I just finished a really powerful book. Mary Cain’s memoir, This Is Not About Running, and what stayed with me after finishing was not simply the story of one athlete inside one notoriously dysfunctional system, it was how recognizable the structure of that system felt, even to someone whose own experience was very different.

Mary was running for Nike from roughly 2012 to 2017, long enough after I had finished high school and college sports (1995-2006ish), and I was never sexually or physically abused by a coach. I want to be careful about that distinction because not every harmful athletic experience is the same, and I do not need to borrow the severity of someone else’s story in order to recognize the culture she is describing.

What I recognized was the system around it: The "good-old-boys" network, the blurred lines of authority, the adults with impressive-sounding titles whose qualifications were not always what athletes and parents assumed they were, the politics, the gatekeeping, the pressure to perform, the willingness to normalize questionable behavior because somebody was winning, and perhaps most importantly, the enormous amount of power we routinely hand to people simply because we call them a coach. That word is incredibly loose.

I am a coach. I have worked as a high school sports coach, a personal trainer, a health, wellness, mental health, and behavior-change coach, and in environments where the word “coach” can mean almost anything. Depending on the setting, it might describe someone with years of education in physiology, psychology, behavior change and human development, or it might describe a well-meaning parent who volunteered because nobody else would. Sometimes it describes somebody who was simply good at the sport. Those are not interchangeable qualifications.

We would never assume that because someone was once an excellent patient, they were therefore qualified to practice medicine, yet athletics has historically operated on some version of that logic. You played at a high level, you know somebody, your kid is on the team, you are willing to give up your evenings, congratulations, you are now responsible for the physical and psychological development of a group of children. That should strike us as strange.

One of Mary’s observations that stayed with me was her resistance to the idea that athletes necessarily need some entirely separate category of psychological care, as though their humanity changes when they put on a uniform. There are excellent sports psychologists, of course, and I have always understood that field largely through the lens of performance psychology, helping athletes work with confidence, focus, anxiety, motivation, visualization, pressure and the mental skills involved in performing at a high level.

But when an athlete is dealing with depression, an eating disorder, trauma, anxiety or another mental health condition, why would we imagine that they should receive a lesser or somehow more sport-friendly version of care? I never thought of it that way before. They are human first, athletes second.

An eating disorder does not become less serious because someone runs fast. Depression does not become acceptable because someone has a scholarship. Harmful treatment does not become therapeutic because it is delivered in pursuit of a medal. Athletes should not have to tolerate things we would recognize as unacceptable in any other population simply because hardship is part of sport.

That distinction matters to me because difficulty itself is not the problem. I believe deeply in the value of doing hard things. Sports taught me resilience, courage, discipline, teamwork, leadership and how to keep going when I was uncomfortable. My dad, despite having his own complicated relationship with achievement and athletics, taught me to take no shit and to be tough as nails, and I am genuinely grateful for that.

The problem is that athletic culture (the one I grew up in included) has often been terrible at distinguishing between resilience and harm. I was good at sacrificing my body for sport. I was proud of playing through pain. I knew how to toughen up, and I knew how much social currency there was in being the athlete who could take it. That quality can make you formidable, but it can also make you vulnerable, because the athlete who prides herself on tolerating pain can be very slow to recognize when she is being asked to tolerate something she should not.

Girls, in particular, were often receiving an additional message alongside all of this, which was that being good also meant becoming smaller. I experienced comments about my eating, my body and my size throughout adolescence and college, sometimes directly through sport and sometimes simply through the culture of being a young woman in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The messages blended together so thoroughly that it can be difficult now to determine where one ended and another began.

There is another structural problem here that we do not talk about enough, which is that if we want better coaches, we have to build systems that make it possible for qualified people to coach. When I coached high school sports, I was fingerprinted, background checked and vetted, which I absolutely support, but the compensation was laughable once you divided it by the hours spent preparing, practicing, competing and traveling. I loved coaching. I still miss it. I would gladly contribute to youth sports again if doing so did not require donating an enormous amount of professional labor.

That is not a small issue, it is part of the architecture of the problem. My son’s various "rec" teams need coaches. AYSO, Little League, and so on needs coaches. Youth programs everywhere are constantly begging parents to volunteer because the entire model assumes that coaching children should be unpaid labor.

Then we act surprised when the available coaching pool is determined by which parents have enough time, money, interest and confidence to step forward. Some of those parents become wonderful coaches. Others do not. Either way, we have created a system in which access to good coaching is partly determined by luck.

Organizations should pay coaches. Nonprofit does not mean nobody gets paid. Youth sports are organizations with registration fees, boards, equipment, insurance, facilities, administration and operating budgets. Coaching should be treated as one of the essential costs of delivering the program, because it is. Build it into the fee structure.

Pay people appropriately, require meaningful education, and credentialing, vet them properly, teach them about child and adolescent development, injury, nutrition, communication, mental health warning signs, safeguarding and the limits of their own scope of practice, then give them supervision and accountability.

