Preventing abuse in youth athletics with Bobby Click

Bobby Click: 

He groomed the family. He groomed the community. He groomed everybody. 

Lee Wochner: 

Everybody loved gymnastics coach Mike Spiller. That is, until they found out he’d molested a 10 -year -old girl during a sleepover at his gym. Seattle climbing coach Alex Fritz was beloved by parents, but not after when they learned he was raping 15 -year -old girls on the job. These are just two examples of the horror stories that keep parents awake. 

And these are some of the abuses that Bobby Click has devoted his career to putting a stop to. As CEO of Safe Sport Matters, Click, a parent himself, is committed to preventing abuse in sports and in youth -serving organizations. Spiller and Fritz are both now in prison, but there are more abusers out there and more types of abuse than you might think. 

What are the three types of abuse the 45 million kids annually enrolled in youth sports might be prey to? How can you keep your own kids from falling victim? And what should people look out for? Find out this and more in this episode of That’s What C Said. 

Jaclyn Uloth:  

Welcome to the podcast that lightens the tension when things sort of get hard That’s What C! Said, the Counterintuity podcast, featuring interviews with leaders and doers who have helped to make our world a better place through their actions — and especially through marketing, communications, and embracing change. Here’s host  Lee Wochner.  

Lee Wochner:   

Bobby, welcome to the show. 

Bobby Click:  

Great, thanks for having me on today. 

Lee Wochner:   

So I’m very interested to talk to you about this topic. I think everybody wants safety, but I think we need to learn a few things about that just so we have a basic understanding. So you are the executive director of Safe Sport Matters. What does Safe Sport Matters do? 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, so that’s a great question. So Safe Sport Matters is a consulting group that works with sporting organizations and youth serving organizations around the country and even actually have some international clients. And what our dedication is, is ending abuse within those realms. So ending abuse in all of athletics and ending abuse within youth serving organizations like YMCA, big brothers, big sisters, things like that. So those types of organizations and really trying to promote safety, right? So what we do is help those organizations understand abuse, prevent abuse, and if necessary respond to allegations of abuse within their organization. 

Lee Wochner:   

Okay, so let’s start with understanding. In your use of this, what does abuse mean? What do you mean by that? 

Bobby Click:  

So when I say abuse, I typically put it into one of three categories, right? Because I’m usually talking about the type of abuse we see in those sporting or youth -serving organizations, and that’s sexual abuse, and that’s the one that most people have a good understanding about, right? Sexual abuse. Physical abuse, which, you know, is things like kicking, punching, those types of things, but also could be withholding water, excessive training, making somebody train when they’re injured, call that physical abuse. And then what most people would call emotional abuse or psychological abuse. And those are verbal or physical acts like yelling and screaming at people that have no productive or motivational purpose. Or physical acts like throwing the water cooler or kicking over the water cooler or punching a hole in a wall. Or acts of denying attention, so isolating individuals, ignoring individuals. Those are typically what are recognized as the three most common forms of abuse within these areas. So it’s sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional or psychological abuse. 

Lee Wochner:   

Okay, let’s take these separately for a moment. And just to reinforce, you’re really talking about with young people, correct? 

Bobby Click:  

You know, that’s a great point. Most of the work I do is within amateur athletics or youth serving organizations that involve youth, but it’s not only there, right? What I see, especially in the sports organizations, from professional sports down to grass level sports with seven and six year olds, we see some forms of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. And so these types, they’re all over the place, right? I point your listeners to the National Women’s Soccer League abuse scandal that happened within the last couple of years. And that is happening at the National Women’s Soccer League, which is the pinnacle of soccer around the globe, right? I’d also say take a look at Chicago Blackhawks back in 2021 when there was some abuse scandals happening with professional hockey players. So even though it’s most commonly portrayed as an issue that only affects youth, it really is a problem across the board in sports and service organizations. 

Lee Wochner:   

Okay, so I’m aware of that one with the soccer league, which was appalling. And then you also hear stories about figure skating coaches for young girls and swim teams. So, wow, so I have like a million questions for you. Let’s, unfortunately, right, let’s start with the sexual abuse. So, obviously there are laws against this and I would think that school districts which have sporting programs are vigilant because first of all it’s the right thing to do not to let people be sexually abused but also because it’s widely reported, it’s very illegal obviously and there are big court cases that come out of this. So. 

