So while the hockey world confronts potential abuses by coaches, I've been poking around looking for literature. Estimates seem to range from 25-75% of competitive young athletes experience emotional abuse from coaches.

There's Canadian research that shows self-reported emotional abuse rates below 20% for current athletes, with retired respondents reporting a higher number. Often the cause was neglect or forced to play through injury or physical exhaustion.

So, it appears reported rates of abuse are on the decline, but is that due to better coaching? Or conditioned acceptance of abuse because you don't know it's wrong?

We absolutely need to *actually* educate young people on what abuse is and have strong avenues to report it.

There's a 2012 paper (Kerr&Sterling) outlining a definition of emotional abuse:

1) Reported harmful behaviour
2) A pattern of such behaviour
3) Close personal relationship
4) Parent/Child-like relationship
5) Harmful behaviour is deliberate
6) Behaviour is non-contact

The stories we're hearing and may continue to hear cross most, if not all of these.

That these stories were/are out there and not being reported due to potential relationship sacrifices is frankly BS to me. Where's that imaginary line in a culture full of imaginary lines?

Coaches have an innate desire to do whatever it takes to win, as do athletes. That is a culture rife for abuse, and if you come down hard on it, then you may have the fear of falling behind those that DO abuse players for results, but from my perspective, that fear is unfounded.

From what I've found, negative environments alienate most and don't motivate the right people in your organization. Positive environments require work to maintain, but results are more positive.

I just don't know about you, but I'm very tired of reading about intersport emotional abuse from coaches, and that's all the stuff that's reported.

The thing we need to remember though is that various kinds of reinforcement have their place. Punishment (i.e. removing a positive reward or adding a negative consequence) can be effective, but the dividing line depends on if the athlete is attempting to perform a task correctly.

Someone out there trying to do what you ask of them in practice and struggling? No point punishing that.

Someone goes for a shift on a 3-on-2 creating a 3-on-1? You should maybe bench that player.

But humiliating players to motivate them as a group? That's entirely different.

Last thing I'll say is that we clearly don't know what happens behind closed doors, and judging picks as "busts" might be missing context that we never would know.

Maybe some "just didn't work out", but I would want to know how many have been coached/managed out of the game.