Thread by @jessicawluther

Reading old SI articles is a trip. From a piece in 1993: "Former Houston coach John Jenkins, it came to light last winter, spliced footage of bare-breasted women into practice film. (You know, "Win one for the Stripper," and all that.)"

Oh, wow. 1993 didn't even know: "And Paterno's career at Penn State has been sullied by a spate of off-the-field incidents involving Nittany Lions, all duly recorded in the central Pennsylvania press."

I'm down a rabbit hole. A 2001 SI article: "Any coach who has been coaching for 10 years and says he never fell in love with an athlete or vice versa is lying," John Leonard, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches
Association (ASCA), told the NYT in 1993"

I thought, why's that dude familiar? "In 2010, as USA Swimming proposed a mandatory abuse education program for all coaches, John Leonard, executive director of the ASCA - essentially, a coach union - argued against the measure, which ultimately was approved." Oh.

"In 2013, Leonard published an op-ed in the coach association's newsletter expressing outrage that USA Swimming leaders were considering making abuse prevention a core part of the organization's mission, a common measure for youth-serving agencies."

Those quotes are from a 2017 WaPo that points out: "Leonard, still executive director of the coaches' association, did not respond to multiple interview requests."

Oh no! The start of a 1993 NYT article: "Female athletes and their parents are complaining in increasing numbers about sexual abuse and harassment from male coaches, prompting the coaches themselves to examine their own roles in a very delicate power relationship."

girls and women just wants to play sports, and this is one of the risks of it and has been one of the risks of it

Oh, ok. I'm now at the 1993 NYT article that was quoted in the 2001 article where John Leonard said that terrible thing.

"Several top-echelon coaches insist that the power of the male coach over a female student can be used constructively. Bela Karolyi, the former United States national gymnastics coach, still coaches 2,500 girls"..... oh my, 1993

"Karolyi, who also coached Nadia Comaneci to Olympic gold medals in gymnastics, said that when he was coaching team handball for women in Romania, he noticed one handsome male coach was able to gain the attention, and the fire, of his students." !!!!

This was 2008: articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/23/sp…

And this was 2018: cnn.com/2018/02/02/us/…

(y'all, I'm not even sure how I got here tonight but here I am)

"At the...Saints' 1998 training camp, two dozen veterans escalated the usual hazing...by herding five players, their heads covered with pillowcases, through a gantlet of punches, pushes and wallops with coin-filled bags." WHAT EVEN

(I back to SI now, this is from a 2003 article)