Sexual Abuse By Coaches: How To Stop it Before it Starts

Sports is supposed to be the sacred place. When we bring our children to sporting events, we think we’re signing them up for exercise, friendship and all the other positive life experiences that should come from kicking, throwing, punting, jumping, passing and team building. We want to trust the men and women who oversee our children in what should be sacrosanct moments — but as National Teamer Cindy Gordon’s story of being sexually groomed and abused by her youth coach showed us, all too often we can’t.

“If Cindy’s story helps one person, one child, one family, then it was worth it,” said her long-time friend and teammate, Amy Allmann Griffin. “My guess is her story will help a lot of people, because there a lot of people who need it, too many women who already lived through what Cindy has endured — due to a lack of knowledge of the risks.”

The responses from Cindy's revelation continue to bear that out. She reported being overwhelmed by the number of women who reached out to her, many of them saying in essence, “Me, too.” I also heard from some of these women, yet I did receive one anonymous on-line comment about how my selection of current headlines, plucked from a selection of the nation’s newspapers, was “sensationalistic.” One organization told me off the record that the issue of sexual abuse of players by coaches was “one-in-a-million,” and not something they had ever heard about in their own club. I’m still waiting for a call back from that club’s president for an on-the-record quote.

I’m sensitive to painting all coaches, especially male coaches, with the same tainted brush of doubt. My eyes tell me that the vast majority of coaches have nothing but the best of intentions; they are out there to help the girls and young women get better at their sport. Often they are fathers of daughters. I know my daughter’s first coach was unhappy with the quality of coaching and lack of resources his own daughter and her teammates were receiving relative to the boys, so he started coaching girls himself to level the playing field. I desperately want to believe — and do believe — that his intentions are pure.

As uncomfortable as it may make us, however, Amy and so many others believe it’s imperative that parents approach the coaching relationship with inherent trepidation. “There are a lot of guys coaching in the in the women’s game and you do have to wonder why they’re there,” said Amy, a long-time National Team goaltender and current coach and senior administrator with the Girls Academy, one of the premiere youth leagues in America. “Is it because they couldn’t survive in the men’s game? Is it because they are hoping girls will fawn all over them? Or is it for all the right reasons, they value the talents and potential the girls and women possess?”

Amy Allmann Griffin, right, with National Team icon Michelle Akers and Michelle's son, Cody, in a photo from Page 236 of the book, Raising Tomorrow's Champions (courtesy of Amy Allmann Griffin)

Amy said she played for many excellent male coaches throughout her life, yet inappropriate sexual behavior among coaches was rampant. “Girls didn’t say anything back then because we thought, ‘Oh, I guess this is what guys do.’ We shouldn’t complain because everyone’s doing it. You think, ‘I can’t go to a different team, because it’s happening on that team, too.’” Amy and Cindy Gordon’s National Team teammate, Emily Pickering Harner, agreed in a social media post congratulating Cindy for her courage: “It was just such an era where ‘pedophile, abuse and predator’ were not terms that we even use to contemplate.”

Amy said Girls Academy coaches now receive training about the issue of sexual abuse and maintaining proper boundaries between coaches and players. She agreed it might be a good idea to consider making this training mandatory for players and parents as well, something that another sexual abuse victim said she would like to see instituted at the highest levels at U.S. Soccer. “I guarantee if I had been told to look out for that kind of behavior from my coach, my life would have turned out differently,” said Amy Carnell, who revealed she had been molested by her youth soccer coach in Washington state. “That was a prime motivator for me to step forward last year and say, ‘Hey, look, this happened to me — and I want to help stop this from happening to others. But we need to do more.”

Both of these women and others helped us draw up a blueprint for parents to follow when trying to keep their children as safe as possible. Here’s the advice:

SET STRICT PROTOCOLS — Clubs, teams and leagues need rules that govern coach-player contact, and then steps must be taken to ensure adherence. “For example, for each team there needs to be two to three designated watchdog parents who are trained to specifically be looking out for signs of grooming, or sexual abuse,” said Amy Carnell.

ANNUAL TRAINING — Part of the orientation for each team each year needs to include age-appropriate information the issue of sexual abuse, including brochures and videos for parents and guardians to follow when talking to their children.

If YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING — Parents and anyone else in the sports community need to speak up when even the slightest suspicion arises. Signs of sexual grooming include excessive attention to a single player or unusual gifts to one player, but not others.

