When you are a young athlete, you generally have to do what your coach tells you, even when you are helping him to coach other teams.

What would you do if you felt that your coach did a poor job with the team, but you weren’t comfortable confronting him directly?

That is the situation that the young athlete in this story was in, so she wrote a letter to the board of the league and had them monitor his coaching methods. She feels cowardly, however, that she didn’t confront him face to face.

In this situation, it seems like she did the right thing. Read through the full story and see if you agree.

AITA for anonymously reporting my coach to the board?

I(F22) play a sport at a high level & also coach young girls in my club.

Coaches have a lot of power over the kids.

The person I reported (M50) is both the head coach of the youth team I help with AND an assistant coach on my own team. Despite being an assistant, he has a lot of power over me as a player

For the youth team, he is in charge of planning & running practices. My role is to help execute them, manage the girls & basically be a “mom”.

Did she try to talk to him about it first?

I’ll be honest I don’t like him. I feel he talks down to me & others, but that is NOT why I reported him.

My issue is the quality of his practices. They’re far below what the girls are capable of & they spend a lot of time sitting around instead of being active.

So, some parents had complaints as well.

There’s also a language barrier. He doesn’t speak the girls’ language. Neither do I fluently, but I’ve lived here for 1.5 years and understand it & speak enough for the girls to understand me.

I was approached with concerns by parents & encouraged to contact the youth board.

He does seem like a jerk.

I didn’t confront him first because I’ve challenged him before. Where he refused to speak to me for the rest of practice. He has also spontaneously told me to run practices without warning.

When I’ve said I haven’t prepared anything because planning is his responsibility, his response was: “I’m the boss, so I decide. Therefore, you’ve prepared something.”

If that is the normal path for complaints, her actions might be fine.

Considering he also has authority over me as a player, I wasn’t comfortable formally confronting him.

I contacted the board anonymously. They know it’s me, but I’ve asked them not to reveal my identity when they address the issue.

She is trying to do this the right way.

Importantly, I didn’t list everything I thought he did wrong. I know I personally dislike him and didn’t want to bias them. I even had my mom help make my message neutral.

This is the entire message I sent (translated):

Let’s see exactly what she said.

Hi Sue.

I’ve been encouraged by parents of the girls to contact the board regarding the youth teams.

I could easily tell you one thing or another, but I think the best solution would be for one or two board members to observe some of the girls’ practices.

This is a good way to go about it.

That way, you can form your own impression.

Afterwards, I’d like a meeting where we can discuss whether we have the same view of the practices.

Kind regards

The board agrees that he isn’t a good coach.

The board came without telling him why. Afterwards, they told me they also thought the situation with his coaching was bad.

Ironically, during that practice he put me in charge of the youngest girls. I hadn’t been told to plan anything, as that’s normally his duty, so I had to improvise.

It is good that the board got to see an unbiased practice.

This meant I was unknowingly being evaluated on the same basis as him while running a practice I’d had zero opportunity to prepare, which I’m okay with because I wanted the board to see a completely normal practice, not a prepared “show practice.”

I did go behind his back. He wasn’t told about the complaint or observation, & I didn’t give him a chance to improve before involving the board.

Approaching him directly would have been good too, but she handled it fine.

Was I wrong for anonymously reporting him & asking the board to observe his coaching rather than confronting him directly?

AITA?

If they were on an equal level and had a good relationship, she should have approached him directly. That is not the case, though, so going to the board makes sense.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Here is someone who says she handled the situation properly.

This person thinks she did the right thing.

She really couldn’t have handled it better.

Advocating for the kids was the smart thing to do.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who is getting evicted because they refuse to let their landlord in whenever he wants.

This young lady handled herself well.

She reported him to the right place and let the people in charge handle it. This is exactly how it should have been done.