The Quinnipiac University Student Government Association executive board election announcements came to a halt Wednesday night when SGA announced that the executive board results were under review.
Graphic by Thamar Bailey
SGA Vice President for Public Relations Victoria Johnson announced the winners of each class’s respective president, vice president and representatives. However, she failed to announce the executive president, vice president, and vice president of Finance.
There were multiple grievances that were filed, but Johnson said the organization would not be releasing any more details until the appeals are filed and “properly dealt with.”
Based on the grievances forms found on the SGA Do You QU site, a grievance is a formal complaint based on a violation personally witnessed during the course of campaigning in accordance with section four of the SGA election policy.
According to the policy, a grievance could include: campaigning outside of permitted areas, executive board candidates spending more than $250 on their campaign, accepting donations and defacing or destroying campaign materials by another candidate or his or her supporters.
It’s unclear who filed the grievances, though Johnson said they can be anonymous.
Johnson did not specify when the executive positions will be announced.
It seems that the influence of video games grows more prevalent every day, even to a point where it might cause concerns.
This idea is evident with the recent success of player-versus-player games, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. These two games have found massive appeal amongst people around the country. According to pcgames.com, both games have reached a combined total of 6.5 million reoccurring players.
“I play PUBG when I should be doing work, and I’m in college,” said Chris Brachlow, a senior international business major at Quinnipiac University.
The games, both released in 2017, require the player to survive in a combat zone against 99 other people. While each game has their differences, such as Fortnite’s building mechanic and PUBG’s use of vehicles, the end goal is still the same for both games. This result is something that people who frequently play the games admire.
At the same time, the games also have their issues.
With the release of Fortnite for mobile devices, as well as the upcoming public mobile release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, people are growing concerned that these apps are becoming a distraction to people in educational institutions of all levels.
“It’s addicting,” said Steele Brogdon, a junior at Seawanhaka High School in Floral Park, New York.
When asked if people in his school play the game, Brogdon said that “tons of them” do.
“Once you start playing it, you just don’t stop,” Brogdon added.
Elena Bertozzi, a Quinnipiac game design and development professor, believes that the distraction these students may have from the game could be fixed by removing cell phone use from class rooms.
“I know that having students on their phones during class is incredibly distracting, which is why I send people out of the room if I see them doing it,” said Bertozzi. “I think it is harder for high schools to deal with this problem. I think the only solution is to not allow cell phone use during class.”
With the concerns of distracted students becoming more common, EPIC Games, the developer of Fortnite has responded to the matter. The company placed a message on the mobile version of the game’s loading screen, which specifically reads, “Mr. Hillman says stop playing in class.”
This was done after the company heard a teacher’s plea to have the company create a message to his students after they were getting distracted in his classroom.
With this message now in the mobile version of Fortnite it is yet to be seen if the public release of the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will follow suit.
Jorge Cabrera has lived in Connecticut his entire life. During his childhood, his father worked long hours in a factory and often took on a second job to support his family.
Cabrera and his wife Rebecca graduated from Quinnipiac University in 1998 when the tuition was just $27 thousand a year. It has more than doubled since then.
Now as a father of two, Cabrera is running for State Senate in the 17th District as a Democrat. He hopes to win the seat over Republican George Logan to update the struggling Connecticut economy.
Scott McLean, Quinnipiac political science chairperson and associate political science professor, remembers Cabrera as a “politically aware and socially engaged student.”
As a student, McLean said that Cabrera, who was elected as the SGA president his junior year, helped to improve the political science program as a whole and understood the importance of political involvement in his peers.
McLean also remembers Cabrera working to help the non-academic working staff on campus.
Cabrera with wife Rebecca and their twin boys Gabe and Jorgie.
“He was always advocating on behalf of the staff on campus,” McLean said. “And he did have an impact on students who picked up on that advocacy after he graduated.”
Cabrera’s mission is to bring more opportunities to hardworking people across Connecticut.
“In Connecticut there was a time, when my parents were raising me, where it was assumed that the harder you work the luckier you get,” Cabrera said. “It seems like that story is less common now.”
