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Articles - Employment
Coaches Report - Summer 2002, Volume 9 Number 1
Doing
Something About Bad Coaches
For over a decade
part of our business has been helping sport organizations, coaches and
athletes resolve their differences. In an average week we receive one
or two telephone inquiries seeking advice on how to deal with situations
of perceived coach misconduct. Some of the problems we hear about are
minor while others are deeply troubling. We appreciate that there are
two sides to every story; nonetheless, here are a few examples.
Our most recent
query comes from a master course conductor who, through the process
of teaching the ethics component of a 3M NCCP level 3 course, learned
from a student in the course about the “sleazy” activities
of another coach. Under the guise of coaching, this man was repeatedly
and unnecessarily touching female athletes. The student and the course
conductor feel that they needed to do something, but their communications
with the sport club’s management appear to be falling on deaf
ears.
Last week a parent
of a Little Leaguer was at her wits’ end because the sport organization
refused to register her nine-year-old daughter in spring league. Their
stated reason: The year before, the parents had made a complaint about
a coach’s treatment of their older daughter. According to this
caller, the angered coach “boxed” her daughter’s ears
so hard that a tooth cracked. The police were contacted but felt there
was little they could do because there had been no witnesses to the
incident. Letters and phone calls to the league were met with silence,
and this spring neither child is playing baseball.
A third unsettling
incident unfolded over the past year. A successful coach was convicted
of a sexual offense after exposing himself in a public place. The court,
while aware that this man coached youth, did prohibit him from frequenting
the type of public place where he committed his offence, but otherwise
placed no restrictions on his coaching activities. This coach is now
coaching youth in another jurisdiction.
In the 18th century,
Edmund Burke wrote “the only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good [people] to do nothing”. The failure of people
in positions of authority to take action causes harm to athletes, their
parents, coaches and the sport organizations themselves. Often people
won’t act because it poses too great a personal risk. Most people,
by nature, will avoid conflict and confrontation. Sometimes an incident
of alleged misconduct pits one person’s word against another’s,
and there is a fear that a complaint will result in a charge of defamation.
Another frequent response is, if we lose this coach, we won’t
be able to find another to do the job. And at times, a person in a responsible
position wants to do something, but lacks the requisite knowledge and
skills to intervene effectively.
For those situations
where people can’t, won’t, or don’t know how to respond,
there are alternatives. CPCA has a mechanism to review coach conduct.
It encompasses a Coaching Code of Ethics and corresponding discipline
procedures. It is modeled after similar schemes in other professions,
and it allows members of the public to lodge complaints and provides
for those complaints to be investigated and, if warranted, either moved
to a formal hearing or dismissed.
We applaud those
sport organizations that embrace the CPCA Coaching Code of Ethics and
mandate CPCA membership as a condition of coach employment or appointment.
This is a good move on all fronts; it’s good for the sport organization,
good for the coach and good for the profession. Most importantly, it’s
good for athletes.
Encouraging coaches
to be professionals subject to the ethical standards of the coaching
profession is good for a sport organization because it can relieve the
sport organization of the burden of receiving, responding to, investigating,
hearing and deciding disciplinary complaints. In our experience these
matters consume enormous amounts of time and energy and in almost all
cases take an exacting personal toll on individuals.
Being a member of
CPCA is good for the individual coach because complaints about coaching
or coaching ethics will be professionally and properly handled. If a
complaint is serious, it will be considered and decided by the coach’s
peers. It will be done so in an objective, even-handed and fair fashion.
Recourse to this procedure can protect the coach from the whims, personalities
and oddities of disgruntled parents and well-intentioned, but inexperienced
administrators.
Having coaches regulate themselves is good for coaching because who
better understands the challenges, stresses, complexities and rewards
of coaching than other coaches? A quick perusal of the pages of this
magazine shows the breadth and depth of the coaching profession in Canada.
A hallmark of a profession is its commitment to protect the public.
The coaching profession through CPCA does this by setting standards,
promoting competency, and regulating conduct through the Coaching Code
of Ethics and its related disciplinary mechanisms.
The sport organization
and the coach who support the profession of coaching through CPCA are
demonstrating that they place the interests of athletes first. A coach
has incredible power. The coach-athlete relationship is both complex
and delicate, and the trust inherent in it can be easily abused. Preventing
such potential abuse through professional standards and regulation sends
a very clear message that the athlete’s welfare is paramount.
We have “ranted”
once before in this column [“More Coaches Being Sued,” Coaches
Report, Spring, 2000]. The source for this particular rant is the
continuing realization that people are sometimes not able, or not willing
to do something about bad coaches. It makes only good sense for sport
organizations and individual coaches to actively support CPCA’s
efforts to promote ethical coaching. We challenge all sport employers
to make CPCA membership an essential and unquestioned prerequisite of
the coaching position.
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