Content Warning: emotional abuse, physical abuse, post traumatic stress, description of injury, use of violent and profane language, anxiety, self-injury, eating disorder
At the start of July, I sent an email to all my teammates of the U17 girls’ ultimate team I played for at the 2017 Youth Club Championships. I wanted to talk to them about our head coach from that summer, referred here as Coach A, because he was emotionally and physically abusive to us. I also shared my intentions of writing an article about how to create safer spaces in youth ultimate.
After many painful conversations, I realized that a single article was not enough to achieve what I have envisioned. I decided there would be better readability if I split my original idea in two — one article would have my call to action (read here) and this article would encompass the experiences from that summer.
Below, I have compiled individually written accounts about Coach A from my U17 teammates. The following accounts are not all-inclusive to the extent of his abuse because not every player of the team wanted to come forward. Additionally, there are perhaps a dozen others from prior years who have also been coached by him and may have stories of their own.
The fact that it’s taken us three years to acknowledge the events of that summer does not take away from our credibility. Rather, it speaks to his manipulation and the constant gaslighting that left us questioning the perception of our experiences. What happened to us was real, it was painful, and to many of us, it was traumatic.
Our hope is that the reader will better understand how abuse and misconduct can manifest between a coach and a player beyond textbook examples. We also hope to find some closure by reclaiming our voice against a coach who took so much away from us.
Do not disclose the identities of those who remain anonymous and please respect our privacy.
Three years ago, I got a message explaining that I have made my region’s U17 girls team from Coach A. I never thought that at that moment, the abuse started which ultimately traumatized me and ended my ultimate career. As we started having practices regularly and incorporating cells or group workouts, Coach A pushed us harder, testing our limits. At the time, I thought that would make us tougher and play better as a team with all the training and encouragement but I was wrong. Coach A would make me feel guilty for not completing my workouts in 100+ degrees and texted me privately, asking for videos of my private workouts. Every day I would record myself doing my workouts and send them out of fear of not having playing time. I was threatened to be exposed to my teammates for not being able to finish my workouts which humiliated me and lowered my confidence as a player, teammate, and in myself. A middle-aged male would mentally and verbally abuse me for months gaining power. Coach A’s intentions were to win games and hold power to his name, not the health of his players. For weeks, I pushed myself through the verbal abuse and continued to send videos of my workouts in exchange for playing time that I never got.
When it came around the time to travel to Minnesota, I was extremely excited to be with my team and play the sport that I loved. I was grateful to have my parents pay for my travels and expenses for the summer of 2017. When we got on the plane, Coach A assigned me to do laundry. I was the only one with that job and had to collect everyone’s laundry after the games in the hotel and wash them. I sorted and delivered them back to the rooms while my teammates were bonding or resting from playing in the beaming sun. I did this every night watching my fellow peers play and get their jersey dirty while I cheered on the sideline. I cried to my teammates in my room explaining my frustration. I felt as if I couldn’t talk to any of the other coaches due to the power and manipulation of Coach A. In total, I played an estimated six points or less throughout my entire tournament. I felt that I spent so much money, so much time and dedication just to do laundry for the team and make sure everyone got water. Coach A would reuse players knowing they were exhausted from the heat but never switched the players on the sideline. Coach A mentally abused players for months, gaining our trust from the beginning. Looking back three years ago, I am so embarrassed about letting someone manipulate the way I thought, and how easily I trusted this person. I had to lie to my parents, teammates, and myself to be able to recover from the trauma. Till this day, talking about what occurred throughout those months still triggers me. If I had decided to not play that summer, I would still be playing ultimate. I tried to play in the fall but decided to end my career in the spring of my senior year. Watching myself leave a legacy that I once wanted to carry is honestly the hardest decision I have ever made, leaving behind teammates, best friends, and my coach. If I knew this was abuse three years ago, things would have ended differently but I was young and naive like all my other teammates whose intentions were to meet new friends and play a sport we love. Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
~