What does your organization do with that and why are you called in given that I would think, maybe I’m mistaken, I would think there are so many other protections for this sort of violation. 

Bobby Click:  

Well, you know, that’s true in some cases, right? So we have a number of different ways. There are often situations where police or district attorneys decide not to prosecute, right? Maybe their evidence isn’t there, right? So one of the things that my organization does is come in and investigate when police may decline to charge in a matter that would be illegal. And that could be for a number of different reasons. Often it’s because the standard of proof in criminal law is beyond a reasonable doubt, right? So that is as high of a standard, a legal burden that we have in this country. 

When I do an investigation, most of our clients ask for a preponderance of the evidence standard, which is a more likely than not standard. So we are able to actually investigate and potentially make findings in cases even if police declined to charge, right? But there are also a lot of situations where the conduct, although terrible, is not necessarily illegal, right? And think about in a situation where the age of consent is 16 and that’s still a minor, that individual is still a minor and they are in some type of relationship with a 34 year old coach, right? So even though that may not be illegal, organizations don’t want that in sport, right? And I would advocate pretty clearly that that is a form of abuse because of the power imbalance that exists. So we will come in and investigate in situations where it’s either not illegal or even if it is illegal, individuals have involved in the criminal justice system that declined to charge for a number of reasons. That’s the sexual abuse aspect, right? You’re right. Like a lot of this stuff, there is crossover with the criminal justice system, but there have also been situations where someone has been found not guilty at trial and they want a secondary investigation on that preponderance of the evidence standards. So there’s a lot of reasons why you would engage with an outside organization to investigate allegations of sexual abuse, even if it may involve a minor. 

Lee Wochner:   

Well, whether or not it’s legal for a 16 -year -old high school student to be in a relationship with a 34 -year -old coach, it’s certainly horrible. So it’s kind of nice to hear that there’s a backup here if law enforcement doesn’t get involved. Although as a parent myself, I find it perplexing that they wouldn’t get involved in that. 

Bobby Click:  

I couldn’t agree more, but that was a part of the creation of the Center for Safe Sport and a part of what I do now in my private practice is ensure that we’re doing everything we can, which includes the use of the criminal justice system, but also includes the use of other policies, procedures, and tools to really safeguard athletes and make sure that youth that are in youth serving organizations and are participating in sports are able to have the types of experiences that we want them to have, right? Sports are supposed to be a great experience for a kid. It brings you together, creates a sense of community. There’s so many studies out there about the positive benefits from a mental and physical standpoint for youth participating in sport. We have an obligation to do everything we can to make sure that they have those positive experiences. 

Bobby Click:  

And yeah, so that’s why I got involved in this and why I work with organizations around the world to try to help them safeguard youth. 

Lee Wochner:   

Okay, so, and we should remind listeners that you are an attorney as well, which helps you bring a wealth of experience to this and how to handle these sorts of cases. So that’s the sexual abuse aspect, which I think most of us can imagine much as we don’t want to. Let’s talk about emotional and psychological. Now this, I taught graduate level writing at a major university for years and I taught at other universities. And boy, emotional and psychological can be harder to define. It’s not quite, you know, he touched me or something like that. So how do you define emotional and psychological abuse? 

Bobby Click:  

That is a great question that if you got 10 experts from 10 different sports in a room, you’re probably going to get 10 different answers, right? Because there are so many nuances that come with emotional and psychological abuse. And one of the things I said when you asked kind of what types of abuse there were is that, you know, I’ll use the U .S. Center for Safe Sport, which has developed a code which is also similar to codes with the International Olympic Committee and others that say that it can be verbal acts or physical acts or denying attention that can cause psychological harm such as belittling and yelling that serve no productive or motivational purpose. So that is the difficult part right there. So what does yelling or being a tough coach, is that different for productive and motivational purposes for an elite 17 -year -old athlete compared to an eight -year -old athlete? 