With a degree in political science and hands-on experience in student government, Cabrera went to work as a legislative aid for the first female Speaker of the House after graduation in 1998.
After starting a family, Cabrera and his wife experienced similar challenges to what he had seen his parents face.
“We struggled to make ends meet too. I had to get a second job,” Cabrera said. “My wife is a school teacher, she had to put in extra hours working summer school to make extra money for us.”
Cabrera is motivated by his life experiences to secure a Senate seat for the 17th district, made up of the town of Hamden (where he has lived for 13 years), Woodbridge, Ansonia, Derby, Beacon Falls, Bethany and Naugatuck.
“We need to invest more in Connecticut,” said Cabrera. He feels that the only way to give back to the state’s working class is by jumpstarting the quality of the state’s institutions.
His plan for improvement begins with Connecticut’s children, specifically the state’s public schools.
“We need to fully fund our public schools. We haven’t been doing that,” said Cabrera. “The quality of your public schools can attract businesses and also is a big reason why people make a decision to move somewhere.”
Next up for Cabrera is infrastructure.
“Our bridges, our roads, our rails, they have been neglected for a long time,” Cabrera said. “Connecting all of our communities is vital for attracting businesses who want to come here.”
Improving these facets of the state, Cabrera believes, will stimulate Connecticut’s economy and offer more jobs for people joining the workforce, which he feels has been becoming increasingly more limited.
“I am constantly meeting people on the campaign trail who have college degrees and are still living at home with their parents because they can’t find a good paying job with their degree,” Cabrera said. “That narrative wasn’t as common when I was growing up and even when I got out of school. If you got a degree somewhere you were pretty much assured a job somewhere.”
College is the third pillar of Cabrera’s plan. He wants to make it more affordable and eliminate student debt. For those that are not interested in college, Cabrera feels that the state’s trade school needs improvement as well.
“Many people I run across want to be a plumber, or a pipe fitter, or a carpenter, or a steel worker. Jobs that are good paying middle-class jobs with the right training programs,” Cabrera said. “We need to do more to invest in those programs and apprenticeship programs, because those (are) sorely needed.”
Cabrera’s mission is shared by many young politicians in Connecticut, that hope to see changes in the state with their involvement. The last election for the Hamden Democratic Committee alone brought 26 new members.
“The energy that young people bring, and the passion, is vital.A lot of the issues we have to solve directly impact college students and younger people,” Cabrera said. “We need to make sure that young people have a voice at the table.”
But young people can only have that voice if they get involved, said Cabrera.
“When you graduate, be aware of what’s going on and speak up. In our country that’s always the way it’s been. When young people get involved things change,” said Cabrera. “College grads and young people are more powerful than they realize, and their voices are powerful too.”
The election for state senate will take place on Nov. 6.
Most basements are dead places, where things deemed too valuable to throw out but not worth enough to keep in easy reach are stored, but not this basement-style room. It teems with 20 vibrant television screens connected to Nintendo WII video game machines. The sounds of characters from the game Mario Super Smash Bros. mix vibrantly with the often shrill voices of young people expressing surprise, frustration and the other emotions that accompany esports.
In Wallingford, Connecticut, every Thursday night the organization Hall of Gaming (HoG), hosts a Mario Super Smash Bros. event, called the “Hall of Gaming Melee Weekly.” According to Hall of Gaming employee Sean Thomas O’Connor, the weekly melee tournaments are the biggest of their kind in Connecticut.
Hall of Gaming’s Melee Weekly is held every Thursday night at 150 Center Street Wallingford, Connecticut.
“So you pay five dollars for the venue as a thank you to the owner for letting us use this space, and then five dollars to enter the singles bracket, and then I calculate all that money. Then I pay out to the top three,” said O’Connor, who is also a student at Quinnipiac University in nearby Hamden, Connecticut.
O’Conner notes that there is a range in the amount of money winners take home.