He claimed I was skipping my workouts entirely (I had personal crises, which he was aware of, that inhibited me from completing them 100%) and “sabotaging the team by not being fit enough”. He forced me to send daily updates as well as video evidence of me doing my workouts, which ultimately humiliated me. He threatened to bench me at YCCs if I didn’t do this and claimed that the team would hate me due to my actions, which plummeted my feelings towards my teammates. I knew he had favorites among the players, that was always clear. The way he spoke and acted manipulated many of us into thinking that we needed to be liked by him to get any good feedback, playing time, praise, or respect from him. If you weren’t a favorite, you basically got treated like dirt. I wanted the feedback, the respect, the praise, but I was never a favorite so I did everything in my power to earn that. I was jealous of the players whom he favored because they were treated better, given more feedback, given captainship, etc. So when he told me to send videos of my workouts, I sent them without question. When he told me I needed to run extra sprints and miles to “make up lost time”, I ran until I puked and even then, I got back up and kept going because he disregarded my heat exhaustion as a reason to stop running. When everyone else’s workouts were scaled back a week before YCC’s, mine were increased. At practice that week, I suffered a quad cramp due to overdoing myself during his workouts. He roughly rolled out the muscle for 5 minutes, making it worse, before telling me to “stop faking it”. I suffered pain from this cramp for months afterwards, due to his neglectful way of handling it, eventually spraining the muscle later that year. Coach A mocked many of my injuries and disregarded them as “excuses”. I did whatever I could to appease him; even if that meant playing through a serious meniscus injury that has now caused me permanent knee damage. He didn’t care about my, or most other players’ healths, he only cared about winning. If you were injured, he would tell you to walk it off and work harder to “crush your opponent at all costs”. He reasoned that his personality came off as “tough love” and it was in our best interests to listen to him, even though it effectively hurt us in the end. While I originally convinced myself that I was doing this to progress into a better player, I also confided in him that I was doing this in hopes of being captain one day since I needed to gain his favoritism before that would ever happen. He used this to his advantage, claiming I didn’t have what it takes to be a leader and that I’d never be a leader if I didn’t follow all of Coach A’s rules. He continuously commented about my body/athleticism, using the term “not fit enough”. It was never “you’re too slow” or “not agile enough” to be a good player, the words were always “not fit enough”. Once we arrived at YCCs, he proceeded to play a small group of players (including myself), relentlessly. He relied heavily on a specific line and would put us on point after point, while disregarding the rest of the team and not caring that we were tired. I was extremely grateful for the playing time because I thought maybe that meant that I was a worthy enough player. I was one of the few people he played that weren’t part of his small group of favorites, which led me to feel like a complete outsider since he convinced me that the team disliked me, especially those he was close with. Those 3 days not only destroyed my body, due to the overwork he put me through beforehand, but also my mentality towards frisbee. I never felt part of the team because he ostracized us from each other and from his favorites. His actions led me to value playing time much more than I should have. Instead of focusing on bettering myself as a person and a player, he made me believe that getting playing time was the “end all, be all” and that I was nothing without it or his favoritism.
Looking back, sending videos of my 15 year old self working out to a 30-something year old man should’ve raised enough red flags right there, but it didn’t because of his position. He gained my trust and respect out of pure fear of failure and rejection. His repetitive usage of the words “not fit enough” along with his belittlement of my aspirations, injuries, and hard work decimated all self confidence I had and sent me into a debilitating mindset. I began rationing how much food I consumed or, more often than not, forcing myself to throw it back up so I could be “fit enough”. The way he spoke to me always indicated that I owed him something or that I had to overly prove myself just for an ounce of respect or praise, which even then was followed by criticism. I cried after every single practice and hated myself for not being a worthy enough player, based on his standards. I fell deeply into self-injury, even going as far as to cut the words “not fit” into my skin. I’m grateful that that scar has since faded, but I engaged in self-injury for a long time under the precept that I would never be good enough because of my body, due to his words and actions.
~
Going into [the team] that year, my freshman self only had one season of experience so I was not only one of the youngest players there but also one of the most inexperienced. I think that definitely influenced the way [Coach A] treated me (don’t really wanna generalize here and say the team because maybe other people did not feel the same way?). Although his approach to coaching was one that I’ve experienced (it kind of reminded me of the way my parents made me learn math/practice piano growing up), it made me dread going to practice and interacting with him. I felt that as a coach, instead of trying to bond with ALL the players on the team, he made it clear that you were either someone he wanted to get to know/see get better or someone whose growth he didn’t really care about. I knew that time was limited and that my experience was limited, so I understood why I fell into the latter category. When he yelled at us or yelled at me, it didn’t really faze me only, and I really want to emphasize that it is only, because I grew up in a household where my parents used to do the same when I was much much younger.
