By Lilah Drafts-Johnson
Drafts-Johnson is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and Equality Now. Lilah was a Division III NCAA Champion in the 400m hurdles and has earned certifications in trauma-informed coaching from the Army of Survivors as well as a Track and Field Technical Certification from the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Lilah holds an MA in Kinesiology and Physical Cultural Studies from the University of Maryland, where her research focused on the impact of domestic and sexual violence policies in professional sports.
INTRODUCTION
As discussions around preventing abuse in sports gain momentum, it’s crucial to recognize that many young athletes enter sports already carrying the burden of past trauma. Today’s youth sport coaches are increasingly encouraged, if not required, to complete abuse prevention workshops offered by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which provide guidance on how to prevent, identify, and report abuse in sport.
While preventing abuse in sports is key, continued effort is also needed to support those who have already experienced trauma.
The trauma-informed movement in sport aims to address this by equipping coaches with the knowledge to proactively create sporting spaces where all athletes, but especially those who have experienced trauma, are empowered to take risks, grow as athletes and teammates, and navigate the highs and the lows that sport offers without compounding prior trauma.
However, the phrase “trauma-informed sport” often confuses more than it clarifies. Coaches are concerned they are being asked to take on a therapeutic role or initiate conversations with their athletes for which they aren’t prepared.
Furthermore, the majority of youth sport coaches are volunteers, who may already feel overwhelmed keeping up with state—or school-mandated coaching requirements on critical topics like CPR, first aid, and concussion prevention, not to mention staying up to date on the best practices for skill development and injury prevention in their specific sport.
This article aims to provide practical examples of trauma-informed approaches in sport coaching and demonstrate that trauma-informed sport isn’t just for people who have experienced trauma; it is an athlete- and strengths-based approach that can benefit people from all walks of life.
WHAT IS TRAUMA-INFORMED SPORT?
Trauma can refer to a broad range of experiences. As The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) explains, “Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individuals’ function and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
Trauma can result not only from forms of abuse but also from exposure to systemic discrimination and/or marginalization, grief and loss, natural disasters, or exposure to community violence. SAMHSA describes a trauma-informed perspective as one that “views trauma-related symptoms and behaviors as an individual’s best and most resilient attempt to manage, cope with, and rise above his or her experience of trauma.”
A helpful adage within the trauma-informed movement describes shifting the focus from “What's wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
Trauma-informed sport programs follow a similar model of understanding that disruptive or alarming behaviors exhibited by a youth athlete–such as appearing withdrawn, hypervigilant, easily angered or irritated, unable to focus, and more–are often trauma responses. Coaches seek to respond to these behaviors in ways that do not compound further harm and instead provide athletes with opportunities to rebuild trust and autonomy.
Definitions of trauma-informed sport may vary from program to program, but generally, researchers emphasize four main tenets that constitute a trauma-informed approach:
1. Understand the prevalence and impact of trauma and violence
Approximately 46% of U.S. children have experienced at least one traumatic event by age 18, and over 20% have experienced at least two. Experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event has been linked to behavioral and chronic health issues, substance abuse, mental health conditions, and risky behavior. Understanding trauma's significant prevalence and impact is the first step a coach can take to address how it may show up in practice or competition.
The world can begin to feel like an unsafe place for people who have experienced trauma, which has serious consequences for the function of the nervous system as the brain starts to activate stress hormones chronically.
This causes people who have experienced trauma to physiologically experience what may appear as low-level stressors–such as a sudden change in plans at practice or a coach’s decision to substitute a player from a game–as serious threats.
As the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport explains in their Nothing Heals Like Sport Playbook:
“These overreactions can get young people in trouble because they don’t fit the circumstance. This can look like a young person who explodes, quits, or checks out even when it seems to everyone else like nothing is wrong. They feel unsafe, even when it doesn’t seem that way to others.”
Equipping coaches with the knowledge about the prevalence and impact of trauma allows them to approach players who exhibit these symptoms with greater empathy and confidence and can disrupt a painful cycle of isolation for individuals who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide physically and psychologically safe spaces
For young people, recreational sport is a rare “third place” outside the primary and secondary realms of home and school/work. It can be a refuge where they can build trust in others, create new and healthy relationships, and affirm identities that might not be accepted in other spaces.
Some examples of physical safety include athletes having access to:
Regular water, bathroom, and rest breaks
Proper warm-up and cool-down exercises to prevent injury
Appropriate workouts and drills for their skill level to prevent overuse or injury
Proper safety gear
Safe playing environments, including environments that are hazard-free, supervised, and where safety rules are enforced
Coaches who have completed requisite background checks, athlete protection trainings, and possess adequate health and safety knowledge for their sport
Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor and leading researcher of psychological safety in team contexts, defines psychological safety as “a belief that neither the formal nor informal consequences of interpersonal risks, like asking for help or admitting a failure, will be punitive. In psychologically safe environments, people believe that if they make a mistake or ask for help, others will not react badly.”
In practice, a psychologically safe environment in sport may look like:
Focusing on process and skill development instead of wins and losses
Celebrating athletes who take risks, such as executing a newly acquired play in a soccer game or attempting an aggressive pace in a track and field race, even when the risks do not pay off
Respecting the identities and lived experiences of athletes
Learning preferred nicknames, correct name pronunciation, and pronouns for athletes
Prioritizing athlete health and enjoyment
Providing opportunities for athletes to voice concerns or fears
Providing resources for mental health support
3. Create opportunities for participant choice, collaboration, and connection
People who have experienced trauma often feel robbed of their autonomy, which is why small acts that allow athletes to exercise their agency throughout their sport experience can be so impactful.