“You can walk out of here with anywhere from $50, to I’ve seen people walk out of here with $500,” said O’Connor. “Big or small we always have a good time here at HoG. We’re kind of like a tight-knit family in that sense.”
The Hall of Gaming snack bar with Hall of gaming employee and QU student Sean Thomas O’Connor
Mario Super Smash Bros. Melee was released on the Nintendo Gamecube back in 2001.
So what is “esports” anyway? Well, basically “esports” is what has developed out of playing video games on a competitive level. It has turned the competitive playing of video games into a sport. Playing esports can be done on an individual level, but mostly it’s played through teams.
Free streaming services like Twitch and YouTube allow anyone with a Wi-Fi connection to watch various esports tournaments and matches. These internet services give gamers the opportunity to watch their favorite esports athletes, mostly for free.
Esports is a rapidly growing industry around the world and according to Newzoo, an esports market research firm. The esports industry is expected to have a worldwide audience of over 557 million people by 2021. In Connecticut, esports programs and teams have made their way into high schools across the state, a prime example is the esports team in the New London Public Schools.
this chart shows the current as well as projected worldwide esports audience Size
Tyler Schrodt, the founder and CEO of the Electronic Gaming Federation, said that esports have changed into something more important than the original goal. Esports isn’t just a game, he says, but it can also give players a community that they can’t find elsewhere.
“It’s evolved beyond just the idea of people playing against each other in video games, into something that really makes a real impact for a lot of people,” Schrodt said.
League of Legends, made by publisher Riot Games, is the most popular esports game. It has more 100 million monthly active users, or MAU, according to research firm SuperData. MAU is a key figure used to measure the popularity of digital applications and games. In the MOBA game League of Legends each team has to work together using strategy to destroy what’s known in the game as a nexus in the center of each team’s base. Last year’s League of Legends World Championship had a nearly $5 million prize pool.
Arguably the most successful esports athlete Lee Sang-hyeok, also known as “Faker” has earned over $900,000 in prize money playing League of Legends. It has been rumored that “Faker” was offered a $2.5 million per year contract extension to resign with his team SK Telecom T1, after they won their third League of Legends World Championship.
Dota 2, made by publisher Valve Software, is another popular MOBA esports game that has more than 12 million monthly active users, according to SuperData The Dota 2 World Championship boasts one of the biggest prize pools for an esports tournament, with nearly a $24 million prize pool.
Statistics show how much money the esports industry is making, how many people watch esports and how valuable the esports industry will be in the future, according to a Morgan Stanley report titled “Have eSports Hit the Majors?”
“Esports is on track to be a $1.5 billion industry by 2020 as it emulates the business models of major league sports, complete with sponsorships, advertising, media rights, ticket sales and merchandise,” according to the Morgan Stanley report.The report’s statistics show that the esports industry was worth approximately $700 million in 2017.
“In 2017, esports attracted an audience of more than 380 million, 20 percent increase from the year prior,” according to Newzoo, an esports market research firm, cited in the Morgan Stanley report.
this chart analyzes the number of global online esports viewers vs. us sporting event tv viewers
Vince Nairn, managing editor of DBLTAPESPORTS, a media company focused on the coverage of esports using a combination of fan generated media with traditional sports journalism elements said, “Video games have always been popular and as technology has advanced and as kids today have lived their entire lives in the digital age (and a growing one at that), that interest has gone beyond just playing games with the handful of friends who live on your block.”
Nairn went on to explain, “We have a giant mass of people in the 13-24 age range. That demographic is the most desirable for advertisers because it’s huge.” He went on, “So you have this giant mass of young people and a lot of people interested in trying to reach them, and that’s why you’ve seen so much investment and sponsorship from non-endemics. Everybody wants a part of esports because it’s young and it’s trending up.”
Professional sports teams have started to get in on the esports action as well. For example, several of the world’s biggest soccer clubs have started to sign their own EA Sports FIFA esports athletes.