However, just because I didn’t break down and come away from this scarred or hating frisbee, it doesn’t mean that this is acceptable. I have memories of him having [redacted] run around and do laundry for us at YCCs and the next day, giving her no playing time at all. I also have memories of us running hills and [redacted] throwing up afterwards. I then remember him quite vividly grouping us together to tell us how every team at YCCs has this one fat and unconditioned girl but how we will not, which I found to be so disrespectful and inappropriate. At the end of the day, all of us were there to play frisbee, but unfortunately, some of us barely got any of that and instead, more bad experiences than we signed up for. I also remember [another coach] being there and trying to help calm him down/balance things out, but I don’t really remember anyone successfully stopping him. Looking back, I am surprised that this experience didn’t make me hate playing frisbee. Instead, [the team] helped me (ironically) gain confidence the next fall because I had played with so many talented players and learned from them. It is unfortunate that [Coach A] was not able to help accelerate my growth that summer as a coach should do, but I am grateful for all the teammates that did.
~
I was lucky in that I never got a lot of attention from him but at the time I hated that. I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough to stand out. That I didn’t push myself hard enough to be noticed and to deserve any feedback. I would see him pull people aside and give them small things to change and wonder “why aren’t you saying anything to me?”. For a while I blamed our lack of interaction on myself; I thought it was because I didn’t ask enough questions, or I didn’t make a super cool play, or I wasn’t being smart enough on the field. I remember once he finally pulled me aside I felt relieved and ecstatic that I was finally getting feedback. He told me “good job for spreading the field”. I was so happy at the time but looking back I realize anything he ever said or texted was never feedback. Only vague statements of approval of how hard I was working. I never really felt like I was getting any support from him And that just fueled my doubts about my own skills. As a result I never saw myself equally to my teammates. I thought I was just good enough to fill the last spot on the line and nothing more. I don’t remember much from that summer at YCCs specifically but I clearly remember feeling surprised a lot. I was surprised whenever he spoke directly to me. I was surprised whenever I was called to help demo a drill. I was surprised I was put on starting line. I was surprised whenever my teammates wanted to spend time with me. After that summer I became very insecure about my performance in ultimate. I always viewed myself as just okay and not good enough compared to my peers. It became worse as I got older and became a veteran/captain to my team. I thought “here I am as a role model but I’m not good enough to be”. I had always struggled with self harm in high school and sometime after that summer, frisbee became a trigger for it. If I dropped the disc on the field I’d pinch and scratch at myself. Before tournaments I’d cut myself anticipating that I wouldn’t do anything great. Frisbee had become a source of anxiety for me, I loved the sport and the community but it caused me so much internal turmoil. Once I started college I had the opportunity to join and perhaps excel on their team. I say that I quit because it was too time consuming but the truth was I associated too many negative emotions to the sport to want to return to it. Like on the field it felt like there were other members of the team who were more better to be around than me. After that summer this sentiment stuck around in my subconscious. I would be surprised when they would come over to talk to me at a tournament, or invite me to hangout. I have an immense love and appreciation for these women and yet somehow I never thought they’d reciprocate. To this day I still struggle with reminding myself of that. I am relieved that he never explicitly did anything to me. However it was only recently that I realized his neglect had long lasting effects that still affect me today.
~
The summer of 2017 I was a captain for my ultimate team that went to YCCs in Minnesota. While I was there, I sustained a concussion in our first game. Unlike the injury itself, the way my concussion was handled could have been so easily avoidable. A year of my life that I lost because my coach neglected to care for my safety.
When I hit my head I sat out for a couple points till my coach asked me if I was okay to go back in and I said sure, I felt a bit shaken up but okay — no problems yet. While I was playing I felt okay, but the second I stopped I understood something was wrong. When my team got ready to read our spirit song, the minute I looked at the page, the words started flying around and I felt dizzy. I got a bit worried, so I went to my coach. I still remember it all so clearly, I approached him outside the merch stand and said, rather timidly, “When I tried to read the spirit song the words were moving around and my head is foggy.” Those words alone — the very fact that I hit my head should have triggered the concussion protocol set in place by the CDC, followed by USAU (see attached).