The Army of Survivors, a non-profit formed to advocate for survivor-athletes of abuse, notes in their guide to Trauma-Informed Environments in Sports that taking the time to gather input from athletes “can be as simple as walking around and having individual conversations with athletes as they are preparing or packing up.”
Some other examples include:
Soliciting player input on how practice is being run and implementing their feedback
Sending short and anonymous surveys to players to provide an opportunity for them to give feedback without fear of repercussions
Creating spaces for the team to share their goals, individually and collectively, together
Scheduling beginning-of-season, mid-season, and end-of-season meetings to foster closer relationships with athletes and solicit feedback
Providing options for how athletes complete workouts when feasible
“There are two ab circuit options for you to choose from to close out practice.”
“We can either start today with our conditioning workout or end practice with it; we’ll take a team vote.”
Creating spaces for the team to share their goals, individually and collectively, together
Striving to get to know players outside of their identities as athletes
4. Utilize a capacity-building or strengths-based approach
Instead of zeroing in on a player's weaknesses, trauma-informed sport programs aim to use a capacity-building or strengths-based approach that focuses on what a player or team is doing well and their specific opportunities for future growth.
In addition to using affirmative language, the Play Like a Champion Trauma-Responsive Coaching guide mentions creating leadership opportunities, such as identifying an athlete to lead a game-day huddle cheer, and service, such as asking athletes to take turns with practice set-up or clean-up.
Some other examples include:
Celebrating an athlete when they take a risk or try a new skill, regardless of the outcome
Emphasizing what a player did right before offering a correction or suggestion
“Jill, great job getting the ball up to the strikers, but don’t forget to come help out on defense.”
Highlighting sportsmanlike and leadership behavior
Using examples of what’s working well for an individual to encourage similar team behavior
“See how Jane moves towards the ball when it’s headed her way, not just waiting to receive it? That’s great; let’s see more of that.”
WHY USE A TRAUMA-INFORMED APPROACH IN SPORT?
As over a decade of research from the Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Project Play initiative has shown, today’s youth athletes enter a sport ecosystem that no longer prioritizes teaching physical literacy skills that can serve a young person throughout their lifetime.
Pay-to-play travel leagues encourage families to begin specializing their child athletes early in a specific sport.
In the increasingly competitive and expensive college admissions climate, parents see sports as the conduit through which a young person can either pay for college via earning a D1 scholarship or receiving preferential admissions treatment as a recruited athlete to a selective D3 institution.
While trauma-informed sport programs are not a silver bullet to what has been called the youth sports arms race, the process-over-product approach that is inherent to trauma-informed programs can provide an alternative to the “win-at-all-costs” model that is promoted for coaches today. This is particularly important given new research that suggests that athletes themselves may be a vulnerable population to particular forms of abuse.
The U.S. Center for SafeSport’s 2024 Athlete Climate Survey reported that approximately 1 in 10 of the athletes surveyed had experienced unwanted sexual contact or sexually explicit behaviors during their sports involvement, and more than 2 in 5 who had unwanted sexual experiences reported that at least one of these incidents had occurred before the age of 18.
Some researchers suggest that such high rates of sexual violence in sport could be traced to the culture of the “sport ethic,” or the set of norms in sport such as overcoming obstacles and ignoring pain, as athletes are gradually trained to accept and normalize behavior that would be considered unacceptable outside of sport contexts.
TRAUMA-INFORMED SPORT: POLICIES AND POSSIBILITIES
There are currently no institutional mandates for a trauma-informed approach to sport, although many sports organizations are required to train coaches on topics that support some elements of such a framework.
One such policy is the aforementioned Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017, which codified the U.S. Center for SafeSport and now mandates that any adult appointed to a position of authority over a minor athlete (e.g. volunteer, coach, medical trainer, etc.) by a National Governing Body (such as USA Baseball, USA Track and Field, etc.) must undergo regular training on topics like mandatory reporting, sexual misconduct awareness education, emotional and physical misconduct, and abuse prevention.
While this training ensures that coaches are aware of their reporting obligations and signs of abuse in youth, it does not necessarily equip them with the skills to create a trauma-informed environment to support athletes who have already experienced harm. However, organizations like the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport and The Army of Survivors fill important gaps with their resources and training offerings for coaches interested in learning more.
Another set of policies impacts sport organizations at the professional level and was catalyzed by the Ray Rice domestic violence incident in 2014. Today, sport organizations like Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association have policies that require players, coaches, and employees of teams to undergo domestic and sexual violence prevention workshops on a regular basis.
While these workshops are a critical piece of cultural change, my time working in the sport industry and serving as a facilitator for such workshops has led me to believe that such policies must be supported by broader trauma-informed principles embedded in these organizations.
As these policies enter their second decade of existence, I am optimistic about how sports leagues and organizations like the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice may be able to collaborate to achieve a shared vision of reducing harm and creating safe and affirming sport communities in the future.
RESOURCES:
Nothing Heals Like Sport – A New Playbook for Coaches by the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport
Trauma-Informed Approach to Athletics by The Army of Survivors
Why taking a trauma- and violence-informed approach can make sport safer and more equitable by Lyndsay Harhurst, PhD and Francie Darroch, PhD
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