In 2016 English Premier League Club Manchester City signed Kieran Brown, also known as “Kez,” to be Manchester City’s official esports FIFA pro. Since Manchester City’s first FIFA pro mostly played on the XBOX, in December 2017 Manchester City signed a second FIFA pro, Marcus Jorgensen, also known as “ExpectSporting,” becoming Manchester City’s dedicated PlayStation 4 FIFA pro.
Marcus “ExpectSporting” Jorgensen Manchester City’s EA Sports FIFA pro. Image via his Twitter @Marcuzo45
Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the First-Person-Shooter game Overwatch, this year introduced the first season of The Overwatch League, which Blizzard intends to run like a traditional sports league. The inaugural season of The Overwatch League features 12 teams from all over the world including New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, Seoul, London, Shanghai, and two teams in Los Angeles.
The Overwatch League Logo. Picture Via The Overwatch League
The first Overwatch League season will take place in Los Angeles, with plans for home and away games in the future. Each of the 12 teams in the Overwatch League paid $20 million for a franchise spot and some of the owners of the Overwatch League teams include traditional sports team owners like New England Patriots Owner Robert Kraft, who owns the Boston Overwatch League team, and Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, who owns the New York Overwatch League team. With no revenue sharing until 2021 other prospective owners will have to wait and see if owning an Overwatch League team is a profitable venture.
The Logos of All 12 Teams in The Overwatch League. Picture Via The Overwatch League
When asked if traditional sports teams will continue to invest in esports, Nairn said that, “In the short term, definitely. I expect more of that to continue in the short term.” But Nairn isn’t sure that the investment in esports will continue in the long term, “So much money has gone into esports, and not a ton of those investors have gotten money back out of it, at least to this point. That’s going to need to change for people to continue to think their investments are worthwhile.”
High School esports In Connecticut and The Electronic Gaming Federation
Organizations like the Electronic Gaming Federation (EGF) have partnered with various gaming clubs in high schools in Connecticut to help create an esports league for Connecticut high schools. The EGF also helped Connecticut’s high school esports league become an official partner with Connecticut’s state high school sports organization known as CASCIAC.
The EGF was created in 2013 and according to its founder and CEO Tyler Schrodt, EGF’s goal is, “to do what the NCAA does for traditional sports, but apply it to esports.”
The EGF oversees both a high school and a collegiate esports league and according to Schrodt, the EGF wants its league to have a similar kind of professionalism that traditional sports organizations like the NCAA have. According to Schrodt, the EGF also works with various high schools across the country to help them build their esports programs.
The EGF Logo. Picture Via The EGF Website
“We (The EGF) also spend a lot of time working with individual schools to build their programs from the ground up,” Schrodt said. “We spend a lot of time helping to educate staff. We help them figure out what their program is going to look like, establish their goals and assist them up to the point of helping them design their facilities.”
The EGF also does all of its own event production and broadcasts. They even have their own esports broadcast training program that educates people interested in producing and commentating in the esports world and about what it takes to get a job.
According to Schrodt, the EGF often faces knowledge gap challenges when it helps high schools create esports teams and programs. The EGF helps explain what esports are, to students, parents, teachers and administrators who are unsure of what it is. The EGF also helps set realistic goals for the high school esports programs, as well as helps them reach those goals. EGF is working on expanding to other states besides Connecticut, but has yet to identify the states. The main tool that EGF has used to promote its services is through word of mouth.
“We put a lot of effort into enabling our members to talk completely about what they’re doing with their programs and how we as EGF can help new programs find their feet in esports,” Schrodt said. “Beyond that, we generate as much content as we can and make sure that we’re visible at conferences and wherever else students or administrators might have an opportunity to interact with us.”
One of the school districts in Connecticut where EGF helped develop an esports program is the New London Public School District. Clint Kennedy, who holds a doctorate degree and is the director of Innovation Technology for the New London Public Schools, decided to start a gaming club for the New London Public Schools after he saw a few of his students playing League of Legends during their free time.
After Kennedy started playing League of Legends with his students, Kennedy realized that games followed a pattern common to all technological developments. It required collaboration, research and critical thinking. During the first year of New London’s gaming club, about 80 high school students showed up for every gaming club meeting. This led Kennedy to approach the New London Public School administration about starting an esports team.
