Yesterday, I read Kara Eaker’s courageous and articulate Instagram post about the verbal and emotional abuse she endured as a gymnast at the University of Utah, the intense negative effects on her mental, emotional, and physical health, and her decision to leave the team, retire from the sport, and also withdraw as a student from the University of Utah. Yep, folks, it gets that bad.
As a former gymnast, I first want to say that each time another story about toxic training environments surfaces, I feel the pain all over again along with these brave athletes as if it all happened yesterday.
The description of autocratic and abusive coaching, the cult-like atmosphere in which you are allowed no voice, no choice, no autonomy of your own, is remarkably similar to the way it was 30 years ago in both club and NCAA gymnastics. The yelling and swearing, the intimidation, the belittling, the isolation and manipulation tactics, and the public humiliation — all remarkably the same.
And then the response: the paralyzing fear, the dread of going to practice, the PTSD response every time the coach’s name appears, the anxiety, depression, nightmares, and suicidal ideation (and for many out there, an eating disorder thrown into the mix). The extreme and quick decline of human life – horrifyingly the same.
Coaches, listen to these stories
You need to know the effects of the toxic and abusive cultures maintained in so many gymnastics programs. You need to know how they defile and break human beings. You need to be a part of a new solution. Read Kara’s post.
I’ve had a lot of conversations with gymnasts and other athletes who have lived through hell in their training programs. And I’ve been there too. As an athlete in a toxic training environment, you feel like you are living in a cage — a prison. You are treated as less than human. You feel trapped and have no way out, short of losing it all.
And no one hears your pleas. No one takes you seriously. You have no voice because your words fall on deaf ears, or you get punished for them. There are often puppet “support resources” set up — physical therapists, nutritionists, sports psychologists — who are supposed to help you, but their function is often to give an air of scientific respectability to a whole system of exploitation.
Sometimes your teammates are experiencing the same abuse, and you can find some solidarity with them, but they are also afraid to speak up due to certain retaliation. And sometimes teammates are so completely entrenched in the cult mentality that they will defend their cult leader at all costs, even as that person continues to do harm (perhaps some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, but I’m not a psychologist).
I’m not a psychologist, but I am a specialist in ethics and power dynamics. (Guess what made me want to study that?) I taught ethics to college students as a professor for over a decade and continue to teach it in my community. And I can say, both from personal experience and with professional confidence, that regardless of whatever psychological problems or personality disorders are plaguing coaches who abuse young women (and please, do go to therapy for those things), there is a failure of ethics going on.
And as Kara’s post reinforces again, the failure of ethics is not only with the coaches but also with the staff and administrators who are bystanders and deniers of the problem and who uphold and maintain a whole system that chews up and spits out athletes for wins, power, championship legacies, and salaries.
Now, I know there are good coaches out there. However, the crisis in ethics in gymnastics (and many other sports) is an epidemic and deeply entrenched tradition. It is not the case that there are few bad apples. On the contrary, there are only a few good apples. And to you good apples, I am grateful, I support you, and beg you to use your voice to teach others, hold perpetrators accountable, and work to turn the culture around from the inside.
I know I am only one person with one voice, now I’m on the outside, and I cannot single-handedly change a culture. But I’m gonna use that one voice in case it reaches one person who needs to hear it. And, frankly, I’m a middle-aged lady who’s got nothing to lose. I’m exactly the person who should speak because of that. And I encourage all you other recovering gymnasts, too, to speak the truths that others are still too vulnerable to speak.
So, how do we turn the culture around? Some “radical” ideas
With this moment and this voice, I want to offer a few “radical” ideas that call into question some long-standing pervasive assumptions in sports. Perhaps this is a conversation starter, and you can add your own “radical” ideas to the list.
- Coaches, you do not own your athletes. They are not commodities. They are not your performance machines. They are human beings.
- It is your job as a team leader to serve their well-being.
- Leadership IS service. Your job is to cultivate these young people, to lift them up, to teach, to help them reach their potential, to increase physical, mental, interpersonal, and even spiritual (in the sense of meaning and purpose) health in their lives. Your job is to help set them up for a future in which they will thrive.
- If you bring an athlete in on a scholarship, it should be because they show promise and character, and you want to work collaboratively with them to build them up even more. They don’t owe you an outcome (which they have no control over anyway). You owe each other reciprocal goodwill, respect, and an agreement to work hard together in a positive environment through their college years. If you belittle them, abuse them, manipulate them, intimidate them, and coerce them, you have failed in the basic agreement, made conditions impossible for them to succeed, and have broken the contract.
- Good leaders empower their team and help them to fulfill their human potential (whether that team is a group of students, employees, community members, or athletes). That means giving them space to think, speak, choose, and create! Good leaders do not force, command, punish, and defile their people. That’s dehumanizing. That’s what tyrants do. Don’t be a tyrant. If you wouldn’t like to live as an adult under a tyranny, don’t create one for others.
- If you would not talk to your own daughter in a belittling way, and you’d think it’s inappropriate for a teacher to talk to them in a belittling way, why do you think it is ok for a coach to talk to a gymnast in that way? And if you are talking to your own daughter in belittling ways – I’d have to ask, how’s that relationship working out? What kind of mental health issues is she now suffering from? What kind of mental health issues have you never resolved in yourself?
- The faculty of human and natural sciences at your college is working hard to cultivate independent-minded critical and creative thinkers who can participate in democratic systems, deliberate and problem-solve together, communicate with respect, protect the vulnerable, resist abuses of power (exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization), consider the holistic well-being of the groups in which we live, and support others suffering in the world. In short, the university is trying to offer an education appropriate for good citizens of the world. It is trying to offer an education appropriate for free-people (p.s., that’s the meaning of a liberal arts education – one appropriate for free people who govern themselves). Consider whether you as a coach are acting in concert with these goals or not. I recall the extreme confusion as a college student of going straight from my humanities classes to a gym with an angry, belittling, authoritarian coach. In one moment, I was treated as an adult, encouraged to think, speak, and uphold humanistic values. In the next, I was treated like a piece of property, yelled at, belittled, dismissed, and mocked.
- I’ve got some more ideas for how to treat a gymnast like a human being in an earlier post. Check it out and see what you think.
Closing thoughts
As a former ethics professor, I just want to say I’m damn proud of the letter/post that Kara Eaker has written for the public. It’s a letter written by a free person. It’s a letter critical of dehumanizing behaviors. It’s a letter that speaks truth to power. Kara, you will be the leader, thinker, and ethical actor that this world needs. Good for you. I support you.
And, as a philosophical counselor who now helps people who are recovering from long bouts of alienation and abuses of power, trying to find their voice again, grappling with big changes in culture, ethics, and identity, and trying to take back their lives, I also want to say that though the road is long, you will survive this. You are very clear about what matters, you are so beautifully articulate and have a powerful voice . . . and I can attest to the fact that there is life after gymnastics. Everything you’ve learned will be used again and again in the future. Nothing is lost. You’ve already done an incredibly meaningful thing by telling the world your story, and that is going to help a lot of people suffering in silence.
To you, and all other gymnasts still struggling, I stand with you in your courage and power,
Monica Vilhauer, Ph.D.
Philosophical Counselor – Ethics Specialist – Former Gymnast
Founder of Curious Soul Philosophy: www.curioussoulphilosophy.com
Learn more about philosophical counseling for recovering gymnasts.
