Every person reaches their breaking point.
After tolerating berating texts and words for months from coach, I broke. I remember this vividly. I had just finished my last English class of the day with my advisor. We were approaching the end of the school year. As usual, we ended up chatting in her office. She was the only professor at the school that I felt safe to confide in. And so, that day I was invited to her office due to my “vibe seeming off”. As soon as we stepped into the sanctuary that was her office, I allowed to walls to fall. The first of many panic attacks… I sat her on her couch and further explained the events I had endured under her authority. After using one too many tissues, we crossed campus to the center of Academic Disability and Success. A building I had become more and more familiar with as my injury prevailed. One important thing to note, my advisor is not a woman to be taken lightly. If you want a person fighting for your happiness and health, Priya Jha is who you want in your corner. We met with the esteemed Amy Wilms and came to find that my coach and the trainers had in fact defied University Athletics Policies with how my injury was handled. There had also been previous whispers of emotional abuse from the softball athletic program as a whole. For the first time since the meeting with her, the day before my wrist surgery, I felt validated. My injury was not my fault. My pain was not invisible. I was finally heard. It was decided amongst Priya and Amy that the next step was to set up a meeting with the AD. This I both looked forward to and dreaded. On one hand, I didn’t want to become that kind of player, you know, the one that turns a team or organization against a coach? On the other hand, I had just been told by two deans of my own University that I needed to speak up. First and foremost for my own mental and physical health, but also on behalf of current and future bulldog athletes.
Meanwhile, I still struggled with the fact that I had to tell coach sternly that I needed to stop going to morning workouts due to high sensitivity to the cold (not me but my arm & hand). This was not only my decision but strict order from my surgeon to stay the hell away from meaningless exposure to prolonged cold weather (due to my fingers literally turning purple and not being able to use it). She was not going to take this well. I had heard countless horror stories from previous teammates about how she had handled smaller (only in the sense that those injuries did not go on for months) (there was even a double wrist injury before... ) injuries in conjunction with the training staff. Not to mention, that I was seeing the same pattern of ignorance affecting other teammates and athletes. If an injured player showed signs of having to limit how much they could participate in workouts or practices, they were immediately second-guessed.
Here are three common examples:
Many of my teammates had not been used to performing overhead weights 2-3 times a week in addition to 4 days of intense use of their arms for softball. Rather than tweaking the workout routine for sore arms, they were expected to increase the weight they could tolerate every few sets. Coach turned away from any complaints about arm overuse and pain. We were held responsible for ensuring that our arms were ready to go every practice. But after lifting more than one should have, an injury is more prone to show up. One teammate had an amazing. She had never had many complaints about rotator cuff abnormalities. As the season went on her pain only spiked. MRI results later confirmed slight tears along with her shoulder muscles due to overuse and severe rotator cuff tendinitis.
In a span of one month, 3 of our main players all complained of quad and hamstring tightness. Instead of coach talking with the training staff about lessening leg workouts while in season, they were told to “push through it”. To “spend more time in the training room prior to workouts rolling out and stretching in order to prevent these things.” In her opinion, it was always the girls’ fault. They were never doing enough for themselves or their bodies. And the worst part of it all? The training staff that we trusted to take care of the health of our bodies never listened to the athletes. Those 3 teammates of mine were all told that they had the same tightness and to perform the same generic hip stretches. (Luckily, 2 out of these three would heal but that's a story for another time)
As you can probably tell, I spent a lot of my freshman year in the training room using the heating pad and any tools to scrape out tight muscles in my arm. So, this meant getting to know athletes from other sports as well. The sad truth was to the training staff, the only sport that really mattered Was the football team. They were the only ones who I saw get any sort of special treatments and exercises. Anyone else who came in with an ankle or knee problem was going to do the same marble exercise (grabbing marbles with toes from one full bucket to an empty one). Anyone who came in with back pain was stretched out the exact same way regardless if symptoms varied from one to the next, and so on and so forth….
This kind of "second-guessing" culture surrounding committed athletes will never end well, especially if it comes from a level of high authority, in this case, the trainers and coaches. These"qualified" trainers make injuries worse and build up a negative stigma for anyone who stays injured for a long period of time or anyone who has a tendency to get injured often. It inevitably spreads like cancer. Trainers in the pockets of coaches and coaches in the pockets of trainers. The dreaded "push till you can tolerate" back-handed phrase. It was really a test of your supposed strength. When in reality this picture should look like a cohesive unit of trainer, coach, and player trusting and listening to one another while dealing with an injury.
I wish this was the truth.. but alas, the culture did indeed bleed into our team. With a coach who continuously second-guessed their own players and gave them little to no affirmation or guidance teammates began to turn on one another, and she is to blame for the issues that arose from that season. Two new stigmas took root. A prolonged injury is a fake injury and A hurt player slacks off. Teammates began to question the numerous amounts of limitations I had on my athletic self because she did. I was expected to share every single note written by my doctor after every appointment with her, to prove that I really did need my restrictions. As teammates saw me doing this it's no wonder they too grew cautious and curious. My image began to be molded into that of an injured player not doing her best for the team, ever. No matter what I said and tried to show in my actions towards my team, coach had already poisoned them. I couldn't handle the exterior questioning when I had ongoing interior increasing and everchanging pain. I snapped and then crumbled. I snapped at coach, at teammates all for the sake of defending the only things I had left, honesty and passion. I hated being hurt, that was a blatant truth. Ever since I was 10 years old I wanted to be a college softball player and nothing got my way until the day I got hurt. I love the game. I love everything it has taught me and everyone I have met through it. So, without it as an active part of my life... who was i? This was the beginning of the crumble. At the end of it all, I just wanted to be like my teamates. Capable, hardworking, strong women. I owe the normal parts of my freshman softball season to them.... my anxiety rose, tensions rose then thankfully diminished, and the season continued on.
but this was not the first instance of team issues and tension between the coach/team dynamic... Through stories I heard from senior teammates about coach’s first year at the university, she refused to consider any feedback she got. This made her the most dangerous coach of all, one who only acts, not for the good of the team, but for her own agenda.
I finally felt like I could speak my truth to the AD. I had heard rumors from parents of other teammates that they had tried to speak to him about their issues with her before, so my expectations were slim.
On the day of the meeting, I met Amy and Priya near the fountain across the street from the Currier Gym. We entered the hallway and walked into the AD's office. He spoke in a gentle tone and immediately apologized for all the trouble I had been going through. My advisor spoke on my behalf about the toll she had seen on mental health. Amy spoke about the numerous accounts of coach forcing players to put softball above all else, regardless of the consequences in the classroom. Then, she spoke about the medical insurance policies that the trainers failed to advise me about and her blatant defiance of the medical-redshirt policy. To my surprise, he took these concerns to heart. I was then given the chance to speak to him about how all of these experiences had affected me over the past year. I honestly told him that I felt as though softball was being taken away from me on two accounts. First and foremost because of my injury, then because of how she coached. I had never had a coach blame an injury on a player, threaten to kick them off the day before major surgery, and then continue to make their first year at an otherwise amazing university miserable.
I'll begin to handle this... were the last words he said.
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