Right, so not only is it difficult to define in general you have to understand that what is emotional abuse changes often depending on who the audience or target of the allegations are right and so it is it is really difficult and that is shown in the studies where there’s a great study out of young athletes that says emotional abuse 25 to 75 percent of young athletes that compete in sports are subjected to emotional abuse. That’s a huge gap, right? Because we know that it’s under -reported and not necessarily understood. And we as a society have not consistently defined what emotional abuse is. So it’s a great question that’s, you know, I’ll give you the lawyer answer that says, it depends, you know, it depends. It depends on who the audience is. 

It depends on what the purpose is. But anytime that I see acts, verbal acts or physical acts that are belittling and demeaning and have the chance of causing psychological or emotional harm to an individual, that’s a good place to start with an understanding of this is emotional or psychological abuse. And we have to move away from that in sports. 

it doesn’t necessarily, and I would argue that very rarely, does it actually have positive impacts and produce a more effective or productive athlete. 

Lee Wochner:   

Well, let’s talk about that for a moment. And I don’t disagree with you necessarily. And I don’t like to be yelled at either, right? And I’ve worked in all sorts of situations in my career and won’t have it. I worked for a major motion picture studio some decades ago where pretty much every executive was under court ordered anger management and I refused to be yelled at and I was quite happy there and someone said to me, well, well, gee, how come you never get yelled at? And I said I would get in my car and leave. And indeed, one day I did that. And then the lawyers hurriedly called me to make sure I was OK and lured me back. The myth we have in Hollywood is that the screaming, yelling thing is great to get great artists, great athletes, great people, because you were really hard on them and then they became superstars. And so you get movies like the one about the music teacher who is just a terrible person. You get one about the basketball dad who is just a real pain in the ass and screams and yells at his kids. And man, it’s life changing in a positive way for them. Any thoughts about that? 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, it may be true that it had a positive impact on that youth or that actor or that athlete, right? But it’s similar to what you said about the office is a great kind of lead in because what I often do when I’m talking to people about this, because it’s a common question, right? It’s like we haven’t done as many studies in the sports world, but there’s a whole lot of studies in the employment world that shows an employee who feels supported, who feels safe, right? 

Who feels that there’s open communication, they’re a more productive employee, right? That employee who feels there are healthy boundaries and there’s that work -life balance, all of those things, all of those studies that these large organizations have spent millions of dollars on, how do we have more productive employees? They’ve learned that, right? Living in fear and being demeaned or belittled at work does not result in a more productive employee, right? 

You have an employee who may produce, but they’re going to burn out. They’re going to move on, right? They’re going to get in their car and leave. Athletes, I would argue it’s the same thing, even though they might, they’re a youth, so they may not leave sport. They’re going to be less productive, right? They’re going to be less engaged. They’re going to be less inclined to push themselves at home when they’re outside of practice. So I often argue that the same type of things that we see that are beneficial in the work environment translate to the sports environment. Yes, there are some individuals who thrive or who can produce in those types of situations, but I think they’re the exception, not the rule. When we are safe, when the athletes feel supported and feel like the coach is there regarding development and protection, not results, they actually produce a little bit more. And I’ve seen a kind of a shift in transition in the sports psychology world to really focusing on athlete mental health and wellbeing because they’re starting to understand that that translates to performance on the field. And I would argue it’s the same thing. And so that cliche is, yeah, it’s a little out of date and I’d love to see it get a little bit more by the wayside. I don’t wanna age myself too much here, but being from the South, there were some tough coaches that I had when I was a youth and I thought, yeah, they helped me play better. 

It’s through my time in sport and in starting to study and learn more about these things to understand that maybe that worked for me But maybe others are part of that 25 to 75 percent of individuals who say that they were subjected to some level of emotional abuse and they left sport or they don’t participate anymore something happens so I like to treat those as exceptions and not the rule with regard to people who really perform well under those types of circumstances or situations. And as a society, we should understand again, exception, not the rule. And we should strive to create a safe space. That does not mean you can’t push, right? Athletes need to be pushed and they will excel when they’re pushed. But we have to understand where the boundaries are and not cross over into that emotional abuse or psychological abuse or physical abuse where we’re pushing athletes too far because I promise you, the athletes I’ve spoken to, the majority of the studies I’ve reviewed show that the inverse is true and that once they cross over that threshold, you don’t get the results that you hoped you had got. 

