By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
The U.S. Center for SafeSport has released its first annual National Coaches Survey, hoping to shed light on the perspective of coaches “related to safeguarding in sports.”
While coaches and safe coaching practices are often the target of SafeSport’s work, this survey aimed to “(recognize) the importance of coaches and instructors within sport ecosystems,” and tried to gather perspectives related to coach satisfaction, burnout, and norms and behaviors.
There were 3,470 total respondents to the survey, though certain portions had fewer respondents.
Key Findings
While overall, coaches felt that their profession has had a positive impact on their lives, a high percentage of coaches reported negative behavior that impacted their ability to do their job.
46% of coaches reported being the target of verbal harassment or abuse. 56% of those coaches said that the source of mistreatment was most often parents of athletes. The next-most common source was other coaches or assistant coaches.
Several other pieces of the report were focused on parent-coach or coach-coach interactions.
38% of coaches agreed or strongly agreed that a lack of understanding by parents creates a barrier when implementing athlete safety policies. This led to a recommendation for parent SafeSport training. 60.8% of coaches said they faced discrimination by another coach or assistant coach, while 46.8% said they faced discrimination by parents of an athlete. 10% of coaches said they left coaching because of challenges with parents, the fourth-most common response behind retirement/aging out (21%), challenges with sporting organization (18%), and family needs or their own children aging out of sport (13%). 156 coaches responded to this portion of the survey.These findings were consistent with other surveys among coaches, and officials, about why they left their roles.
Roughly 42.5% of coaches said that they had experienced harm or abuse when they were athletes. 14.9% said that was in the form of physical abuse or misconduct, while 5.9% said they had experienced some form of sexual abuse or misconduct as an athlete.
Female coaches reported higher rates of emotional and sexual abuse than their male counterparts, and male coaches perceived their organizations’ safety cultures as ‘significantly more positive’ compared to female coaches.
Read the full report here.Other Key Figures:
92% of coaches agreed that coaching has had a positive impact on their lives 76% of coaches felt confident that concerns raised about athlete safety would be appropriately addressed by their sport organization. 46% of coaches were aware of other coaches within the last 5 years shouting at an athlete in a frightening, threatening, or belittling manner. 72.5% of respondents felt that their sport organization prioritized athletes’ well-being over winning, while only 54.2% felt that their organizations prioritized coaches‘ well-being over winning. In general, coaches felt that their sport organizations were doing a good job at educating them, though coaches felt more confident in preventing and addressing sexual abuse (85.8%), physical abuse (85.0%), and boundaries between coaches and athletes (83.9%) than bullying and hazing (79.7%) or emotional abuse (77.3%). 91.8% of female coaches reported feeling burned out by coaching in the last five years, as compared to 81.9% of male coaches. 73.7% of female coaches said they ‘seriously considered quitting their coaching role,’ versus 60.5% of male coaches.While the data was not, by-and-large, published by sport, 2.3% of respondents (81) were swim coaches. Soccer (37.1%) and skiing (9.3%) made up the largest groups of coaches in the survey, while notably high participation sports like track & field (1.6%) and football (0.7%) were lightly represented.
While there wasn’t much of a sport breakdown, there were a few specific mentions of swimming. For example, coaches were asked if they had seen or heard about other coaches in their sport holding athletes underwater – and those who said ‘yes’ were not predominantly swim-focused sports. While there were reports in swimming and water polo, there were also reports in archery, basketball, biathlon, canoe, cycling, figure skating, tennis, wheelchair basketball, soccer, and sailing.
This is significant because the Athlete Culture and Climate Survey Report conducted in 2024 reported that athletes in swim-focused sports, like swimming and water polo, experienced it at a much higher rate. The report says that “when athletes are held underwater against their will, it may most often be other athletes who are doing this.”
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