Coaches and Minor Athlete Safety: What Every Parent Should Know

Keeping children safe and helping them learn and grow are goals that should be shared by parents and coaches alike. While this is usually the case, it isn’t always. Effective abuse prevention requires planning for the exceptions, and helping your child better understand appropriate interactions.

One specific area of risk involves one-on-one interactions between coaches and minor athletes. Maybe a player is struggling with a new skill, and a coach offers to provide an individual lesson after practice. A young athlete needs a ride to a game, and a coach or volunteer offers to pick them up and drive them. A player has questions about an upcoming competition, and a coach offers to communicate with them electronically. While most coaches have the best of intentions for their athletes, normalizing one-on-one athlete-coach interactions sets the wrong tone and could foster an environment that puts athletes at greater risk of abuse.

These examples demonstrate moments where a minor athlete may find themselves in a situation with a coach where the risks of abuse are higher. Even in cases where a parent knows and trusts another adult around their child, setting guidelines around one-on-one interactions reinforces appropriate safety standards across any and every scenario.

Here are five rules to help parents of young athletes—and parents who coach and volunteer with young athletes—proactively support safety:

1. One-on-one interactions between adults and minors must be observable and interruptible.
2. Electronic communication between adults and minors should be open and transparent, and should be professional in nature. This could mean that communication includes the parent/guardian or other adults. Further, only electronic platforms that can be open and transparent should be used.
3. Adults should not give personal gifts to minors unless they are distributed equally to a group of minors and/or are educational.
4. An adult should not travel with a child alone unless there is written parental/guardian consent (which can be withdrawn at any time).  To make sure your children know they are supported and to avoid uncomfortable situations, have a conversation with them before the trip about boundaries and the policies that adults are supposed to follow.
5. An adult should not share a room or otherwise sleep in the same room with a minor unless there is written consent provided by the parent/guarding prior to the lodging arrangement. Again, making sure your young athlete knows these rules in advance can help them speak up and advocate for themselves if rules are not being followed.

The U.S. Center for SafeSport developed these rules based on best practices for proactive abuse prevention. The full set of guidelines can be found in the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies (MAAPP). The MAAPP is required for sport entities within the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, but has applicability for any youth-focused organization.

Implementing these rules matters. One example of how inappropriate one-on-one interactions can manifest relates to grooming. Grooming is when someone engages in a series of manipulative behaviors in order to sexually abuse a child. Abusers often use trust-building actions, like offering special gifts or opportunities to the child or to their family members. Early warning signs can include:

• A coach or other adult going beyond their role in sport, including by offering special treatment.
• Attempts by an adult to find ways to be alone with a child, including things like repeatedly offering to drive them home after practice.
• An adult engaging in behavior that blurs the line of what is appropriate, including things like telling a child to keep a secret or secretly communicating with them via text.
• An adult pushing sexual boundaries and/or introducing sexual topics and action, which can also be forms of sexual abuse.

Many of these behaviors can be mitigated by establishing rules and boundaries around one-on-one interactions between adults and young athletes. The U.S. Center for SafeSport is here to help by providing resources for parents, young athletes, and coaches to help set boundaries and standards in terms of appropriate behavior. Check out our free courses for families, designed for parents/guardians, teens, and kids ages 5-12. As important as it is to proactively prevent abuse and misconduct, it’s also important to ensure athletic spaces are places where young athletes can truly thrive and access all the benefits of sports.