A Duty of Care
I was a high school coach for forty years, thirty-six of those as a head boys track coach. My duties ranged from technical coaching to managing meets to painting lines on tracks to helping kids through the trials of life. But one thing I knew for sure: beyond how fast I could make kids run, or how high I could make them jump; my primary obligation was to protect them and act in their best interest. Their parents placed them in my care, whether we were practicing at home or travelling across the country for national competition. I had a duty to protect them: a duty of care.
Caring for athletes would include discipline as well as love. It would include taking their side against other adults from time to time, even if it would be easier to step aside. It was protecting them, but also demonstrating to them how to do what was right, even if it was hard.
Most of my athletes were minors, only a few eighteen or older, but it didn’t matter to their parents, the school, or to me. They were in my care. When many of them earned the opportunity to compete at the collegiate level, we recognized that they were now young adults of legal age. But we still expected that their coaches, who would demand an enormous amount of time, dedication, and effort, would feel that same duty of care to protect them.
For several of those forty years, I coached wrestling as well. It’s the hardest thing a kid can do in athletics, combining strength and stamina, putting it all in front of the world in one-on-one competition. It demands intense dedication; a “take-home” sport of control at all times. Wrestlers constantly focus on their body, from weighing in every day, to worrying about injuries and skin conditions. They are also constantly “inspected” by coaches, officials and medical personnel, more than any other sport I know.
Whether it’s today, or in the 1980’s and 90’s, coaches in wrestling have a special “duty of care” to protect their athletes, who are more vulnerable to abuse than in other sports. This was just as true at the Division I collegiate level, where tremendously motivated and talented wrestlers are willing to do or endure almost anything to achieve their dreams.
You might well ask: why didn’t the gymnasts at Michigan State cry out against their abuse? Why didn’t the Olympic swimmers tell their parents? And why is it only now that the wrestlers from Ohio State are speaking out?
The answer is, they knew that to speak out was to risk their dreams. They knew that to question the “powers” that were abusing them was to risk being sent away, ending their quest for achievement. And while looking back it might not make much sense, to the young and dedicated athletes their abuse became part of the “price” to be paid.
It was up to the adults, the coaches in the case of Ohio State wrestling, to stand up for these athletes. It is clear that everyone “knew” what the team doctor was doing; why didn’t the head coach Russ Hellickson, or his assistant, now Congressman, Jim Jordan, speak out. The probable answer: they didn’t feel empowered by the administration to take a stand, they would be risking their jobs.
That’s too bad. It was their “duty of care” to speak out and protect their athletes. It was a failure on their part. And it is even more of a failure, now twenty-five years later, to not acknowledge that mistake. Congressman Jordan has been “called out” by his wrestlers. He might have said, “I was young, I made a mistake, I’m sorry.” He didn’t, he called them liars and the right wing media machine has gone to work to discredit them. It is “ME TOO” again, this time, with forty-year old men.
Should Jordan’s actions disqualify him from his political office? He should have stood up for his athletes then, but he didn’t. He made a mistake twenty-five years ago. That is forgivable. What should disqualify him is his failure to acknowledge that mistake now, and his continuing failure to recognize that he stills owes those athletes, those kids of the 1990’s, a duty of care.
Well said Marty, This would make a good “Letters to the Editor”‘ or Opinion piece for a local or national newspaper.