Chloe Jeng, a senior at Mayfield, is currently working on a Girl-Scouts project called ‘Safe sports, Strong Athletes’. With statistics showing high rates of abuse among young athletes, protecting their safety is more important than ever. “Everyone involved in sports—athletes, parents, coaches, staff, and even those close to athletes such as neighbors, siblings, friends, and classmates–needs this knowledge,” said Jeng.
“By raising awareness,” said Jeng,” athletes can grow, compete, and thrive in a safe environment. Safe Sports, Strong Athletes aims to educate communities to protect athletes from abuse, misconduct, and unsafe situations in sports.”
Mayfield Crier asked Chloe Jeng a few more questions about safe sports. Here is what she had to say:
Crier: What are you currently doing on campus?
Chloe : The project that I am focusing on is a project to work on raising awareness about safe sports, so how to prevent, how to identify, and how to report any misconduct from coaches or players.
Crier: Is there anything students should know about safe sports?
Chloe: I think that people need to know that these things are actually happening.I’m one of the people who went through this myself that is why I am interested in raising awareness so more people can know about this issue, so more people can be educated and report this instead of being silent. They have a resource and know they’re not the only ones and that they have someone to report it to.
Crier: Is there anything else you think people should know about safe sports, like why exactly it’s important?
Chloe: Even if you’re not an athlete yourself, you should still be reading the article because your friends might be suffering through misconduct or physical misconduct and emotional misconduct. I guess this is kind of important because when I experienced this, I didn’t know if it was emotional misconduct. Thinking ‘Oh this is normal for a coach to do to me,’ or ‘I should just stick it out,’ but after researching it I realized this is not okay and this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Learning about safe sports is important so that if you are ever in a situation where you feel unsafe mentally or physically playing sports, you are able to know exactly what you should do. If you are interested in reading the flyer, you can find it here.
