see my former players and students get married, and some have started having families of their own. It always touches my heart when they, or their parent(s) or wife/husband/partner comes up to me and says how important I was in their lives. In part, it’s because we often have “kids” when they are at there at their most vulnerable. Certainly when I had them in high school, that is a time of emotional turmoil, with all the drama high school entails, then combined with the highs and lows of success (or failure) both on the field and in the classroom. I always tell me wife, and my former players, that what I miss the most are those times before practice or on the bus rides and at meals after games. When you sit around, and shoot the shit, bonding over stories of the game, or loves lost, or movie scenes. You bond as a team, you grow as a family, you give of yourself, and you trust that the person across from you won’t share the story inappropriately or use it down the line to hurt you.
So to hear what Sandusky did, and what Penn State didn’t do, it violated that sacred trust and unsworn (but implicit) oath that we all take as teachers and coaches, to always protects those in our charge. What’s more I can’t, and probably will never, understand how given what Mike McCreary saw and told to Joe Paterno, that they could let Jerry Sandusky continue to walk around campus, in and out of practices, and work with an organization, The Second Mile, that was all about interaction with disadvantaged youths. These are kids that are perhaps the most vulnerable due to their family life and living situations. These are kids that need protection from what they might see on a regular basis in their neighborhoods and the cruelties of society.
As teachers and coaches we often are VERY protective of our players/students—sometimes it’s from the opponent, other times from their teammates and friends, and often from themselves. I think those young men and women that played for me always knew I would do anything to protect them, to take care of them, to help them. Whether it’s getting a ref to protect my players from elbows and dangerous tackles, to helping with homework (hey I was working on my PhD at Stanford after all), to talking about what was going on at home or with boyfriends and girlfriends, I was always there to watch out for them. So how those coaches could let a young boy get assaulted in their locker room, and not follow up is unfathomable to me. Their inaction cost who knows how many other boys their childhood by becoming victims of Jerry Sandusky.
This brings me to today. What happened today is not nearly as bad as what happened at Penn State, but it perhaps disturbed me more. My oldest daughter Gaby plays soccer, and I am the assistant coach. We had lost our first game of the season early this morning, and they had a second game this afternoon. I was looking forward to seeing how the girls bounced back from their first adversity. Much to their credit they played hard, played as a team, and had fun—all the things you want from a group of U-8 girls. However, the win was sullied by the other coach. Her behavior was not acceptable. First at half time she game over and claimed that our team had said something to their keeper (who it turns out was her daughter) when they scored. Something along the lines of “you’re not good”. Ok, the head coach and I said, but it sounded odd, because we don’t’ have that sort of team and those sorts of girls. We asked the girls if they said anything when they scored the first couple of goals, and they said no, and we just reminded them to not say anything to the other team. As an aside, we’ve been the target of a bunch of comments from the other team (and a few parents) because we’d won every game up to this morning, usually in the 4 or 5 to nothing range.
So at any rate, coach’s daughter comes out of the goal to play on the field in the second half, and she is a terror. Elbows, pushing, tripping, stomping around, she is just not a good sport. At the end of the game, one of our best players doesn’t shake her hand, which isn’t the right thing. But the other coach decides that she is going to grab my player, stick a finger in her face and start yelling at her. There are a couple of problems here. First, you NEVER touch another team’s player/persons kid. Unless it’s a situation where someone could get hurt, that is out of bonds. Second, there is no reason to stick your finger in an 8 year olds face and start yelling at her. So we shake everyone else’s hand and then the other coach gets in our faces. As that is starting to rev up, over comes my player’s dad, with his daughter crying. He’s pissed because this woman yelled in his daughter’s face, and she’s bawling, and I need to get in front of him to try and slow him down before he gets too close to the coach. Eventually we get things settled down, my player shakes hands with the opponent, everyone walks away, and I try to defuse things by giving out the post-game snack of Gatorade and chocolate chip filled rice Krispy treats.
But I get home, and I can’t get the event out of my head. In 20 years of coaching, I’ve never touched another player, aside from helping them up or shaking their hand post match. I’ve never said anything to another team’s player except for when they popped off at me first, and I generally told them to play the game (although with High School boys my language might have been a bit more, shall we say, colorful). And in all my time doing youth soccer camps and teams, I have never yelled at a kid, much less grabbed them, put my finger in their face, and start berating them.
This woman exemplifies all the worst thing about “sports parents” and “bad coaches”. Its people like her that drive parents and kids away from organized sports in particular, and athletic endeavors in general. They fail to see that they serve as a role model and example for their kids and team. What this woman fails to comprehend is that their behavior then becomes the template for their kids and players. It’s no wonder that her daughter thought it was okay to literally push other kids (including Gaby). Teams take on the personality of their coach, and though it may seem cliché it is nonetheless true. My teams at Gunn (and every other team I’ve coached) played defense hard, but not dirty; they worked hard, but smart; they were good winners, and gracious (though grudging) losers; they protected their teammates, but never looked to injure the other team; and they always trusted their teammates and coach.
But just as I was writing this Gaby came up to me to find out what I was doing. I told her I was writing about the game, and how I didn’t like what the other coach and her daughter did. I then said “I didn’t like how she pushed you down”. Gaby’s reply “its ok (shrugging shoulders). I didn’t get hurt. Plus we got a free kick and Daisy scored.” That certainly brightened my mood a bit. Always good to see that an almost-seven-year-old has her priorities better than a 30-something parent and coach.