Lee Wochner:   

Well, as a teacher of 30 plus years, I know when you lift people up, they can achieve all sorts of things. And when you grind people down, they can do nothing except the one or two who decide to prove you wrong. And in times of my own education, I was that guy because I was told, no, not you. You can’t do that. So that was inspiring. But this seems to me like the gradients on a number line, right? 

all the way to one extreme is abuse, which you don’t want, and all the way on the other end is coddling, which you don’t want, and somewhere in there, you want inspiring. You wanna inspire people to perform. You don’t wanna coddle them, because then you get no results, and you certainly don’t want to abuse them. Is that kind of, I mean, how, I’m just gonna stay on this for a moment, because I’m fascinated by this. How do you identify whether emotional psychological is, 

abuse or not. And I think you’re saying it depends on the individual in each case. That’s difficult to monitor, isn’t it? 

Bobby Click:  

It is. So I would say the impact is subjective, right? Objectively, we can look at it and say that, you know, there are things that cross the lines, but what crosses the line to emotional abuse can change depending on the audience. And what I mean by that is a high performing Olympic level athlete. 

you know, is likely going to be, you know, what is said to them, how they are motivated, how they are pushed by their coach is different and should be different than how my six year old son is pushed by a soccer coach, right? So even though I think you can still take an objective approach to it, and that’s where we look at it and say, is what is being said or what is being done? Is it being done for motivational or support purposes, right? And that’s a little bit more of an objective standard that we can apply varying degrees based on other factors right based on the level of competition based on the years of experience based on a number of different things you know and not necessarily because yeah you’re right if you’re trying to do it on an individual review every time we’d never be able to you know we’d never be able to make standards or determine what would be emotional abuse but it’s still a gray area and I say that what my call to action usually is that each one of those sporting organizations needs to be very involved in defining what is emotional abuse within their sport at each levels, right? Like what a Olympic development program looks like versus what a grassroots level program looks like, right? And how each one of these sports and the leaders in those sports have to come together and work with experts to define out exactly what we see as emotional abuse. There’s always going to be a gray area. 

But I think we can do a better job of setting the bar as to what exactly emotional abuse is in each one of these areas. 

Lee Wochner:   

Every day I’m playing the man. I have my my 21 year old son still lives with me the final one still in the nest and Every day I I find myself Trying to decide between nagging scolding or inspiring and And I lean toward inspiring and I think Perhaps as he’s getting old. He’s a great guy. I mean I I and I said to my fiance I said my policy is take the high road because the trip is better. We were working at a family issue. And so generally I would agree with you. And at the same time, and we can move on at a moment, I get concerned about things about, and this has nothing to do with sports abuse, things like trigger warnings, right? It’s like, well, you know, some things like art and performance and things are meant to surprise you and have a shock. And so… 

But I like what you said about let’s identify the impact on the individual and then we can decide if it’s abusive. So this is absolutely fascinating to me. How did you get involved in this work? 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, so I think I took a little bit of a nontraditional path. As you mentioned, I’m an attorney by trade. So I actually started out as a public defender in Alabama. That was the job I wanted. I had signed a contract to be a public defender in Alabama before I graduated law school. And I did that for a number of years before moving into private practice, which focused a lot on criminal defense. And so I, you know, with five, six, seven years of experience started representing some pretty heinous allegations of murder, of sexual violence, of things of that nature, until eventually I moved into civil defense. I’d had enough, right? So I moved into civil defense, and because of my background, I actually ended up defending organizations under their sexual abuse and molestation policies when there were allegations that employees or volunteers or someone associated with that organization had committed an act of abuse on vulnerable populations. 

That was not for me. Coming from the public defender’s office, I always kind of viewed myself as a public interest lawyer, right? I was a service minded lawyer. I wanted to help people. And I can assure you that I did not have that level, you know, get that level of fulfillment when I was representing organizations that were complicit or potentially negligent in abuse of a vulnerable population where that was youth or elderly. 

