Few people, myself included, would recognize me as an athlete on campus. Really that is because I am not, or I am not any longer, but I played softball at Brown for one bittersweet year. I anachronistically participated during the competitive season in my second semester and the training season after that before quitting midway through my sophomore year. I had mostly relegated my athletic career to the past as a misstep, a valid but unsuccessful foray into collegiate athletics.
After I quit the team, I rarely got to keep up with my busy teammates and maintain my own schedule, and there was a gradual but expected falling out. It wasn’t until I read a recent Herald article that I even realized that eight more of my esteemed and talented teammates had left the softball program in a similar manner as me. In rethinking the events that led to my departure from the softball team, I have come to a brutal but honest conclusion: Katie Flynn, my coach, played no small role in what was one of my most difficult semesters at Brown. She subtly bullied and belittled many of my teammates and I until we had lost joy and confidence where we once found pride. To illustrate the point, I will convey my experience with the program, which rather explicitly implicates Flynn’s arrival at Brown in my loss of confidence and departure from the team.
I was never recruited to play softball at Brown. During my freshman year I began to miss how it felt to swing a bat and throw a ball. Softball has been a part of my life since I was a child, and I realized I wasn’t ready to give it up. I contacted the then-coach, DeeDee Enabenter-Omidiji, an eccentric and stern-faced woman who allowed me to try out for the team. Even during my try-out I recognized that I wasn’t performing at peak capacity. I was aware I didn’t consistently use the proper technique to block the ball, and I knew my throw-down to second was delayed. Regardless, Enabenter-Omidiji saw a player who was dedicated to her sport and whose skills could be developed and utilized. Because I had missed off-season, she made a deal with me that I would not see game time that season because I hadn’t put in the time and training that the other girls had. It wasn’t ideal, but I’m a team player and I’m willing to earn my keep, so I agreed.
As a catcher with a good attitude who loved her position, I walked onto a team with one very talented starting catcher who hated her post and a back-up catcher who was not a catcher at all. I started to see my use on the team. I spent hours warming up pitchers for practice and game time, helping them improve from behind the plate in the absence of a dedicated pitching coach. Sore but uncomplaining, I enjoyed the company of my new team and the friends I was making. I watched the coaches ignore their pitching staff and lose game after game. No one was overly fond of the head coach, and no one was enjoying the battering the team often took on the field. Under Enabenter-Omidiji we ended the season with a record of 7-13 in the conference, a step down from 8-12 the year before.
When Athletics Director Jack Hayes stepped into office three years ago, his first action was to turn the softball program around by hiring an entirely new coaching staff. The team was excited — softball doesn’t usually get very much attention or support compared to other teams. Hayes even let us participate in the selection process by advocating the kinds of qualities we wanted in a coach. I remember one request specifically; we wanted someone who commanded respect. On the surface, I can see how Flynn fit the bill; she is a strong and demanding woman with a low tolerance for bullshit. But interviewing for a job and successfully coaching a group of talented and eager young women are different tasks.
The outcome speaks for itself; three years later and three-quarters of her original team has willingly and concertedly quit the program. With only three upperclassmen remaining, the younger players seem appeased with their impressive roles in conveniently vacated starting positions. Truthfully, the team I watched play this season has improved moderately from the team I once knew. But the team still ended its season with almost twice as many losses as wins in its conference — a season few would designate as marked progress. In fact, it is exactly the record the team held when the previous coach was fired. Flynn’s two other seasons ended in even worse records of 4-16 and 2-18.
Beyond the hard numbers, the softball team was no longer just being battered on the field. Current and former players have broken down after enduring deprecation and derision from the woman who is supposed to believe in them most. Lying in the wake of the stories of harsh verbal jabs and unflattering subtext are nine talented and impressive young women, whose shared desire to play a sport they love with people they care about was tarnished by a coach who doesn’t understand empathy or respect. The enjoyment of our college softball careers was shattered along with our confidence.
I knew I was never the best player on the team; not everyone can be. I never even expected to get much game time without displaying marked personal improvement. But I did try my hardest; I continually improved and worked tirelessly for a team I really cared about. I played the undervalued role of comforting pitchers, coaches and other players by remaining available to keep the game moving, unwaveringly supporting largely unappreciated pitchers and keeping other players in the positions they needed to be in. I was happy during that season with the old coach; I knew I was never going to play but I also knew I was improving myself, playing my sport and helping my team. Enabenter-Omidiji saw a valued team player; all Flynn saw was a defect.