After an inconsistent first season for New London’s esports team, the students of New London and Kennedy decided that they wanted to start an esports league for Eastern Connecticut. While earning his doctorate at UConn one of his professors connected him with a guy named Andrew Cutter who worked at EGF and is currently the Operations Architect for EGF. In the summer before the 2016-2017 school year, Kennedy worked side by side with EGF and 15 high school students from Eastern Connecticut for eight days over the summer to create all the rules, marketing strategies and the ins and outs of the Eastern Connecticut esports League.
“EGF did some pro bono work to really help guide us in the creation of the league,” Kennedy said. “EGF also recommended that we open it up (the league) to the entire state.” EGF helped assist Kennedy and his students at New London as they pitched the idea of making their esports an official recognized student activity by the CASCIAC. “Once CASCIAC blessed it EGF became the official organizing body of the league.”
The New London esports program is not funded by the school system. Instead, it raises money on its own with tournaments and other events. The program does its own fundraising and they have monthly tournaments The Friday night fights tournament is among the most popular,, with funds raised through a $5 or whatever gamers can afford, admissions fee and the sale of food and beverages.
Collegiate esports
Esports has also started to make waves at the collegiate level with over 50 schools having their own varsity esports programs. Robert Morris University Illinois located in Chicago, was the first school to offer a partial scholarship for esports athletes for their League of Legends team back in 2014.
Robert Morris University Illinois esports Team Logo. Photo Via Robert Morris University’s esports Team Twitter @RMUesports
Lebanon Valley College (LVC), located in Annville, Pennsylvania, started its collegiate esports program last December. According to Director of esports Operations, David Shapiro, LVC treats its esports athletes and teams the same way they treat their traditional athletes and teams.
“At LVC we look at esports as a varsity sport,” Shapiro said. “Our esports athletes are a part of our athletic department, they have specific meeting times, specific measurements they have to meet, training schedules, coaches. We really treat it as an athletic organization and we maintain it as a full varsity level team.”
LVC has a Hearthstone, Overwatch, League of Legends, and Rocket League esports team. According to Shapiro, Lebanon Valley’s esports athletes practice Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for about two-three hours when they aren’t competing. When they are competing they only practice for about one-two hours on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Even though LVC plans to start offering partial esports scholarships in the fall of 2019, Shapiro believes divisions similar to how the NCAA has DI, DII and DIII will form after esports scholarships become more prevalent.
“I think what will end up happening as more colleges and universities join esports on the varsity level and colleges see an opportunity to offer scholarships or incentivize coming to play there, it will kind of like NCAA, it will create divisions,” Shapiro said. “Those divisions will be those who offer full rides and those who don’t. We play Boise State (a school with over 22,000 students compared to LVC’s 1,700 students) and I’m not sure if we will in the future.”
Mark Deppe the Acting Director of UC Irvine’s esports program believes that esports scholarships haven’t had that big of an impact on collegiate esports yet.
“There are only a few schools that have esports program scholarships for League of Legends or Overwatch that are good,” Deppe said. “Schools that were historically good at esports, and I would count UCI in that group, are still good at esports. Last year when Maryville won the national title for League of Legends, it was the first time a scholarship team had won the national title. In Overwatch, we were the only scholarship team that was in the finals and we ended up losing to a non-scholarship team.”
Maryville University won the college title for League of Legends in 2017
Professional, high school and collegiate esports are on the way up the and the future of esports looks very bright, but there are still some important questions for esports going forward. Mark Deppe, Acting Director of UC Irvine, raises one of the biggest questions going forward for esports, how long the current popular esports games will last.
“I’m not gonna promise that League of Legends and Overwatch and the games of today are going to be around 20 years from now,” Deppe said. “I think things will change and evolve faster, that’s just the world we live in now. Esports will be the new frontier of competition, I don’t think we are going to be playing football forever, and all the sports that we are playing right now forever, and I think esports will be in a good position to kind of take over that space in our hearts and minds.”