And so one day I just told my wife, I was like, I just, this is tough. Like, I don’t know that I can do this anymore. And, you know, I was like, I found a posting that had been recommended to me by a colleague about this organization in Denver, Colorado, called the US Center for Safe Sport that was looking for attorneys that had a background in like sexual abuse defense from a criminal or prosecutorial standpoint. So I reached out to him and said, Hey, I’ve got, criminal defense, a decades worth of criminal defense background. And I also have quite a bit of experience representing organizations. And they said, great, come on out here. And that was the start of a, which has been a great career in sports safety. If you’d asked me six years ago, I would have laughed at you. I said, let me know what that is. What are you talking about? But once I joined the center, that was it. Like seeing the you know, I just kind of pulled the wool off of the eyes, right? I got to finally have a look at sports from an, you know, a side that I had never seen before. I love sports, right? It’s, you know, growing up in the Southeast, went to the University of Alabama for college and law school. It is like sports are just so important to my culture and my background that I had always viewed them from these rose colored glasses. And the US Center for Safe Sport was able to kind of wake me up to some of the problems in sport. And so that. 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, that started me down this path. I served in a couple different roles at the center. I was an associate legal counsel for about six months before I moved into management and ultimately served for the majority of my time as the vice president for response and resolution, which was the department that oversaw the investigation of all the sexual misconduct claims within the Olympic movement. And that was, you know, what I did until I decided that there were a lot of people outside of the Olympic movement that needed help in safeguarding from abuse as well. So took what I had learned from the center and moved over into helping organizations that are outside of the Olympic movement and you know, you serving organizations as well. 

Lee Wochner:   

take a short break here, but when we come back, Bobby and I will be talking about what you should do if you find yourself or others facing abuse in sports. Stick around. 

Jaclyn Uloth: 

Lee Wochner:   

And we’re back with Bobby Click executive director of Safe Sport Matters. Bobby, can you give us some examples of situations you found, terrible abuse situations? 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, you know, this is one of the more difficult parts of the job that I’ve been involved with, right? I mentioned early on, I think sports and you serving organizations are fantastic and have such positive impacts on so many people. I was one of those people that had, you know, look back fondly on, you know, sports in my time, but that’s the, you know, that’s the great part of it. Unfortunately, in my line of work, I see some of the worst parts of sports as well, right? And it’s unfortunate because what we see is you see the headlines grabbed by individuals like Nassar and Jerry Sandusky, which were just, I mean, horrendous, right? The amount of youth and people that those individuals abused. But I will tell you, while I was at the center, we were getting anywhere from 150 to 200 reports of abuse a week. 

And that’s not all sexual abuse. Understand that’s emotional and physical as well. But the amount of the abuse was just astronomical. And one of the cases that really stuck out to me because it was, you know, it’s one that made some media attention that I like to talk about because it was around a few different spaces was an individual named Mike Spiller out of Texas. Mike Spiller is now serving a 10 year sentence in the Texas Penitentiary because of his indecent conduct with a child, but Mike Spiller had self -labeled himself as the Doctor of Fun, right? That’s what he called himself. He traveled the globe, right? As a gymnastics coach, as a circus arts coach, he was even the master of ceremonies for Texas elementary schools and parades for children. 

And what had come out is that while he was running these camps and these clinics, he was abusing young women, right? Young girls, you know, some sometimes under the age of 13 across the globe. And what was really, you know, just really made this situation stand out and why I still, I remember this day is because it was a win for the U S center for safe sport. And, you know, just a great example of why the center is so important is because when we first got the report at the center, we reported the law enforcement, but it was outside the statute of limitations. So law enforcement was not able to move forward with an investigation of this alleged abuse at the time. So the center started its investigation. And as they were conducting its investigation, more women started to come forward. And some of those women were within the statute of limitations. 

So every time more information or a new victim came forward, that report would go to law enforcement and law enforcement was able to take those and say, hey, this is within the statute. We’re going to run with this. And we’re able to investigate and convict this man who for decades had been involved. And like I said, gymnastics was being flown around the world to coach athletes in gymnastics, circus, arts, and youth camps. And you know, nothing had been done for years and that was a problem. Right? And now he’s on what the, not only is he in prison and he will be on a sex offender registry, he’s also on a fantastic resource that the US Center for Safe Sport puts out, which is called the Centralized Disciplinary Database, which includes a list of all the individuals that have been banned by the US Center for Safe Sport and the NGBs for sexual misconduct within the Olympic movement. 

