The price she pays Confronting the hidden mental health crisis in women's sports--from the schoolyard to the stadium

Sports can give girls a sense of community and empower them. But as licensed marriage and family therapists Steele and Brown lay out, after spending years talking with women athletes about their experiences, sometimes coaches and other authority figures take advantage of their positions, and the results can be devastating. Larry Nassar, who sexually abused gymnasts, may be the most extreme, but another coach invited a player to his house to watch game films and instead showed her porn and masturbated in front of her. Steele, a University of Oregon track and field athlete, remembers telling a coach that she hadn't menstruated for months and getting this response, "That's great. Your body fat is where we want it to be." One noteworthy detail: the world's first suicide prevention hotline was established in 1935 after a 14-year-old girl killed herself. She had just started menstruating but, because no one told her about periods, she thought something was wrong with her. A must-read for parents of athletes and all who work with young people involved in sports.

Family therapists Steele and Brown debut with an empathetic guide to supporting female athletes at the high school and college levels. Illustrating the psychological challenges athletes face on and off the field, the authors describe how a college soccer player became clinically depressed after tearing her hamstring and watching "her team grow and thrive without her." Opining on how parents can help their daughters through such hardships, Steele and Brown recommend making it clear that one's love is not contingent upon athletic performance and refraining from pushing children to continue a sport if they no longer enjoy it. Suggestions for coaches can feel obvious (don't "use personal attacks, belittling, or degradation to 'motivate'"; focus "on sport-specific corrections, avoiding critiques about personality or appearance"), but the anecdotes make clear that such abusive practices remain common. (A 2021 exposé on the University of Oregon track-and-field team revealed that one coach would measure body fat with calipers to shame runners into losing weight, leading some to develop eating disorders.) Such stories outrage, and the advice on how to do better by female athletes is well-considered. This should be required reading for parents and coaches. Agent: Susan Canavan, Waxman Literary. (June)