Reply to Whitman Teacher and Crew Coach Arrested

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a former competitive rower (D1 and clubs after college), it's an incredibly intense sport.  If you want to be competitive, you have to train very, very hard.  And if you buy into that culture, that aspect of what Shipley did would be a feature, not a bug.  I'm honestly not sure I want my kids rowing in HS, if they express any interest, because of how intense it is--I worry it would be too much for young kids.

As for the parents who claim they didn't see it: most parents don't want to believe something like this could happen to their kids.  Many don't have any kind of experience, personally or professionally, with sexual predators.  And plenty are SO horrified by the thought that they bury their heads in the sand rather than learn the signs.  Couple that with the uber-competitive nature of many parents in this area, and, yeah, it's easy to see how it happened.

People seem to be making the assumption that parents who push their kids into the "best" academics and the most competitive sports are caring, observant parents, but usually, they're doing so out of their own self-interest.[/quote]
Thanks for the insights, PP.  Maybe you could help answer a question I think many of us have: why would anyone put this much time into a sport in HS unless they were gunning for an admissions boost or college scholarship or had Olympic dreams? One of my kids plays a D1 sport now, and I felt like the amount of time he spent training in HS was borderline unbalanced, but it sounds like these girls were spending twice as much time on rowing per week throughout the year, if not more. It really does sound almost cult-like both in terms of training to the exclusion of almost all else and the control exerted over the kids by a single charismatic individual. When you were in HS did you have one very powerful coach like this who controlled all aspects of the program?

I do understand that a lot of people fall in love with a sport and put a lot of time into it in the pursuit of excellence, and I understand the camaraderie that develops on teams.  But there should be limits on how much training or competing time a coach can ask of HS kids in a HS-affiliated club sport, the same way there are for JV and Varsity HS sports and in college.  If there are currently no rules established by the school or county re training time for club teams, that should change going forward. That’s just one of the structural problems that made it easier for Shipley to isolate these kids, but it seems like one of the easiest problems to fix.  [/quote]

Thanks for your questions, PP.  I actually didn't row in HS (am old enough that athletic kids could row in college, i.e., before the explosion of rowing as a varsity sport)--but I have had coaches who were as obsessive as Shipley, if not sexually inappropriate, at least that I saw.  That they weren't coaching very young girls is part of it; there's only so much most adults will tolerate from a coach.

I think the answer to your question is complicated, but probably a combination of various factors, in no particular order:
-Rowing is a highly technical sport, and not one that kids typically do prior to high school, so it takes a LOT of time and effort to improve quickly
-Ditto strength needs, although kids who were, say, swimmers from a young age, would have a physiological advantage in some ways
-Probably most of these kids were hoping that excelling in crew in HS would help them get into HYPS; these schools value rowing highly, so if you won at Stotesbury in HS, for example, that would be a big deal
-Some of these kids almost certainly were pressured by their parents to stay and to excel; crew is seen as a prestige sport by many
-Even kids who weren't in top boats might have been sucked into the cult-like aspects of the team, and wanted to participate as a sign of their own status
-These are kids, and kids are susceptible to peer pressure (and manipulation from charismatic adults like Shipley) in ways most adults are not

Of the various sports I've played in life (running, swimming, soccer, softball), crew is by far the most cult-like.  Some of it is pride in doing a sport that's highly technical and extremely painful, and often requires you to wake up very early in the morning, no less!  Some of it is sheer love of the sport.  When you're in a fast boat, it's an incredible feeling, physically and emotionally.  You do get very close to your teammates, because you go through so much together.  Most people, even athletes, think crew is too intense, and so you do feel special because you do it.

And all of those reasons make it especially difficult to balance for teenagers.  As I said, if my kids express interest when they get to HS, I'll vet the coaches and program very, very carefully.  It can also lead to pretty significant physical injuries if done incorrectly or without proper strength training, so that needs monitoring.  The fact that it typically occurs far from school grounds is problematic, as it affords too much time alone with a potential predator, and with not enough oversight.  That the parent board is feigning ignorance is no excuse; if you're going to serve on a board like that, you have GOT to take it seriously and be aware of the risks to the kids.  It's clear that the kids were not the priority here.[/quote]

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