So you can find individuals on there. And so, you know, there’s a lot of media out there that you can see about Mike Spiller. And that’s a really, you know, it’s a really interesting case because again, this was a guy who was like held up as a pillar within the community. And he was teaching youth. This is not an Olympic level athlete. He’s not coaching Olympic level athletes. He is conducting youth camps for eight, 10 and 12 year old just to learn about gymnastics or the circle or circus art. So it’s a great example of abuse happens everywhere, right? Like it is not just within the Olympic level sports or Olympic level athletes, it happens everywhere. And there was another case that was similar that stood out to me that shows the problems with grooming and how these predators become you know how they integrate themselves in the community. It was a case called, it was an individual named Alex Fritz out of the Pacific Northwest. He was within climbing. And again, a lot of media attention involved. He was an Olympic level climber and he was teaching at climbing gyms across the country. And what made this case stand out to me was that the community started to come forward, right? Once allegations that he, was under investigation by law enforcement, by the US Center for Safe Sport, by climbing. The community took a step back and said, whoa, now that I think about it, some of the stuff he did just, it wasn’t, wasn’t normal. And when we started to talk to people, they were saying things like, he became a part of our community. We would let him sleep on our couch. Unbeknownst to the parent, he was then abusing the 13 year old daughter, why he was asleep on the family’s couch, because he had convinced them that he was safe, that he was a friend, that he had become a pillar in the climbing community and it served as just this kind of this forever warning to me that you know we just have to be vigilant. No, not everyone is a predator. Most people aren’t. I come from a place that most people are good, right? But there are dangers out there and so remaining vigilant and sometimes it’s even those people like Mr. Fritz that seem like he could do no good, that he wouldn’t harm a fly that he was being invited to stay on people’s couches because he didn’t have anywhere else to sleep. You know, the community got together and went loan him a car or purchase him a car. You know, that’s how integrated into that community he was. And it was after these allegations started coming forward and people started to just reflect on some of the things that had happened. They’re like, wait, he didn’t just groom the youth that he was abusing. He groomed the family. He groomed the community. 

Bobby Click:  

He groomed everybody, manipulated everybody into thinking he was a safe person, a safe space for these young athletes. And that’s what gave him access to these youth, to these climbers. Everybody that he abused, he found in a climbing gym, right? So it was all related to abuse. And so that, those are just two examples that to me it showed the Olympic level type, but also the grassroots level and to remain vigilant. And that’s really kind of what spur, you know, pushed me further into action to understanding, you know, grooming behaviors and the manipulation that individuals who are seeking to abuse others use because they don’t just groom the target of the abuse, right? They often groom the families and the community to make sure that they can get access and make sure that they can get, you know, isolate that intended victim without any, you know, throwing up any red flags. They’re like, of course Alex is gonna drive this person to this practice. Or yeah, it’s no problem. They can sleep in the same hotel room. Alex wouldn’t harm a fly, right? And then when it turns out that, you know, he was abusing multiple individuals, some within the same families. 

Lee Wochner:   

If you’re a parent, how can you make sure your children are being treated safely in sports activities and youth activities? 

Bobby Click:  

Great question, right? Education, education, education, right? Understand what abuse is and what abuse looks like, right? So I tell people, I always start, prevention always starts with an understanding, right? Because as you increase your understanding, you also start to learn about the best practices that are currently out there. And when you’re a parent at a club, because I’ll tell you, I do it, right? I want to know what the safeguarding practices are of the club my child is participating in, right? I want to just say, hey, what are your one -on -one communication policies, right? What are your travel and lodging policies? All of those types of things I want to know. And I don’t know what to ask for if I’m not educating myself. So I tell people the first thing to do is educate yourself. And there are great resources out there that are available for free to parents and youth athletes. I may not work at the US Center for Safe Sport anymore. But you will find I am one of its biggest advocates and it has great parent and youth athlete training that is available for free for any parent or youth athlete out there that can help you start to build an understanding of what abuse is, how to recognize it, how to prevent it, because then you can help in turn hold those organizations accountable and make sure they have those safeguards and best practices in place. Because what I tell people is if you don’t feel that your child is safe in an organization. 