Shapiro, said that he believes more schools will start to have more varsity esports programs in the near future and that esports will become as commercially popular as traditional sports.
“In the next five years most colleges will have a varsity level esports program or will be in position to create one,” Shapiro said. “I think that major networks will air esports on TV seasonally, if not always. The market will continue to grow, we will one day see a Super Bowl commercial with Alienware or ASUS or Samsung or somebody that has two or three of the major players or teams in it. It’s not going away it’s only going to grow.”
When asked about the future of esports, Vince Nairn, managing editor of DBLTAPESPORTS said, “Whether that growth is sustainable or not? That’s the question that everybody is trying to answer. But the growth to this point has been undeniable.”
“I don’t think esports will ever fully be mainstream. And that’s OK. It can have its functional niche in the gaming and entertainment world, and a lot of people can be successful,” Nairn said.
Nairn went on, “But I don’t think esports needs to be seen as a traditional sport, or esports athletes being considered “real” athletes. That’s a debate going on in the industry right now about that, and it’s just pointless to me. Esports athletes are the best in the world in their profession, just as the NBA players are the best in the world at their profession and the top musical artists are the best in the world at their profession. It doesn’t matter how they’re classified, or if people believe they’re “athletes” or not.”
The rise of esports is evident in the number of participants and the growing list of schools that are fielding teams. Its future looks bright, as the buy in and financial investment from the established sports world continues to grow. It appears to be making a successful transition from the fringes of the sports world, to the sports mainstream. The development of both high school and college programs will only help in this transition.
Note: this article was updated on April 9 to clarify Sara MacDonough’s comments.
When Nicole Connery signed with Quinnipiac’s women’s ice hockey team for the 2012 season she didn’t know the suffering she would endure for the next three years.
Coaches from her hometown of Newmarket, Ontario, warned her when she told them where she was going. They told her they had heard things.
“But I was like, a lot of coaches yell,” Connery remembered.
Rick Seeley was Connery’s coach at Quinnipiac until her junior year when the university fired him in April 2015 for verbal and physical abuse of his players. But according to student surveys originally reported by Q30 Television, students had been reporting incidents since 2009.
“It could have been avoided earlier if our surveys were read and understood,” Connery said. “It’s the only thing I don’t understand of how those things were swept under the rug. I’ll never understand that.”
Every student athlete fills out a survey at the end of his or her season. After Connery’s first year she said she wrote long and honest answers detailing the abuse. But after a while she figured no one seemed to be listening.
Photo courtesy of Nicole Connery
In her first survey, Connery described an incident where Seeley had the team run from the Mount Carmel campus to York Hill at 5 a.m. Afterward they had practice without an athletic trainer and a player tore a ligament in her knee.
After her sophomore year, Connery said since she didn’t feel like administrators were listening to the surveys. She just wrote that Seeley, “probably shouldn’t aim a slapshot at a player that did something wrong in practice.”
A more public incident at an NCAA tournament loss against Harvard sparked the end of the abuse.
Seeley not only started swearing at his players, but also grabbed one by the facemask. Another coach had to pull Seeley off of the player.
“Not only did we all see the incident but my parents, other parents, parents on the other team, and players on the other team saw this incident and was horrified,” said one player in her anonymous survey.
Former athletic director Jack McDonald, who was at Quinnipiac during the Seeley scandal, declined to comment on the incident.
The university hired Sarah Fraser in 2016, so she wasn’t around for Seeley’s firing. However, as the deputy director of athletics she is now one of the administrators who reads the athlete surveys.
Fraser is also the senior women administrator at Quinnipiac, a role designed to promote women within the school, according to the NCAA.
She said the student athlete surveys are anonymous because they allow student athletes to feel more comfortable being honest. While she said she feels strongly that they should stay that way, she also thinks the anonymity makes it hard for administrators to pinpoint problems.
“The challenge is not being able to follow up with somebody to get additional detail or verify how true something may be,” said Fraser.