I thought I was getting the best care, but there isn’t a day that passes where I don’t think of his response: He looked at me, chuckled a bit, patted me on the head and then walked away. Immediately my stomach dropped, all of that courage it took to go and tell him I didn’t feel well (something that is certainly not my strong suit considering my intense stubborn mindset and my constant wanting to “play through the pain”) seemed entirely useless. The one person I am supposed to be able to trust to keep me safe had just completely and utterly failed me. He took no action to follow the protocol USAU has in place or just even follow some basic common sense to have me see an athletic trainer and have me be monitored throughout the tournament.At this point, I took a step back and stumbled into a whirlwind of confusion and betrayal. While my concussed mind processed the lack of support I just received from my coach, I remembered a conversation I had with him a couple weeks before in which he said something telling me I can’t get injured, that it would be bad for the team’s morale since I’m a captain. At this point I was terrified, when he told me that, I laughed and said whatever — how am I supposed to prevent an injury? Injuries are accidents and therefore out of my control. I began to realize that my coach wasn’t being facetious.
I told the adult I was supposed to tell but I don’t get taken seriously, I didn’t see a medical professional, and I didn’t get removed from the games. I continued playing, because I had no idea what else to do — I’d been groomed by a thirty year old who would text me and my teammates all throughout the night, constantly pushing boundaries. He would talk about his love life, he would trash talk our teammates (often using profane and inappropriate language), he would make us all rate our other teammates on a google doc (green=good, yellow=eh, red=“hot garbage”), he even created group chat that specifically excluded certain players (not with any purpose, just to create a toxic environment). My coach made us all feel like we were close to him, but not only did he not listen to me, he laughed in my face — so was I wrong? Was I okay? I felt gaslighted. I had no idea what was happening, so I kept playing — because I was told I had a duty to my team. I did exactly what I was supposed to do when you’re injured: tell your coach. I was ignored, alone, and concussed and, due to ignorance, I played for three days with total disorientation.
I remember one game where I stood on the field and looked up at the sky, and then back at all of the players moving, and I just stood there. My vision was foggy and I was so far gone I had no idea what was happening. Everything felt fake. What I saw felt like a dream, my body didn’t feel like mine, and my head felt like it was off on another planet. I remember standing on the field and just crying. I would make perfect cuts and get open, over and over again, but each time I did, the throw would go straight to my stomach and for some reason my hands just missed it every time. Perfect cuts, perfect throws, but over and over again my body — my brain — just wasn’t working. My coach — who told me he never needed to yell at me like he yells at everyone else, because I “discipline myself enough” — screamed at me. I could feel his red hot rage at the fact that I was playing like someone who had never played frisbee before. And I cried — not because I was upset at being yelled at — but because I had no idea why I was playing that way either. In hindsight, I had a concussion and was making it worse with movement, but this coach specifically I felt close to, and he made sure I knew how good I was — so I understood exactly when I wasn’t living up to his standard. This coach had favorites, and I was one of them. I thought whatever he told me would always be right, on or off the field, because that’s what his constant grooming had taught me. He bought me gifts, one was a pin from Disneyland. He stole things for me, a small figurine from a museum. All things I thought were weird, but the word “grooming” never came to mind until I started reading about it. He destroyed boundaries so much no one on our team even turned a head when you would say you were up until 3AM talking to him, or that you had taken a trip with some other girls to go visit him… he made all of us feel like his incredibly inappropriate behavior was normal and just ways of showing he cared. I was one of his favorites but he still, he chose a game over my life. I can’t begin to imagine what my teammates, who I always thought I was protecting, had to endure.
For a while I felt resentment towards my teammates for never bringing me to an athletic trainer, they were girls I looked at as my family. I would die for them, so why wouldn’t they check up on me when I was acting so incredibly out of character? I felt betrayed again, until I realized that they were kids too. They were just as scared of our coach as I was — they had absolutely no responsibility for me. My coach was responsible for me. This coach told me that I was a perfect captain because when he would tear girls down, I would be able to bring them back up — which is an incredibly sickening idea. If he only did his job and took care of me — and my team — like he was supposed to I likely wouldn’t have lost a year of my life along with the ability to play ultimate.