That means other people’s children are likely not safe in that organization. So yes, you can take your child out of that organization, but I also want to see you start to raise issues and hold that organization accountable for being unsafe. And the first step is to educate yourself and your child in what the best practices are, what abuse is, how to recognize it, how to report it, all of those things. And there are free resources out there that are great and that I would advocate could really help, you know, put parents in a better place to where they can, again, feel more comfortable that their child is safe and that they know that because they’ve seen it with their own eyes and they’ve seen the things that are being done and they understand what the best practice is out there right now. 

Lee Wochner:   

If you can provide us with those links, we’ll put them in the show notes here so people can check it out and go help prevent this. 

Bobby Click:  

I will 100 % give you those links because I would tell everybody, use the resources that are out there. You don’t have to pay for all of this. There’s so much out there to make us a more informed group in sports safety. What I tell people all the time is I feel that predators, true predators, are like water or electricity. They follow the path of least resistance. If your club, or you’re as a parent, your involvement, whatever it is, if it starts to show those predators that there are safeguards up that this organization, this sport isn’t the easiest route for them, then they’re not gonna go there, right? And that’s what we’re trying to do by setting up those safeguards and increasing that understanding. And so I’ll 100 % provide those so you can have those for your listeners, because I’d love to see more people accessing those free resources. 

Lee Wochner:   

Excellent. So you had said there are three types of abuse and it was sexual, emotional, we covered those and we did not get yet to physical, I was saving that because I have a question about head injuries. So I’m not sure this is quite abuse, but you know, again, this goes to the gray area. Head injuries in the NFL has been quite a story and widely reported. 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah. 

Lee Wochner:   

Would you let your child play high school football tackle football? 

Bobby Click:  

That is a tough question, one that me and my wife don’t necessarily agree on, right? But I do think, like, I love football. I played football. I think football can be a fantastic sport for youth, but there have to be appropriate safeguards in place for me to say, yes, I would allow my son to play high school football, right? And, you know, some of those safeguards include like, 

Bobby Click:  

I want a coach who focuses on development and safety, not winning, right? I want him to be concerned with my son’s, my child’s development as an athlete and as a person, and that safety runs the forefront. There has to be quality equipment available, right? We know, and we see changes in equipment every day with them, especially football, have to be good equipment available. And what you talked about concussions, right? Head injuries. I would 100 % say, that failure to follow appropriate concussion protocols is a form of non -contact physical abuse. And what I mean by that is you see it in the NFL now. It’s where it used to be. You get a concussion, you go back in and play. Nowadays, they put them through an entire concussion protocol before they’re cleared to play football again because we know how much the injury can be exacerbated if they get another head injury while they’re recovering from a concussion. So concussions, training and protocols in place, those are just some of the things that would have to be in place for me to say yes. Because if my son came to me and said, I want to play football, it’s exactly what I just told your listeners. I would ask questions about what is there and what is available because there is no doubt that head injuries are a real thing in football at the, you know, at the P we level up to the NFL level. And I don’t even know that we have a full understanding of, you know, the long -term implications of head injuries in high school. So I would, yeah, I’d have to have a tough conversation, you know, with my kid and with the program to ensure that all the safeguards are in place to where we’re mitigating as much risk as possible for injuries in what is a violent contact sport, right? Look, I couldn’t tell you, I love football. I love college football. I went to roll tide, right? But that’s a good question for sure. 

Lee Wochner:   

Well, and I think you gave a good answer. I mean, my kids have always been really rigorously physical, doing all sorts of things, weightlifting. You know, I don’t, you know, those barbells get pretty heavy, right? You slap them up with weights and, you know, you drop them. Skateboarding, et cetera, and all sorts of things. So I just chose football and I thought your answer was great. Your answer is, let’s find out what the precautions are and what the protocols are and then we decide from there. 

Bobby Click:  

Yeah, it’s the same way that I operate in, like I said, what I would advocate to operate with the safeguarding and safety and abuse, right? Like sports can be safe and they can do wonderful things. So ask some of the questions on the front end and you can, like I said, you can do as much as possible to mitigate that risk on the front end, which is what I advocate for people. 

Lee Wochner:   

So we got a couple of minutes left. I wanted to just get a little bit more advice from you. If you could put three changes into effect that would help prevent abuse in youth sports, what would they be? 

