Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Coaches, Athletes and Sex: Not a Good Game Plan



In December, Bev Kearney, the highly successful women’s track and field coach at the University of Texas, was looking forward to a new contract from the university with a substantial raise.  In early January she resigned to avoid being fired for having a consensual relationship with a woman on her team in 2002. It is unclear who brought the relationship to the attention of the university, but Kearney acknowledged that she did have a relationship with a student-athlete.

Anyone familiar with athletics knows that some coaches do have sexual relationships with their athletes. It happens at all levels – youth sports, high school, college and professional.  At the youth and high school levels, it is a criminal offense. At the college or professional levels, it may not be a criminal offense, but it is a breach of coaching ethics and an abuse of power by the coach, even when the relationship is consensual.

I believe that coaches who engage in sexual relationships with athletes on their teams should be fired. I draw a hard line on this issue. It doesn’t matter what the gender or sexual orientation of the coach is, it’s wrong and should not be tolerated.

What complicates Bev Kearney’s situation is that, in the wake of her resignation, the University of Texas has now publicly acknowledged that an assistant football coach who had a sex with a female student team manager was treated quite differently. 

Major Applewhite, a former quarterback for UT and now an assistant football coach admitted to having sex with the student during the Fiesta Bowl in 2009.  In addition to keeping his breach out of the media, Applewhite, who was married at the time, was disciplined, had his salary frozen for eleven months and received counseling, but retained his job.  The incident was minimized as a “one night stand.”

Though the ethics and/or criminality of sex between coaches and athletes should apply equally to all coaches – male or female, gay or straight – often the reactions and punishments assigned to the coaches do not. The University of Texas’s differential responses to Applewhite and Kearney highlight the problem.

Applewhite, a white, married heterosexual man coaching football was protected from public embarrassment. His breach of ethics was minimized as a one time lapse of judgement punished lightly and he continues to be employed in good standing by the university. 

Kearney, an African-American lesbian track and field coach, was immediately offered the choice of resigning or being fired for her breach of ethics eleven years ago.  She is no longer employed by the University of Texas. Over. Done.

Even given the differences in the specifics of each situation, UT’s wildly different responses to the two coaches’ ethical breaches is apparent. 

Kearney has  filed a lawsuit against the University charging race and gender discrimination based on the different sanctions meted out to Kearney and Applegate  (I suspect Kearney might have also included discrimination based on sexual orientation too, but Texas has no laws protecting against this kind of discrimination).

The UT board of regents met earlier this month to discuss personnel matters "regarding legal issues concerning individual athletic personnel and legal issues related to inappropriate relations between employees and students." I bet they are talking about Kearney’s lawsuit too.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is not "unclear" who brought the relationship to the attention of UT, it was Kearney's girlfriend. That fact has been public knowledge from the beginning of this drama.

Big difference between a one night stand and an ongoing hidden sexual relationship with someone you are supposed to be coaching.

Kearney's escapade is just the latest in the long list of lesbian coaches taking their athletes as lovers.

Let me know if you'd like me to list them here. Would be happy to do so.

No one is surprised that Kearney and her lawyers brought are suing UT. What else is she going to do?

Anonymous said...

"Big difference between a one night stand and an ongoing hidden sexual relationship with someone you are supposed to be coaching."

I have heard this comment in regard to this situation more than once. It makes no sense to me. You are saying that sex in the context of an adulterous one-night stand is morally superior to sex in the context of an ongoing relationship between two single adults. I would think just the opposite would be true.

In other respects, the violations are the same. Both involved sex between a coach and a student in the coach's program. (Student managers and trainers are as much a part of a particular program as the players.) In both cases, the coaches should have been let go, in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

If you are unable to comprehend the difference between a one night stand and an ongoing affair there's not much I can do to help you out.

Try this - a one night mistake isn't the same as a head coach entering into a long term sexual relationship with one of her athletes with a specific strategy to cover it up to the public, administration and other athletes over an extended period of time which is precisely what Kearney did.

I don't know if you've ever been a part of a major program but student trainers are in no way the same as athletes that are under the direct supervision of a program head coach that is having sex with them. For starters someone like Kearney would have had authority over the status of her "partner's" scholarship and overall quality of life at UT as a student athlete. There was nothing like that power differential, over time, between Applewhite and his one night stand partner.

Further if you've read Pat's book you would have gleaned that the women college athletic environment may well be the first time a young woman can "honestly explore" the lesbian option. In that context taking vulnerable young ladies into that environment and then exerting the type of power differential that Kearney may well have on this young athlete is seriously problematic.

Finally although Applelwhite was clearly an idiot for doing what he did it hardly rises to the level of what Kearney and many other lesbian female head coaches over the years have done with and to the young ladies that have been entrusted to them by their parents and their respective universities.

If you ladies wonder why parents aren't excited about letting their daughters enroll in know lesbian friendly programs and why what you call "negative recruiting" goes on you need to look no further than this story or any of the other five or six similar scenarios that are out there.

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