AVOID ONE-ON-ONE SITUATIONS — Any situations that put a player and coach physically alone and out of view of others should be banned, including car rides home. Any necessary soccer-related individual meetings between players and coaches should be help in public spaces, such as hotel lobbies, team buses, or offices with the door open and, preferably, someone else in the room.

AVOID DIRECT COMMUNICATION — When coaches need to communicate with players about practice or game times, it should be conducted in group settings such as team-wide texts or emails, or ZOOM calls. Parents should avoid commenting on appropriate soccer issues such as playing time or positions on the field — but otherwise monitor all communications between the players and coaches to be certain no inappropriate lines are crossed.

RESOURCES:

National Sexual Assault hotline: 1-800-656-4673

United Soccer Coaches course: https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/education/sexual-violence-the-facts/

The official policy of U.S. Youth Soccer: https://tnunitedsc.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1221/2018/11/USYS-Code-of-Conduct-2.pdf

U.S. Center for SafeSport: https://uscenterforsafesport.org/

Safe4Athletes: https://safe4athletes.org/

Pioneers: Gretchen Zigante, the First Full-Time Professional Women's Soccer Player

INTRODUCING: Gretchen Gegg Zigante

COLLEGES: Universities of Washington and North Carolina

LOVE AT FIRST SITE: Gretchen said she knew within a minute of stepping on the middle school soccer field practice for the Dash Point Dashers that soccer was the only sport she would ever take seriously. Though Gretchen would have preferred to remain a field player, one of the area’s many pioneering girls coaches, Dan Swain, quickly saw her potential as a goaltender and recruited her for his Team Adidas club that ruled the soccer landscape in Tacoma, Wa. “I’m not sure he thought I was that good, but he did think I was brave,” she said.

Gretchen Gegg Zigante, with her husband of 28 years, Nenad "Ziggy" Zigante at home in Utah (photo courtesy of Mario Zigante)

18-0 AND NOWHERE TO GO: Amidst the birthplace of American women’s soccer that the Tacoma-Seattle area of Washington state represented, Gretchen soon found herself playing with or against many of the 12 other women from that era who would join the National Team via her club team, the Cozars, which competed for national championships for several years. Her Hall of Fame teammate Michelle Akers was the legend in the making, but the area also produced Sandi Gordon Yotz, Cindy Gordon, Lori Henry, Denise Bender, Shannon Higgins-Cirovski, Kathy Ridgewell-Williams, Denise Boyer Merdich, Amy Allmann Griffin and Sharon McMurtry. Gretchen even allowed her future National Team teammate Lorraine Figgins Fitzhugh to live for a year on her family's 25-foot sailboat in the Seattle harbor when Lorraine was attending the University of Washington and fighting with the school administration about adding a women’s varsity team. As Lorraine told us in her interview, the UW club team was beating all comers, including an 18-0 season in 1984, but were denied the opportunity to play for anything but pride.

MOM VS. MOM: Gretchen’s biggest rival might have been the other goalie, but instead the pair were each other’s biggest supporters and instigators of hijinks. “There’s not a human being in the world that doesn’t like Amy Griffin; she’s one of my greatest friends to this day and will be forever,” said Gretchen. “Our mothers, on the other hand? They were fiercely competitive with each other about who should be playing the most, Amy or me. That carried on for years.”

Fearlessly going all out carried Gretchen to the highest levels of the game.

THE NATIONAL TEAM: Gretchen declined to attend the infamous tryout in Baton Rouge, La., in 1985 for what became the first National Team. “I honestly didn’t think I was that good,” she said. She changed her mind in 1986, however, and National Team head coach Anson Dorrance liked what he saw enough that he not only offered her a spot on the roster, he also offered her a scholarship to attend North Carolina that fall for her senior year. Though she suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament after college and was sidelined for long periods — with no surgery to repair it — Gretchen managed to remain a regular attendee at National Team camps through 1990 and appeared in two games, one in 1986 and the other in 1990. “I think I was in the best shape of my life at that point and I gave it my all,” she said. “When I didn’t get picked for the World Cup roster in 1991, I was at peace with the decision. I was in the stands when they won in China in 1991 and I was in the Rose Bowl with my mother in 1999 and I still felt connected to the players and the team.”

Marketing the women's game in Japan, circa 1990.

