In the SwimSwam Podcast dive deeper into the sport you love with insider conversations about swimming. Hosted by Coleman Hodges, Garrett McCaffrey, and Gold Medal Mel Stewart, SwimSwam welcomes both the biggest names in swimming that you already know, and rising stars that you need to get to know, as we break down the past, present, and future of aquatic sports.
Athlete-coach relationships are an integral part of youth sports and often numerous lives, including the athlete, their parents, and the coach. But where is the line between healthy coaching and unhealthy coaching? When is it “tough coaching” and when is it abuse?
SwimSwam sat down with Kathryn McClain, MSW, MBA, Program and Partnerships director at We Ride Together, a nonprofit organization created to cast light upon the endemic issue of sexual abuse in youth and amateur sports. Kathryn discusses the key differences between healthy and unhealthy coaching and how coaches can change their mindset, language, and actions to better serve the athlete in the short and long term.
View Kathryn’s Original Blog Post Here.
- 0:00 Kathryn McClain Introduction
- 4:22 Drawing the Line Between Healthy and Unhealthy Coaching
- 11:37 Coaches Convincing Themselves That What They’re Doing is Appropriate
- 15:31 Coaching the Whole Person
- 23:22 Why (Youth) Sports Matter
- 25:04 Training Enough but Not Too Much
SWIMSWAM PODCAST LINKS
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Podbean
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Google
- Click here to listen and subscribe on YouTube
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Listen Notes
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Stitcher
- Click here to listen and subscribe on iHeartRadio
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Amazon
- Click here to listen and subscribe on Pandora
Music: Otis McDonald
www.otismacmusic.com
Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
I swam club swimming for 8 years and my last coach was a horrible person. It wasn’t just his abuse but the toxic culture he created to support his treatment of me .At 14 , being stripped to just your swim suit in the weight room while coach pinched your body all over with a fat calibre, everyone watching ,waiting for their turn hoping he won’t say the same things to them.
The older senior boys in the squad standing around and laughing at you, telling you to stop eating so much. The Coach made his abuse my fault to the rest of the squad enlisting them as supporters in his daily insults about my work ethic ,weight and… Read more »
One thing for sure is that when you get lit up daily as a kid in club swimming, nothing you get from your college coaches, professors, and bosses at work really phases you after that. Boss wants to chew you out over a typo after an email? No problem man, you should’ve heard what my coach used to say to me. Not condoning abusive coaching but when you’ve been through a club program where the coaches let it fly, you don’t really get down about comments/criticisms from people in the future.
Never have I ever had a boss say to me “your v***na is so big I could drive a truck through it,” but IDK maybe we’ve had different kinds of bosses in our lives.
i swam for an abusive coach who called me “lazy,” “selfish,” “undeserving to be here,” “big boned,” “a waste of time,” and told me i’d be better off spending my time at planet fitness. after returning to campus after being at home for christmas after training trip he asked me “did you even swim at home? you look horrible.” it takes your confidence and sends you into a spiral that you aren’t good enough to be where you’ve worked so hard to be. it took a lot of time to convince myself that i deserved what i had earned and build my confidence again once he left. i just hope his current swimmers aren’t facing the same abuse so many… Read more »
This may be a hot take but I’m open to discussion.
The good coaches who actual care about appropriately challenging their athletes and cultivating personal growth get run over by the kids that don’t care and are self serving.
It’s unfortunate but the coaches that have a tight clamp on the team and their athletes and are deemed “abusive” are able to stay put because administrators and board members see that as a better option than a hazing scandal or other behavioral issue.
Not all cases of course, but a lot of times the “hard coaching” is directed at the athletes that are the most difficult to coach or cause the most problems. If athletes can’t handle discipline it’s… Read more »
Louder for those in the back, please!
You can hold kids accountable without attacking their character. That’s where abusive coaches cross the line. Great coaches will work with the effort that the athlete is willing to bring them on any given day.
A lot of coaches put their ego in front of the needs of the athletes they are leading. So much of hard coaching involves impressing external motivation onto athletes with little thought or direction toward developing a schema of internal motivation and emotional regulation. It’s hard to feel respected by a coach who snowplows your feelings and life goals into oblivion in order to achieve their own glory. And it’s harder to respect a coach when you never feel like your feedback/questions/personal goals are listened to. Whether your team ethos is one of rigidity discipline or one that is more laid back, a coach needs to be able to communicate not just desired performance outcomes, but their desired ways to… Read more »
Important stuff and very timely. Look at what’s going on at UNC
I’m not too versed in the swim drama. What’s going on at UNC?
Couple of swimmers from UNC who got kicked off the team wrote an op-ed that basically says “we didn’t want to swim and he made us swim.” Nobody cared (didn’t make any real waves) so they keep posting it in the comments hoping to get Gangloff fired.
Ha. I feel like UNC is always in the crosshairs of some meaningless drama.
“didn’t want to swim”? They do realize what sport they selected, right?
I took over a large program where the previous coach had been abusive. It was heartbreaking to see the effect it had on the swimmers, many of whom swam fast, but thought that it was the coach who had made that happen. This was almost 50 years ago and I note that the previous coach is now banned for life by safe sport, I wish it had happened sooner, there was at least one suicide of an abused swimmer.
Thank you, Coleman. This might be one of the most important articles of the year. Luckily, I’ve seen more tough coaching than abuse, but there was one former coach who definitely was abusive. Coaches need to check themselves before they wreck their swimmers.