That would not eliminate bad coaching, just as licensing does not eliminate bad doctors or bad therapists, but it would move us away from a model in which virtually anyone can acquire enormous influence over a young athlete while operating under an almost completely unregulated title.

Parents are part of this system too. Sports invite a particular kind of parental anxiety because talent creates possibility, possibility creates investment, and investment can quickly turn into the belief that if we just find the right coach, the right club, the right private training, the right tournament or the right opportunity, we can manufacture an outcome for our child. I understand the impulse much more now that I am a parent.

I am highly attentive to my son’s coaches (often to my husbands' annoyance, lol) because I know how influential those relationships can become. I talk to them, I stay involved, I ask questions and I pay attention to how he is being treated, but there is an uncomfortable line here as well. Parents cannot, and should not, control every outcome. Kids need opportunities to struggle, advocate for themselves, lose playing time, receive criticism, deal with disappointment and discover who they are outside of our management.

The answer is not to protect children from every hard experience. The answer is to make the adults responsible for creating those experiences worthy of the responsibility. That is the larger question Mary Cain’s story raised for me.

Sports are extraordinarily valuable, particularly for girls and women. They can teach us to inhabit our bodies with power, to lead, to cooperate, to compete, to recover from failure, to tolerate discomfort and to discover capacities in ourselves that we might never have found elsewhere.

I do not want a softer version of sport in which nobody struggles, nobody loses and nobody is pushed. I want a more competent one. I want a system sophisticated enough to understand that pushing an athlete and harming an athlete are not the same thing, that mental toughness and silence are not the same thing, that discipline and humiliation are not the same thing, and that caring about the person does not somehow interfere with developing the performer.

In fact, Mary Cain’s story makes me wonder how many athletes we have failed precisely because we believed the opposite. We often ask what someone might have accomplished if they had been tougher, more disciplined, more committed or more willing to suffer. I wonder how often the better question is what they might have accomplished if they had been properly cared for.

Not coddled, not protected from challenge, not guaranteed success, simply coached by educated, ethical adults inside systems designed to develop human beings rather than extract performance from them. That is a much bigger cultural overhaul than removing a few bad coaches, but I think that is exactly why it matters.

NBC-HWC | ACSM-CPT

Mental PEAKS: Support the Whole Athlete

Sports can build resilience, confidence, discipline and belonging, but kids also need help navigating pressure, politics, disappointment and unhealthy coaching.

At home, focus on a few things you can actually control:

Stay involved without taking over. Know the coaches, ask questions and pay attention to team culture, but help your child practice speaking up for themselves when appropriate.

Teach commitment and boundaries. Finishing what you start matters, showing up for teammates matters, and discomfort is part of growth, but commitment should never require tolerating harm.

Model sportsmanship. How we talk about coaches, refs, teammates and opponents teaches kids what competition means. Let them see that you can care deeply about winning without becoming cruel, entitled or disrespectful.

Talk honestly about fairness. Sports are not always a meritocracy. Bias, money, access, politics and timing can affect opportunities. Help kids recognize inequity without teaching them that every disappointment is injustice.

Make their identity bigger than sport. Ask about friendships, school, interests and how they are feeling, not just how they performed. They need to know they are still themselves when they lose, sit the bench or get injured.

Watch the language around bodies and food. Talk about strength, energy, growth, recovery and eating enough, not shrinking, “earning” food or looking like an athlete.

Know when to bring in outside support. If your child is (or you are) struggling with anxiety, depression, disordered eating or another mental health concern, treat them like a whole person first and an athlete second. Get professional help.

The goal is not to protect kids from every hard thing, it is to help them learn the difference between being challenged and being harmed, and to know that they never have to abandon themselves to belong in sport.

Mary Cain + Athlete Mental Health Resources

• Read:This Is Not About Running by Mary Cain, especially if you are a parent, coach, or work with young athletes. The book is explicitly framed as both memoir and a call for healthier youth-sports culture.
• Listen: Mary’s recent interview on The Lane 9 Podcast, where she talks about RED-S, fueling, body dysmorphia, trauma-informed care, navigating the healthcare system, and why a non-sport therapist was ultimately the right fit for her.
• Find qualified support:Lane 9 Project maintains a directory of sports dietitians, physical therapists, therapists, coaches, and other providers who understand athletes.
• ​Learn from what she built next: Mary founded Atalanta NYC, which uses running, mentorship, and community to support girls’ physical and mental well-being, intentionally rethinking the traditional competitive model.
• For coaches and organizations: Mary’s Fordham conversation digs further into athlete safeguarding, coaching ethics, accountability, corporate responsibility, and how abuse becomes normalized inside sports systems.

A First Look at Power in Practice 2027

A little preview of what’s next…Power in Practice is heading to the Dolomites, Italy in Spring 2027. Our retreats are about intentional movement, adventure, connection, great food, and stepping outside everyday life for a while. Think alpine trails, daily movement, spa time, incredible meals, and a small group of very good humans in Ortisei. We’re still finalizing the details, but this one will be intentionally intimate. If this already has your attention, hit reply and tell me you want first dibs on the Dolomites details!

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