The people who told me I should have done more or been more vocal are wrong. This coach chose a tournament over my well being, and it has been something I have had to live with — not him. I had to lose a year of my life to complete darkness and isolation. If you think quarantine is bad, imagine being in so much constant pain that you can’t talk to others, you can’t be in rooms with lights as dim as candles without cringing and leaving as quickly as you can. Imagine people’s footsteps bringing you to tears because of how loudly they boomed in your ears and how much it all strikes you unreservedly to the core. I was forced to complete a semester of school on home instruction — I fought 4 times to go back to school, to a place I felt comfortable and helped me grow, before my doctor told me I need to give up on it before I make things worse. I completed my second semester doing half days. The smartboards gave me migraines with spotted vision. I spent any time not in a lecture with noise canceling headphones. I wore pink or blue light blocking glasses to make light a bit more bearable. I had to endure people whispering about me, about how I was out of school, about how I was probably faking it. I wish I was faking it. There was nothing more that I wanted than to just go back to school and not be in pain the entire time. I just wanted to be normal, I yearned to talk to people without feeling intense pain or getting migraines. I wanted, so desperately, to live my life again.
I wanted to play frisbee. Later on my road to recover, I realized that I had developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Late in the spring, when I was starting to feel a tiny bit more human, a classmate hit me in the temple with a rubber lacrosse ball. I immediately started having a panic attack that ended up lasting for about twenty hours. I was so terrified of losing another year of my life. I thought if I got another concussion I would get stuck in that seemingly endless spiral of concussion symptoms I endured after YCC. It is not at all common for concussions to last as long as mine did. That was my first concussion — if I stopped playing when I told my coach what was wrong, it would not have lasted as long as it did. I was convinced I would never be smart again, never be able to run again, that I would never get a chance to live my life normally. After months of living with my severe symptoms, there were days I legitimately thought I would never get better. When the panic attacks kept happening after just hitting my head softly, I realized my career in ultimate was over. I suffered, alone and in the dark (literally), for a year — just to realize that not only had my life been ripped away from me for that time, but I could never play this beautiful, incredible sport ever again. If my coach had just done his job, if he had just followed concussion protocol, if he just listened to me instead of using me as a pawn in a game filled with women he knew I would do anything for — I wouldn’t have had to suffer for such an egregious amount of time.
~
Coach A is very clear about who his favorites are and who he doesn’t like or doesn’t find anything ‘special’ about. Looking back, I feel ashamed to have been one of his favorites but in the moment, the attention meant so much to me because he was the first coach I ever had. I felt validated as a player when he told me I basically made the team before tryouts started and better about myself as a leader when he insisted I apply for captainship, which I ultimately got.
Despite all his praise, I didn’t like him from the start. He was arrogant and pretentious and narcissistic. I found him trying to get to know us annoying and uncomfortable but only realized later how inappropriate his behavior truly was — he’d invite us to visit him where he lived in the city, be interested in our dating lives, and offer to buy us things. He’d make tasteless jokes, talk about his flirtations with women, and brush it off as “just teasing”.But I brushed off his behavior because I thought he was just trying to be the “cool” adult that everyone gets along with. I knew he was tough, mean, and intense, but back then, I never fully processed the extent of his inappropriate and abusive behavior. He’d also always apologize to me for “coming off as a dick” and in response, I’d reassure him that I knew that he cared about us and said he was a good coach. I kept trying to suck up to him because it was better than being hated by him, but I’m scared I helped enable his behavior.
If you were a favorite, Coach A rarely yelled at you because he believed you had enough self-discipline. However, I vividly remember one time that he did yell at me. We were scrimming the U20 girls’ team during our last practice. At one point, I didn’t hit an around throw and ended up getting stalled out. Coach A stopped the whole game immediately to yell at me in front of both teams and didn’t stop until he made me take my fellow handler by the shoulders and tell her I trusted her. I remember feeling confused because it seemed like a small thing for him to blow up over, frustrated because of course I trusted my teammate, and so humiliated because everyone was silently watching. I tried to chalk up what happened as high tensions because YCCs were so soon and since I wasn’t used to him yelling at me. However, that doesn’t acknowledge how Coach A frequently used fear and humiliation throughout that summer to discipline the rest of my team.
