[Vision2020] Calm Down, Coaches

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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April 3, 2013
Calm Down, Coaches By CHARLES M. BLOW

The Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice wasn’t very nice. In fact,
according to a video<http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9125796/practice-video-shows-rutgers-basketball-coach-mike-rice-berated-pushed-used-slurs-players>that
surfaced Tuesday, he was godawful.

The video shows Rice pushing, hitting and kicking players, hurling
basketballs at their legs and head, and unleashing a tirade of profanities
and homophobic slurs.

The athletic director became aware of the video four months ago, but kept
Rice on, punishing him but trying
“rehabilitation<http://www.csbs.uni.edu/dept/csbr/pdf/AthleticUnionStudy-2009.pdf>.”
It wasn’t until Wednesday, after the clip went viral and the outrage became
deafening, that Rice was fired.

The issue that arises — beyond the coddling of outrageous behavior within
elite sports franchises — is whether Rice is an outlier, and if so by how
much?

>From my experience, his behavior seems an a extreme version of what is
generally accepted practice among some coaches, players and parents who
turn a blind eye and even give a grudging nod of approval.

As background, I never played college sports, but I played for my school’s
basketball teams from 6th to 12th grades for four different coaches. My
experience and that of most male athletes I know appear to have common
threads: coaches can be incredibly positive influences on athletes’ lives,
and most are, but too many can also be temperamental and explosive,
verbally abusive and misogynistic.

It is almost universally accepted that many coaches have wild mood swings.
They’re quick to cry and quick to laugh, but also quick to pull or push
athletes into place, yell at and berate players, and throw anything they
can get their hands on.

The logic is that these coaches give athletes the worst in order to get the
best out of them. But at what cost?

People excuse — or even celebrate — such behavior as a passion. But, let’s
call it by its real name: abuse.

Reading it as simple passion is a perversion of the word. Excusing it as an
accepted method of whipping athletes into psychological shape, of
conditioning them to the ebbs and flows of anxiety, or to numbing them to
normality, neglects the negative lessons imparted.

According to Child Trends, a Washington research group, about two-thirds of
8th and 10th graders and more than half of all high school seniors participated
in school athletics in
2011<http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/sites/default/files/37_Participation_School_Athletics.pdf>,
the most recent year for which data were available.

In general, this is a good thing. According to a 2009 study by researchers
at the University of Northern
Iowa<http://www.csbs.uni.edu/dept/csbr/pdf/AthleticUnionStudy-2009.pdf>:
“High school athletic participation is associated with an array of positive
outcomes, including high school GPA, college attendance, college
completion, adult income and earnings, job quality, and beneficial health
behaviors.”

But the same study found that: “Male high school athletes in particular
report higher levels of alcohol consumption, drunk driving, sexist and
homophobic social attitudes, gender related violent activity, and same sex
violence (fighting).”

So the Rutgers incident, in its own way, once again shines a light on the
broader, poisonous culture in which masculinity is narrowly drawn, where
physical violence is an acceptable outlet for male emotion, and poor
performance is categorically associated with femininity.

What are the effects of such warped reasoning, when boys groomed by jock
culture must operate in a wider culture increasingly more accepting of
gender and sexual identity variance, and more insistent on gender equality?

Do coaches like Rice strengthen the boys’ bodies but weaken their minds? I
would submit that for some the answer is yes, and that this phenomenon is a
continuing retardant on a more civil society.

But it doesn’t have to be, and this is not the mode of operation for many
coaches. There are many coaches who know how to push without putting down.
They know how to get respect while giving it. Their teams are not
democracies, but neither are they brutal dictatorships. They know that the
boys in their care will one day be men who must care for others.

The good coach must not only be the model, but must teach our child
athletes that there is a line between demanding and demeaning that no one
who truly cares for others would cross.

A program begun in 2001 by Futures Without Violence (formerly the Family
Violence Prevention Fund) called Coaching Boys Into
Men<http://www.chp.edu/CHP/032612>is based on that maxim. The program
“seeks to reduce dating violence and
sexual assault, is effective in discouraging teen dating violence and
abusive behaviors” by providing coaches with training kits that “illustrate
ways to model respect and promote healthy relationships and choices among
young men.”

According to a study released by the program last year, boys who
participated were “significantly more likely to report intervening to stop
disrespectful or harmful behaviors among their peers,” and “slightly more
likely to recognize abusive behaviors.” They also “reported less verbal and
emotional abuse against a female partner.”

We need more movement in this positive direction.

More coaches need to model behavior that says being a gentleman and a
letterman aren’t mutually exclusive.

•

I invite you to join me on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/CharlesMBlow>and follow me on
Twitter <http://twitter.com/CharlesMBlow>, or e-mail me at
chblow at nytimes.com.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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