This challenge may be part of why physical, verbal and emotional abuse is widespread in high-level sport – and why it’s been traditionally ignored. Players say that the culture demands that athletes tough it out for fear of retaliation or being seen as weak. So they don’t usually speak up. This leads to a communication barrier between athletes and coaches that can leave abusive behavior hiding in plain sight.
In fact, nearly half of all current or former athletes have experienced some negative interaction with a coach, whether they felt like the coach was picking on them, or crossed a line, according to an online survey of 62 current or former high school and college athletes in the U.S.
It’s a decades-long problem that has recently gotten the spotlight because players are starting to speak out.
Earlier this year, a Michigan court sentenced former USA Gymnastics (USAG) team doctor Larry Nassar on sexual assault charges. The statements from the hundreds of girls and women Nassar abused exposed the true abusive culture of USAG’s desire to win more medals. Meanwhile, a book published back in 1995 explained the abusive culture of elite gymnastics, yet the governing body did nothing until gymnasts started speaking up.
But most athletes do not speak up, according to the online survey. One anonymous respondent said, “we are taught to put our heads down and deal with it.” Many ignored negative interactions with their coaches. But that has consequences.
A study from 2008 found that emotional abuse, rather than verbal or physical, had the most negative effect on the well being of 14 elite, retired swimmers. The study defined emotional abuse as “sustained and repeated patterns of contact-free harmful interactions between an athlete and caregiver (coach) that resulted in emotional upset of the athlete.”
Quinnipiac fired Seeley for verbal and physical abuse, but the surveys also show signs of emotional abuse.
“He even told a member of the team that she was in fact nothing to this team and that she was worthless,” said one student athlete in a 2013 survey. “He told a girl … when she was ready to quit that if she goes home all she will be is a waitress and that she will have no life.”
The study also found emotional abuse was the least studied form of abuse, especially in athletics. But it’s one of the most common.
In another 2004 study, all interviewed athletes said their coach had abused them in some way. This resulted in them feeling worthless, lacking self confidence, depressed, humiliated or fearful.
The study went on to point out that these feelings lead to a “lack of belief in their own ability to perform,” which ultimately ends up making them play worse.
Also, the “only the strong survive/no pain, no gain” attitude is a myth according to Celia Brackenridge, the director of the Centre for Youth Sport and Athlete Welfare at Brunel University in West London.
“This attitude reflects institutional intolerance for maltreating athletes and overlooks the longer term harm that can result for ‘tough’ training and coaching regimes,” said Brackenridge in a 2010 keynote address at the “How Safe is Your Sport” conference.
Sara MacDonough, Quinnipiac University athletic trainer and mental health liaison said she couldn’t comment on the women’s ice hockey incident. But in general she thinks communication could be a way to foster a good relationship between athletes and coaches.
“If you can talk it out and understand where people are coming from and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, then no one abuses their power and we can keep that check and balance in place,” she said.
According to former student athlete Connery, communication wasn’t always a solution for her. While her friends would go to other staff members to “let it out and cry,” Connery said she had no one she felt like she could trust. She said Seeley gave the impression that if anyone talked it would get back to him and they would be punished.
“For me it was hard because I never let myself flush out those feelings, what I had was just bottled up,” Connery said. “It’s not good for your health and you end up numb. Communication was just non-existent for me.”
Kelly Frassinelli, the field hockey coach and senior woman administrator at Southern Connecticut State University, said every school handles the role a little differently.
At Southern, Frassinelli’s role as SWA can include sitting down with athletes and talking with them about athletic, academic or social problems. As the field hockey coach she has regular meetings with her players to check in. However, in addition to communication on the athlete’s end, coaches must have a strong moral compass, Frassinelli said.
“I guess for me with all the stuff that’s going on in the world I just, I’ve never tolerated that. I’ve never felt that you know that in a role of power … you should ever take advantage of that role,” Frassinelli said.
She continued and said it might be easy to get lost in a moment, but that coaches have to remember there is life after sport.
“You have to stick by knowing that these are individuals you’re trying to make better people so that when they leave here, they might not be an Olympic athlete, but they’re going to be a good person,” she said.