It was also so hypocritical of him to yell at me about trust. He always talked about how he trusted everyone on the team but they were all empty words. Throughout the season, he frequently went to the leadership chat to rudely disparage our teammates based on fitness level, skill, or even personality behind their backs. Many of his comments were profane and some even suggested violence — it doesn’t matter if these were serious threats or not, it was inappropriate of him to speak to minors like that, especially about their own peers. He also made me and the other captains help him rank our own teammates into green, yellow, and red (“good” to “bad”) based on their playing ability and made rude, snarky comments as he moved players down the ranks. I was furious he had that chart to begin with but kept my angry comments to myself.
For all his hurtful messages, Coach A rarely made sure that all my teammates had the support they needed to improve. For example, a few players had to make up a hill workout they missed out on earlier in the season. In regards to one of the players, I said, “I feel like we should do them with her [because] it’s kinda sad to do them by yourself. I wouldn’t mind doing hills with her.” He responded, “her commitment level is also sad so i really could care less”. In another instance, he told me to help a teammate with her defense outside of practice because it had been “trash” that day, but never bothered to invest time in helping her himself. How could a coach not care about all his players? It’s so petty how he refused to show basic sympathy to players he didn’t like.
He also showed how little he trusted players at YCCs. He played me and his other favorites with basically no subs no matter how exhausted or even injured we were. One night back at our hotel rooms, a couple teammates and I were crying together because of how frustrated we were about playing, and also how Coach A had split us up into four teams — he would award us points throughout the weekend based on stats. I think a lot of us saw it as a silly game to keep us competitive and hyped up but honestly, it further isolated and humiliated the players who weren’t getting playing time because he’d announce points loudly in front of the whole team. After all, how could you earn your group points if you were never given the chance to get a D, assist, or score? Each night, I made empty promises to my teammates about how I was going to talk to Coach A and get them fair playing time. But every time I tried to bring it up with him, he would disregard my arguments, stare me down and say, “If you’re not tired, then you’re staying on.” He made it seem like it was my choice to take a break and put my teammates on, but I was too scared to say to him that I was tired. I didn’t want him to see me as weak.
I remember the awful heat and humidity taking a tremendous toll on me, and I was only sleeping a couple of hours a night because I was anxious about letting everyone down. On the third day, I sat down after another game with no subs and immediately got a nosebleed. I was leaning over the trash can for at least ten minutes, feeling dizzy and headache-y and wishing for the day to be over. Before our next game, Coach A pointed to the blood that stained the collar of my jersey and joked I had really put in “blood, sweat, and tears” into this tournament and that I looked badass. His words were meant to hype me up so that I’d be ready to play but he showed no concern that I just had a bad nosebleed that was the result of exhaustion. Even as one of his favorites, he cared more about what I contributed on the field than my well being.
We also kept losing a lot of games. Every point and game lost, we felt more discouraged and he became more aggressive, impatient, and frustrated. I remember that in one of those games, he was so visibly angrily and emotionally abusive towards us that players, coaches, and parents of the other team were concerned. Someone from USAU headquarters ended up coming down to talk to him. I don’t know how that conversation played out, but Coach A continued to joke about the incident the rest of the weekend about how we had toughened up to his coaching “style” so I can only imagine he made it seem like this was a one time rather than recurring incident.
Once we got back home from YCCs and the season officially ended, I deleted him off of Snapchat and unfollowed him on Instagram, two social media platforms that he frequently used to communicate with me and my teammates. I didn’t want to see his face or hear his voice again because of everything he reminded me of — I felt so ashamed for never sticking up for my teammates, especially since I was a captain. I hated myself for always biting my tongue and dealing with his behavior.