THE CALL THAT OPENED A HUGE DOOR: The day after being cut from the National Team, Gretchen received a phone call from Hiro Watanabe, a professional men’s player from Japan who she had met while completing her college degree at Idaho State University. “He said, ‘Did you make the team?’ When I told him I had been cut, he said, ‘Great! That means you can come to Japan.’” Hiro, who was instrumental in developing Japan’s team that beat the United States in the 2011 women’s World Cup, helped Gretchen land what is believed to be the first-ever full-time professional contract for an American woman in soccer. The Fujita Tendai paid her six million yen annually, along with housing and other covered expenses — which was the equivalent of a $30,000 American salary with myriad other benefits from 1990-1995. With Gretchen serving as an unofficial ambassador for the only professional women’s league in the world at the time, several other Americans followed her to Japan, including Stanford standout Heather McIntyre and 1999 World Cup hero Brandi Chastain.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: Sexism was rampant in the early 1990s in Japan, as evidenced by the marketing pieces for the women’s matches that Gretchen saved. Still, she said the experience was positive overall. “I was treated very, very well,” said Gretchen. “Once they trust you over there, that means everything.” The men of Japan, however, were not necessarily used to seeing women with muscular physiques. “I had a man in the supermarket walk up to me and say, ‘Your legs look really strong!’ He proceeded to grab my legs right there in the store to test how strong they were.”

Gretchen, fourth from bottom right, joined a Canadian, Carrie Serwetnyk, and an American, Heather McIntyre, for her second season in Japan.

THE FAMILY BUSINESS: While still under contract in Japan, Gretchen was back in the U.S. in 1993 recruiting players to come to the Orient when she met a man on an airplane who seemed unusually impressed with her status as a professional goalie. “He said, ‘If you’re a goalie, you need to come train with my friend.’ He kept going on and on and on about his friend, Ziggy.” When that same man called a day later, she agreed to drive to a soccer field outside of San Diego where she met Nenad “Ziggy” Zigante, a goalie for Dinamo, the top team in what was then Yugoslavia. At the end of their first encounter, Gretchen invited him to go sailing in her mother’s boat. “There he is in his thick Croatian accent trying to find the words to say ‘Yes’ . . . ‘I’m very sorry, but I would like to come.’” The couple’s daughter, Susana, was raised playing goaltender in the U.S., but due to her father’s heritage, she has become a member of the Croatian women’s national team.

Gretchen's daughter, Susana Zigante, is a second-generation National Teamer. (courtesy of Grand Canyon University)

THE LONG, WINDING ROAD: With teaching the art of goaltending as their calling cards and the only jobs they’ve known, the Zigantes have traveled the nation and world together in the past three decades. Gretchen has coached in Japan and for colleges in Colorado, California and New York, including a year as interim head coach at Cornell University. In more recent years she has focused on club soccer, but only on her terms. “There’s a lot of crazy people in this game right now,” she said. “I’ve been in situations where the club team’s parents think they know more than I do, so I tell them, ‘Then I guess you don’t need me,’ and I’ve moved on.” In 2018, they landed in Heber City, Utah. “It’s a small community and more mello,” said Gretchen, who works with a local soccer club and previously coached the high school team. “I see this as my retirement job.”

The 1986 National Team, with Gretchen kneeling front and center

Pioneers: Denise Merdich, the Selfless Teammate

INTRODUCING: Denise Boyer Merdich

COLLEGE: University of Puget Sound

INTRODUCTION TO THE GAME: Denise never considered herself athletic until John Dunlap, the father of a fellow future National Teamer, Joan Dunlap-Seivold, invited her to play soccer shortly after the Boyer family moved from California to the Seattle area. “I wasn’t competitive and I might have even been considered slow,” said Denise. “But somehow, when there was a soccer ball to chase, suddenly no one could catch me and stop me.”

Denise, playing as a member of the Tacoma Cozars

THE SALVATION: Denise’s father had served in the military during World War II, the Korean War and also in Vietnam and she said she believed he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by the time she was 10. When her father moved out of the home, Denise, her mother and brothers moved to Tacoma where, much to Denise’s surprise, a local soccer coach knocked on her door a week later. “Mr. Dunlap thought I should keep playing soccer, so he made a phone call and here was this man asking me to join his team,” she said. “I appreciated that. For those two hours on the field a few times each week, I was able to forget about everything at home.”