Frassinelli recognizes that conversations between athletes and coaches will not always be pleasant, like after a game when a player has made a mistake.
“That’s where we encourage them to come talk to us,” she said. “And I know it’s hard for them sometimes but we’re going to give the honest answer whether you like the answer or not. But we’re going to try to communicate it.”
The line between being a tough coach and an abusive one is sometimes blurry, according to Frassinelli. Avoiding it totally may be impossible, but the important part is the way potentially abusive behavior is managed, she said. Coaches, athletes and administrations must build enough trust to do that.
“I think about how often is there oversight, how often are athletic directors or even associate ADs watching the interactions that are happening with their coaching staff and their student athletes just to check, just to make sure,” Frassinelli said.
Fraser, Quinnipiac’s SWA, said she believes administrator involvement is vital to understanding the cultures of the programs they oversee.
“I think the role is knowing enough about the programs you’re reading about going into the survey, so that most of what is said isn’t a surprise,” she said. “So if you’re doing your job [as an administrator] there shouldn’t be too many things there that you had no idea about because you’re close enough to the coaches, you’re close enough to the student athletes, you’re close enough to the program from just being around.”
However, Quinnipiac counselor Mary Pellitteri believes trust may be the wrong word to use when trying to avoid abusive behavior.
“Take trust and throw it right out the window,”Pellitteri said. “That’s a word that is way overused in my opinion because it’s something that has to be earned.”
Pellitteri said athletes need to not only get to know their coaches, but also get over the possible embarrassment of speaking up if they feel wronged.
“We feel like, ‘oh don’t be such a fuddy duddy’ or whatever, and that’s when it gets more and more uncomfortable,” she said. “So I think it’s more about trusting yourself to be able to stand up for things.”
However, as an athlete who has witnessed this behavior, Connery believes athletes sticking up for themselves can be a double-edged sword.
“They’re a wuss if they [admit it bothers them] and then people pull the whole ‘if you’re at a high level, if you’re a D1 athlete you need to be able to handle this,’” she said.
NCAA surveys mirror Connery’s thoughts.
In the most recent Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations and Learning of Students in college or GOALS survey, about half of female respondents said they were “very comfortable” going to their captains with team problems. The percentage increased from freshmen to seniors.
However, when asked how comfortable they were talking to coaches about team problems, a higher percentage of student athletes selected “somewhat comfortable” or “somewhat uncomfortable.”
When asked how comfortable they would be talking with administrators about problems on a team, over half were “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” across all years.
It was Connery’s captain, Morgan Fritz-Ward who faced discomfort and requested a meeting with administration. She and her team decided they were not going to let any more athletes suffer from their coach’s behaviors.
And once Seeley was gone, Connery, in her senior season found her love for hockey again.
“The coaches let me be a little more like, free, the way that I am,” said Connery. “And all the love poured in again.”
While the new head ice hockey coach and assistant under Seeley, Cassandra Turner, was not someone the players felt like they could go to in their time of suffering, Connery found a way to enjoy her senior season.
“In order for you to do better you have to forgive,” Connery said. “She’s very good at communicating with people … She’s very good at understanding people’s minds. I trusted that she could do well, could teach us well, could be a good coach and everything.”
MacDonough, the Quinnipiac trainer and mental health liaison, said that it’s important for coaches to have a healthy line of communication between them and their athletes and to not let too many personal feelings get in the way.
“We have a duty to check those behaviors, check our emotions at the door. If our student athlete isn’t performing well I do think that we have to hold them accountable and say ‘hey you’re slipping, what’s going on,’” she said.
So while student athletes can sometimes feel like no one is listening, experts say there is a way of managing problems between athletes and coaches. Abuse in women’s sports can be avoided with communication, accountability, respect and self esteem.
From Connery’s point of view, “you’ve gotta really value yourself … and know what you deserve and the kind of way you should be treated … put that value up higher.”
Reporter’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, Grace Manthey is a student athlete at Quinnipiac on the Acrobatics and Tumbling team.
