Pushing Through The Pain

As a teenager, Charlie, (who requested that The Flytrap use a pseudonym) played basketball. Over the years, through different teams and coaches, they noticed they preferred certain kinds of feedback: “I respond well to my coaches being harsh and negging me.” But not all of their teammates handled that kind of coaching like Charlie did; receiving negative comments from a coach could make some of them crumble emotionally. It would have the opposite effect that the coach wanted. Players would give up rather than try harder.

After playing basketball at university, Charlie left the sport. As an adult, they returned through coaching a local women’s team. In learning to be the best leader they could, they found themselves leaning on another kind of training—the lessons they’d learned as a Dungeon Master in their local kink scene.

“I think having that awareness of how consent and boundaries are or should be established continuously, on an ongoing basis, has made me more aware of how others might interpret me based on the power dynamic of coach/player,” Charlie says. “I’m trying to be more up front about that so that it doesn't have negative effects on people or make them feel unable to say if they don't like something about how a session is run.”

While the BDSM world has language and norms to have these kinds of conversations, the sports world largely doesn’t. How does one bring the lessons learned in kinky spaces onto the sporting field?