Bobby Click:  

Just three, right? And so I wanted to get this stat out there because I tell people with youth sports, how many people, how many kids play youth sports in this country every year, right? And I’ll give you a middle of the road estimate, which is 45 million every year, right? And so that is why you will find I’m such an advocate for sports safety is because it affects so many people across this country. 

And so the first thing I already told you, education, education, education, the Olympic movement mandates education for coaches and for certain athletes once they reach the age of 18. I would advocate that mandatory education across sports is a step in the right direction to ensure people have an understanding. So not just the Olympic movement. Right now the Olympic movement, encompasses maybe 20 % of amateur sports in the US. So that means there isn’t an organization out there mandating the other 80 % of coaches or who participate in that other 80 % are appropriately trained. So I would say yes. So ensuring that mandatory education across the board, more investment in preventative work, right? So we live in a fairly reactionary society and we wait for something bad to happen and we’ll react. 

A lot of the work I focus on now is preventing the abuse in the first place, preventing harm. And I’d love to see more organizations invest in time and resources into preventative work, right? And not say, well, we’ll just wait for harm to happen and we’ll address it then. And it’s not because people are turning a blind eye to it, you know, that is not it. It’s because, you know, especially sports organizations that are often nonprofits are pulled in so many different directions and have so many limitations on what they can do that they have to prioritize. And I want to see more investment and priority into preventative work. And then for me, it’s communication. I want to see improved communication between organizations and stakeholders, parents and youth. You asked me one of the other things the parents can do to really make sure their youth is safe is to talk to them, right? And it’s to talk to the club. And these are difficult questions to ask and difficult topics to talk about. 

But it is really, I’d love to see some more open communications between all those involved in sports, the clubs to the parents, the parents to the athletes, all of it, right? I think we could go so big, but those are really high level aspirations that I think again, you boil them down into smaller topics. But if we started investing more in preventative work, if we started having more open communications. 

And if we started mandating more education across the board, some more individuals that we could really make, you know, some positive changes and start to push the needle further in just ending abuse in sport, which I think, you know, is an absolute necessity. Like I said, 45 million kids participate in sport. I told you 25 to 75 % report some emotional abuse, right? And then you talk about the other types of abuse that are out there with regards to. 

you know, there was a great resource that said 40 to 50 % have been subjected to some level of physical or mental abuse. 65 % of European athletes reported psychological or physical abuse as children. I mean, 35 % reported non -contact sexual violence. I’m not, I was a philosophy major at the University of Alabama, so I’m not good with numbers. But when you start talking about 40 to 50 % or 65 % or 44 % of 45 million, we have to do more to prevent that abuse because those numbers are, they should not be acceptable to anybody. 

Lee Wochner:   

So prevention, education, and communication, which, PEC, right? So, okay, that’s pretty easy to remember. Bobby, what’s the best way for people to connect with you if they wanna learn more or if they have an issue they need investigated? 

Bobby Click:  

You know, email is 100 % accessible by email all the time, right? I’m one of those old -fashioned lawyers who’s always checking his email and it’s bclick at e -f -i -g dot com. You shoot me an email. If you got a question, you know, I tell, I encourage people to reach out. I want to be a resource to anybody that needs help. You know, sometimes it’s as simple as a question. Sometimes it’s as simple as pointing somebody in the direction of appropriate resources. 

I want to do everything I can to help elevate sport safety. And so yes, please reach out for any reason that your listeners may have. 

Lee Wochner:   

And we’ll put that contact info in the show notes as well. Bobby, it’s been a real pleasure meeting you and learning so much more about this issue, which is obviously really important. I mean, people hold on to bad memories more deeply than good memories. And a kid who’s gotten a bad memory around sports as a child, that’ll last a lifetime. So thank you for the work you’re doing. 

Bobby Click:  

No, and I appreciate you having me on. It’s a great opportunity for me to be able to spread information about what I could not agree more is an absolutely vital topic to be discussing right now. 

Lee Wochner:   

All right, well, thank you so much. 

Jaclyn Uloth:  

Thanks for listening! We’re glad you came. That’s What C! Said is produced by Lisa Pham and engineered by Joe Curet. It’s available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to sign up and learn more.