So why am I playing the religious card? Read the following paragraph form the East Bay Express in Florida and tell me this is not becoming a pandemic of "Catholic priest-like" proportions :
"... Jesse Stovall was a married, 35-year-old father of two who appeared to be obsessed with a 16-year-old girl. She was the star of Bear Swimming, the Berkeley-based swim team that he coached, and, according to one witness, he showered her with an "extreme amount of attention," such as holding "private goal meetings" with her. But Stovall's apparent goal eventually became public once he convinced the girl's parents to let him accompany her alone to Florida for a week-long swim meet. ..."
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Jesse Stovall may or may not have raped the teenager mentioned in the article but I do know that Jesse Stovall would not be going to court if the swim team had a policy of no one-on-ones.
A coach sent me the story above, a coach who is on the front lines of all this nonsense and who has tried to get reforms in place but has gotten nowhere. Though he is a member of USA Swimming, the "high priests" still refuse to insist on a no one-on-one policy which he suggested way before I did.
The new policies that USA Swimming are implementing are a very good start but they have to go further and they must include parental involvement on deck or include a lifeguard, administrator, or assistant coach for all one-on-ones.
3 comments:
Thanks for keeping this "out there".
Don't give up.
Changes may be slow, but they are changing.
It is going to take just the right voice of an abused swimmer OR coach to come forward. But it will happen.
Those coming forward in the mean time need to be supported and counseled.
We have allowed this behavior to go on for far too long.
Reform DOES need to be pushed. New policies around 1-on-1s would be great. Support and counseling for those affected are great. But who is responsible for the 16 year-old girl being sent to Florida with her coach? USA Swimming or her parents? What happened to her is tragic, but let's make sure responsibility lies in the right place - with the individuals, not the governing body.
And let's be serious here - when the coach of a small team is going the extra mile with his star swimmer to do a solo 5am practice or attend Nationals, are we really going to mandate someone is there at all times? In a perfect world the answer is yes, but in the real world we humans use something called "judgement" when evaluating risks. Nonetheless, we parents DO expect reasonable protections for our children. There has to be a better answer than we have right now, but I'm cautious of regulating our coaches into irrelevance and abdicating our responsibilities as parents.
If the coach is on the deck at 5:00 AM with a whole team, that is not a one-on-one situation, however, IMHO, I think a parent or an assistant coach should be there. It is the best way. Scouting events in the Boy Scouts are canceled when the kids-to- adult ratio is skewed.
Just my opinion.
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