Denise, front of the line, in the Cozars’ team photo

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME: In those days, the University of Puget Sound fielded a women’s team, but the part-time coach had never actually played the game and the competition was less than stellar. Fortunately, Denise had already caught the attention of the Dunlaps and the rest of the Washington area’s immense pool of other soccer talent that would form the cornerstone of America’s earliest women’s national teams: Lorraine Figgins Fitzhugh, Michelle Akers, Sandi Gordon Yotz, Cindy Gordon, Amy Allmann Griffin, Lori Henry, Denise Bender, Shannon Higgins-Cirovski, Gretchen Gegg Zigante, Kathy Ridgewell-Williams and Sharon McMurtry. Denise also played for a bevy of renowned coaches through the years, including Greg Ryan, the first National Team coach, as well as Berhane Andeberhan, Clive Charles, Larry Feir and Booth Gardner, a two-term governor of Washington.

THE NATIONAL TEAM: Denise was first selected for the National Team in 1984 when it existed only on paper and made it again when the infamous selection occurred in July of 1985 at the Olympic Sports Festival in Baton Rouge, La. She played in all four of the National Team’s games in Italy in 1985, then took 1986 off. She agreed to try out again in 1987 and appeared in three games — scoring the only goal of her National Team career on July 7 against Canada — before retiring from the team just prior to it leaving for an international tournament in Tianjin, China.

BETTER HER THAN ME: Denise said she always considered her soccer teammates sisters and found it difficult to watch players get cut from the team when Anson Dorrance began to make significant roster changes, including the addition of teenagers Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy in the summer of 1987. “I’d watch my teammates come out of a meeting with Anson and they’d be crying; it was just so sad,” said Denise. “I went in and told Anson, ‘They want this more than I do. Give one of them my spot.’ And that was that. It was the right thing for me to do, for me and for them.”

ENDURING MEMORIES: Denise said she cringes when she hears people say the first National Team in 1985, with its record of three losses and one tie, wasn’t very good. “We went over there to Italy after just three days of training together in New York, suffering from jet lag, and were competitive against every single team; we had a lot of moxie,” she said. Some of her favorite memories came off the field, including receiving what amounted to her first soccer paycheck — $10 a day in meal money. “I was so excited for that $10,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine why they were paying us after they already paid for the plane ticket and gave us uniforms. That was my mindset, honestly. I bought an Italian bathing suit and two pairs of sweat pants, and a bunch of us rented those paddle boats out on the Adriatic Sea. We had it in our minds that we were going to paddle to Yugoslavia!”

*Denise, accepting her flowers and plaque from the Denmark national team in 1985 . . .*

After the game against Denmark on Aug. 21 that featured the first two goals in American National Team history, by Michelle Akers and Emily Pickering, the two teams gathered for a celebration at a disco in Jesolo. “Our hosts played Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘Born in the USA’ for us. The music was blaring and all of the U.S. team was on the dance floor jumping up and down and bumping into each other, laughing and worrying about nothing.” Later that evening, Denise was presented with a flowers and a plaque with an inscription that, when translated, reads: “To the best American athlete of Denmark vs. USA.” She has held onto it all these years.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: When Denise called her father to tell him she had just made the National Team in 1985, his response was: “Why are you playing that stupid Mickey Mouse game?” When she gave her fiancé the news, he reacted similarly: “You’re not going to play, are you?” More than 35 years later, she’s proud of the legacy she helped build. “It allowed me to help be a part of laying the foundation for young girls to dream attainable, possible dreams — and for parents to have an idea of what that dream can look like for their daughters.”

LIFE LESSONS: A volunteer assistant coach for several teams through the years, Denise is perhaps most proud of the Washington Premier “B” team comprised of girls born in 1994. After losing a series of games by a lopsided score, the head coach asked Denise, who works in the physical therapy industry, to help out. Team administrators wanted to cut most of the players and rebuild the roster with new recruits, but she proudly protested: “Do you know how much talent we have on this team? They’re only 12 years old. They’re babies. Give them time!” Two years later, with virtually the same group of girls still considered a “B” team, they won Washington state championship and ultimately played for a national club championship. “I helped them stay positive the whole time,” said Denise, who played competitively well into her 50s. “I’d ask them to go ‘make a little magic for me,’ just like Berhane used to say to me. Be creative. Take risks. Make your teammates look good, and they’ll make you look good. Most of all, just have fun.”

Denise, with longtime National Team friend and goalie, Amy Allmann Griffin