For a long time after that summer, I kept making excuses for him no matter how much anger and hatred I felt. I thought I owed him for pushing me to be a stronger and smarter player and leader. In retrospect, he didn’t make me stronger and smarter — he was actually the root of all the insecurities I developed since I had relied on him so much for validation. My anxiety worsened — I’d have panic attacks (or close to it) at practices and tryouts. To this day, I almost always have at least one breakdown at tournaments. I also have so much shame regarding injuries that I downplay their severity, keep playing through it, and cause even more injuries. I was still in the mindset that I couldn’t appear weak or tired, and that my teammates relied on me to be able to play every point even though I felt like I could never be enough for them.Since he was my first coach, Coach A also set the precedent for what I thought all coaches were like. I developed trust issues with any mentor figure, constantly doubting if anyone genuinely cared about me or if I was just a pawn in their strategy to win. I’d be grateful to get feedback but always second guessed their intentions. Coach A also made me fearful of being competitive so I ended up not signing up for U20 USA tryouts even though everyone expected me to want to play at that level. But I was scared the atmosphere would be like the one he created on the U17 team — “win at all costs”, “weed out the weak”, “fear is the greatest motivator”.
Every day, I wish I hadn’t been so deep into my own head and anxieties so that I could’ve realized the extent of how abusive he was to my team. I’m ashamed that I feel so affected by him when he wasn’t directly abusive to me like he was to some of my teammates and sometimes, I don’t know if I’m angry at him or at myself. I hope to one day feel like I’m enough without needing the validation of other people
~
I met Coach A in my freshman year of high school, and in the five years since then it’s been a whirlwind of trying to differentiate my own personality traits from ones that were instilled by him. I met him half a year into my ultimate frisbee career, and by then he was already whispering to me that I was one of the most special players that he had coached. He told me that I was a lot like him. “Ambitious, smart, calculating,” he said. After he established our friendship, I trusted and confided in him through Facebook Messenger, and he would reciprocate. Our texts would extend beyond ultimate frisbee: we chatted about Marvel movies, inside jokes, and our aspirations. He took me and a few others on a shopping trip in the city, treated us to food, and played Pokemon Go with us.
It’s hard for me to paint a clear picture of my memories with him, maybe partly because of his deceitful nature and partly because of the shame that I feel when I think about it. When I was 14, he told me that I was just like him, but I can’t tell anymore whether I really was or whether my habits that echo his are from his manipulation. At 14 years old, I laughed at Coach A’s quick tongue against anything and everything. If I added my own condescending statement, I’d get a high five. When I complained about my teammates to him, he laughed, agreed, and let it snowball into a gossiping session. When I was at my most hardhearted, he praised me and encouraged me to be even more so. At that point in my life I was being nudged on a path that I didn’t realize I was taking. When I needed someone to talk to, I found myself going back to his contact, because he was the person that I could rely on to tell me something bluntly yet still inflate my ego. He would always be my most recent text thread, and our text threads went on for hours. He repeatedly told me how special I was, and he promised that he would always be rooting for my success in life. Coach A told me that we couldn’t just play an opponent, we had to crush them or beat them into the ground. To him, if people were losing or failing, they simply weren’t good enough. I feel a burden of shame when I think back to my friendship with Coach A, because I think that I was a possible enabler in the system of abuse that he created. When he developed a close relationship with me, he knew that he had a player on his side who would defend his actions and validate his coaching strategy. I’m scared that he turned me against everyone else and used the “rebellious nature” that he saw in me for himself.
Specifically during the summer that I played under him for U-17, I was not in a captain role, yet he constantly disclosed sensitive topics to me privately regarding his complaints of my teammates and his strategic plans for the rest of the summer, even when I went on a vacation outside of the country. I believe now that he wanted me on his side so that I couldn’t take a step back and criticize his treatment of my team. After losing contact with Coach A and looking back at our coach to player relationship, I realized that my loathing for the person he made me has given me an anxiety that has affected many aspects of my life. I hate any self confidence that I have, because I am terrified of it being the arrogance that I could potentially obtain. I hate that I feel stilted in my empathy for other people, and I hate that I hear Coach A’s mentality echoing in the back of my mind. I feel corrupted and manipulated in that I still catch myself feeling irrationally competitive with people around me, holding an inflated ego on the field, being overly critical of others and myself, and thinking that I need to pull out all stops to win at every aspect of my life. He didn’t care about the lasting effect that he would have on the impressionable high schoolers that he coached, if it meant that he would extract the right mentality from them to win. I feel used, because he never considered the guilt that I would feel today. To him, I filled the role of reassuring him that he was a genius coach.