It may be true that part of learning about teamwork is realizing that you are only as strong as your weakest link. But teamwork also involves bolstering one another and strengthening each of those links to improve the whole, not cutting them out. Flynn made it exceedingly clear to me that as the designated weakest link, not only did I not help our team — her team — I was hurting it. By the time she was done with me, I had lost so much confidence in myself that I had actually lost my ability to hit a target. When a skilled player is suddenly unable to throw accurately and with assurance, this is a problem that any softball player will tell you is entirely mental. Imagine it: a collegiate softball catcher who can’t throw the ball back to the pitcher.
I was humiliated. Practices became a mental zone of persistent anxiety, insecurity and disappointment. I felt so strongly that I did not belong and that I never had. No longer able to perform reliably on the field and burdened with mental distress, I felt compelled to quit right before the start of our season. I never even got to earn an inning of game time. When I explained my dissatisfaction to Flynn with tears in my eyes, I said I could no longer continue to play for the team feeling the way I did and asked if I could address my teammates to express my discontentment to them and to say goodbye. She curtly told me no, that I had to leave and that the team didn’t have any more time for me. Now, seeing her around campus, she rudely refuses to acknowledge me in any manner.
For the first time, I can look back and realize it was not entirely my fault. I was not simply a miserable failure the way Flynn had made me feel. It takes a serious weakening of mental faculties to burrow doubt so far into someone’s psyche that she can no longer perform the same task she has excelled at for 12 years. I will admit to some of the fault personally; I was the first to go, I know my mental and physical fortitude were not of the same caliber as those of the other girls on the team. But when this process of mental degradation to the point of feeling alienated from an integral part of oneself happens nine times over, I think that is something that needs to be looked at. Even worse, this is not Flynn’s first go-around; players from her previous team had warned some of my teammates of similar issues that led to her dismissal before coming to Brown.
As an athlete, I understand that the sports realm can be a harsh world of do-or-die competition. Perhaps this style of coaching might be acceptable at a professional level or even just a higher-performing collegiate program. But I have never had a coach, however feared or effective, actually impede the confidence and efforts of her players so dramatically. Flynn has not turned this team around and she hasn’t led the softball program to a more respectable W-L ratio.
But is a slightly better team, even in the ultra-competitive athletics realm, really worth the demoralization of at least the nine women who felt compelled to forfeit the sport they love? Should the remaining team still be going to bat for a woman who seems to have such little regard for the individuals she mentors? How do we know this process of deflation and alienation won’t continue to affect more classes of eager young softball players? For me, and for many of the women who have found themselves under Flynn’s tutelage, the answers to these questions are clear.
In coming to this understanding, I felt that my experience shed light on the unclear aspects of the controversial bullying accusations that were leveled against Flynn, and which were bitterly repudiated in a recent letter signed by seven underclassmen on the team. In response to this letter, I think it should be made clear that these deliberations are not meant as intimidation or threat, but rather as means of expressing frank concern for events that have remained largely unrecognized and ill-considered. The letter calls many of the “allegations” and the credibility of the original article into question. The facts of these personal stories are often easily corroborated, as with my testimony. While I will be the only person signing this piece, having spoken with my previous teammates I feel confident saying that all nine players left for reasons directly relating to Flynn’s comport. Nine women, more than even the underclassmen who felt compelled or able to speak up for Flynn, are still at Brown and estranged from their sport based upon Flynn’s arrival at Brown and subsequent actions. It is unfortunate that this matter affected the end of the team’s season, but it is also important to recognize how this has much longer affected the very lives of women who no longer feel safe or comfortable playing softball at Brown. Now that the season is over, I hope a substantial investigation can be carried out in a reliable and extensive manner.
I can only hope that the experiences expressed by my teammates and I are enough to produce a serious and transparent assessment of, and subsequent reaction to, these accusations. Ideally, this would involve a public response from Christina Paxson P’19 or other administrators about the process for divulging and evaluating accusations of mental abuse by University personnel. This is especially salient considering the ramifications of this instance for the current mental health initiatives that Paxson is spearheading. Appropriate administrative reaction would also entail a comment from Hayes on how this issue affects the Department of Athletics as a whole — a realm particularly susceptible to this type of behavior. An indication of what has been and is being done about the serious issues that have been brought to his attention would also be astute. The only measure of which I am currently aware is a discussion with Flynn that resulted in a curt note to one player. These actions do not constitute an acceptably robust response.
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