Where is the care for coaches in the Safe Sport movement?

If you’ve coached, or been coached, you know that sport is a space that offers opportunities to experience great joy and excitement, as well sorrow and disappointment. More importantly, sport (at all levels) relies on coaches to support athletes throughout this emotional journey.

But who supports the coaches? Studies show sport coaches experience depression, anxiety and psychological stress due to performance demands and scrutiny, which makes sense since coaches are foundational to all levels of sport, occupying an intermediary role between athletes and the broader sport organizations to which they belong.

Coaches are responsible for planning practices, managing athletes during competition, ensuring they are up to date on their Safe Sport Training and fulfilling any additional commitments specific to their club or organization, to name a few.

In the context of youth sport, coaches are also responsible for their athletes’ parents, which involves extra communication and justification of their coaching decisions.

Further, coaching doesn’t stop when practice is over or when competitions are complete. It’s a 24-hour job where the needs of their athletes are carried with them throughout the day and into other spheres of life.

If you haven’t been a coach, it’s easy to say, “well why don’t you put some boundaries on your coaching work?” Easier said than done.

As most coaches will attest, coaching is a passion-driven and immersive job where you start to care for your athletes on and off the court or playing field.

Broadly, care involves responding to someone’s needs, which, in sport, are seemingly never ending. Not only do athletes need to be cared for in physical ways (warm-ups, cool downs, rest, water, nutrition, functioning equipment, etc.), they also have psychological needs (mental health, emotional wellbeing, etc.).

Physical needs are easier for coaches to fulfill because, for the most part, they look the same for each athlete. However, psychological needs are much more specific to each athlete.

For example, when giving feedback about the performance of a skill, one player may need the coach to be soft and kind, saying something like “that was a really great try, why don’t we try doing it this way …”

Another player, on the other hand, might require a more direct approach: “I know you know how to do this! You were doing it great last week! Let’s go!”

The latter approach may appear harsh out of context, but some athletes don’t receive this as harsh. Part of the coach’s job is to figure out how to communicate with each of their athletes to ensure they feel cared for and supported.

The first approach won’t work for all athletes, and neither will the second.

In youth sport, coaches must also (in a way) care for the parents of their athletes. Anyone who has coached youth sport knows there are many types of parents, ranging from hands-off to constant questioning.

Whether coaches like it or not, interacting with parents and ensuring their needs are met with regards to the child athlete is a huge part of the job, one that’s not discussed enough.

In team sports, managing playing time is a significant part of coaching and that applies whether its youth, university/college or adult sport and team sports. Every athlete wants to play. It’s why they’re there! And when they don’t get that opportunity, who’s to blame? The coach!

The problem is that sport is a zero-sum game. No matter what, there will be some athletes on the playing field and some on the bench.

The problem is that sport is a zero-sum game. No matter what, there will be some athletes on the playing field and some on the bench. And it is unrealistic to expect athletes, particularly at the youth level, to be content with their spot on the bench, even if it’s in support of the team’s overall goal.

As coaches, this is tough to manage. Disgruntled athletes can severely affect the dynamic of the team, making it challenging for coaches to care for all their athletes.

Some coaches use data to show why an athlete isn’t playing, which may or may not work. Sometimes coaches devote more time and energy to communicating with the athlete on why they aren’t playing. And sometimes coaches blame athletes for their attitude, claiming that the athlete was fully informed of their role at the beginning of the season and that they should see the “big picture” for the team.

The last option may seem particularly uncaring; however, coaches who opt for this approach must not be judged too harshly – they are merely trying to care for themselves in a system that does not care for them.

We rely on coaches to care for and support our athletes, but who cares for the carers? The system of sport certainly does not.

In Canada, the professionalization of coaching is contested. Although the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) can grant coaches a Chartered Professional Coaching (ChPC) designation, unless they are working in professional sport, coaches often are not viewed as professionals. This is partly why there is such a drastic range of coaching positions, all of which have varying financial and resource supports depending on the organization or institution.

This is even more ambiguous at the youth level where many coaches are volunteers who may receive a small honorarium for their work at the end of the season.

Recently, the context of sport and sport organizations have taken up the language of “self-care,” which may sound great but also is a problem.

First, coaches can only engage in self-care if they have the time and space to do so. As noted above, the majority of coaches are overworked and underpaid, so where/when is this self-care supposed to happen?

Second, promoting self-care shifts caring responsibilities from sport organizations back onto the already burdened shoulders of coaches. This can make self-care a checkbox item that’s acknowledged in policies and/or declared by sport leaders and administrators without any real action or change.

So, where do we go from here?

Current research supports the need to examine coaches’ mental health and well-being more closely in order to provide proper supports for the folks charged with caring for our athletes.

However, identifying this problem, one that has been the lived experience of thousands of coaches over time, is a small step forward but it’s certainly not enough.

If we take seriously the ideologies of this new Safe Sport era, we cannot solely focus on the well-being and care of athletes. This is a system-level issue, where coaches need to be included and recognized as needing care as well.

So, we call for work in the realm of Safe Sport to resist compartmentalizing key sport groups (athletes, coaches, officials, administrators, etc.). Not only does this allow the system to privilege certain groups’ safety over others, it also further hollows out solidarity amongst groups of people who might better work together towards the common goal of a safer sport system.

Only when we can view the sport system as a whole will we be able to collectively repair what is not working and see the kind of change we are all seeking.