Coaches and athletes sometimes end up dating/getting married - Official discussion thread

lol

Women are attracted to men in a position of authority. A coach would qualify as that. So would a boss or superior at work.

rojo wrote:

(at least 30% of the NCAA top 10 men's teams are led by men who are in long-term relationships with ex athletes)

I dont doubt that stat is wrong, but I'm curious where it came Stat. Because I would be interested in seeing it broken down, since there is a big difference between:

- Marrying somebody you competed with, or met at a track meet

Versus

- marrying/dating somebody you coached at the pro level

Versus

- Marrying/dating somebody you coached at the college (or hs!) level.

For example, (a former marathon runner who set an American record) coaches his wife (who is now a marathon runner herself at the pro level). But he doesn't belong in a statistic of "coaches who are married to their athlete," since they became a couple many years before he started coaching, much less coaching her. They met as athletes on the same collegiate team. There was no power imbalance in the start or formation of their relationship. To me that is very different that the other stories we all know of.

Im rooting for the coaches.

There were several cases of women dating their college coaches in the 1980s. I was very familiar with three cases. In the first case, the runner did great, most everyone thought the male coach was a great guy, and they married soon after. Their marriage is still successful. I always wondered how they pulled it off so gracefully. They acted from day one like they were made for each other.

The second case didn't go so well, and again, it was another famous coach who is very well known. The parents of the woman were enraged and the relationship fell apart soon after. There didn't seem to be any ramifications. His teams ran well (if I gave details, it would reveal the individual).

The third case happened at the same school as the second case. This time all hell broke loose. He got his athlete pregnant and then pulled a Maury Povich act saying he wasn't the one. Fired. Never directly heard from him again, but I did hear of him once more.

A few years later I am at nationals and I meet twins. They said they were coached by the baby daddy guy and were telling me how great he is as a coach. I said nothing, but I wanted to somehow tell them to watch out. I didn't.

I think relationships were more common in those days. You would have to be nuts to do this now.

Do you really think a relationship between a former coach/athlete just happens, like other relationships? The athlete is usually pushed beyond normal boundaries long before they graduate with inappropriate contact as a student-athlete. It doesn’t just happen upon graduation. Creepy coaches have reps long before they reveal they have later relationships with former athletes. Besides, are you that lame of a man that you have to date a former student-athlete, many years younger, of yours?? Are there no other sensible prospects?

I don’t see where Safesport has a leg to stand on when both are adults? I coached my wife for a long time before and after we got married. She’s also a year older than me.

This is somewhat simple for high school and college coaches. It's extremely inappropriate regardless of age.

Post - collegiate, if the coach is in a power position as the coach might be while coaching a professional, the relationship is inappropriate.

If it is a private coach that someone could take or leave post collegiate, this might be the only time this is ok.

I don't think it's ethical for the reasons stated by Safe Sport, much like college students should not get involved with their professors and employees should not get involved with their superiors. Not only that, but when a relationship does not work out, there is usually a residual mess.

I currently coach with someone who ended up marrying her high-school coach. Her husband passed recently, but he was 35 years her senior. She said that she never had romantic feelings for him when she ran for him in school, but that later when they began coaching against one another that is when that changed.

I'm sorry, but I don't get how coaches with good intentions end up dating or marrying their former high school athletes. I see my athletes as my kids. The idea of dating any of them feels all kinds of wrong.

I can remember a couple I've known about. One was a prominent coach with success at at midwestern college. He had been in relationship with a few athletes or former athletes. He made unwanted advances toward another athlete via text and she turned him in to admin. This famously went out on Deadspin as well as the local press. He either resigned or was fired and changed his name to go into entertainment, I guess. The other was a prominent post-collegiate coach in one of the running meccas who had good success with his group and even attracted a phenom post-collegian he coached for a few years. Anyway, he was a bit notorious for dating his women athletes. In fact, he was the topic of at least one thread here speculating on the level of his relationship with a female athlete who rose to prominence. Especially when he quit on the rest of the group he had been coaching to coach only her and follow her around to training locations. The athlete wound up severing the relationship with him and last I heard he was coaching online clients.

Just remembered another, a college coach on the west coast who married one of his former athletes. They formed a sponsored group after she graduated and he left college coaching. She went to a couple of Olympics, the group wound up splintering. He's now coaching online.

I'm a male who started coaching when barely out of my teens, and for several years I was coaching (college) women who were my age and older. BITD (~50 years ago) it was common--very common, in all sports--for a male coach to form a relationship with a female athlete, and it's really only by luck that I did not. It helped that

a) in general (there were notable exceptions) I didn't, and don't, find athletic women particulary attractive,

b) I'm a wuss who rarely initiates stuff (most of my actual relationships were started by the woman involved), and

c) I'd always tended to see the athletes as my sisters (nowadays, as my children or grandchildren), so the whole incest-taboo thing kicked in.

I'm so glad that I never got involved personally with one of my athletes. How could other members of the team not have known and resented that?

One situtation that I'm not sure has been addressed here: head coach and assistant coach, a situation again where one person is in the position of power. As a head coach I had multiple female assistants, two or three of whom were extraordinarily attractive (contra my general opinion of athletic women), yet I don't think it even occurred to me to pursue any of them. How could you supervise someone's work effectively if you were shtupping her?

Obviously the situation is different if people who are already a couple start coaching somewhere together.

Our society needs to let adults be adults.

It's one thing if it involves an underage athletes, thats already against the law.

Once one is an adult, you don't need some agency dictating who you have relationships with.