Before the First Practice: Vetting the Adults Coaching Your Child

Whether your child is starting gymnastics, joining a travel ball team, or taking private lessons, you're trusting another adult with more than athletic development. You're giving that person time with your child, influence over them, and access to them. Most coaches are exactly what they appear to be: people who love the sport and want kids to succeed. But as a parent, "most" isn't good enough, and you have every right to verify.

In counterintelligence, vetting people was a core part of my job. The biggest lesson I learned is that a clean record doesn't mean the person is safe. It only means nothing has been caught and reported yet. The best protection comes from combining solid background verification with clear rules and adults who pay attention. This post will show you how to do all three.

Why This Matters: What the Data Tells Us

The CDC reports that at least one in four girls and one in 20 boys in the United States experience child sexual abuse, and about 90% of that abuse is committed by someone known and trusted by the child or their family. The danger usually isn't a stranger. It's often someone the family already knows and trusts, including people in trusted roles like coaches.

Most of it also goes unreported. More than 70% of people who experienced sexual abuse as children never told anyone while they were still children. That has a direct impact on vetting: if most abuse never gets reported, most abusers never end up with a record for a background check to find.

Youth sports have been through a painful reckoning over the past decade, and the protections that exist today came out of it. The U.S. Center for SafeSport was created in 2017 under the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act, with the power to investigate complaints, impose sanctions up to lifetime bans, and maintain a public database of disciplinary cases. Those are real improvements. But as you'll see, they have limits parents need to understand.

Step One: Verify Who the Coach Is and What They Claim

Start with the basics: the coach's full legal name, their experience, and any credentials they claim. Ask which organization issued each certification and whether it's current, then check directly with that organization rather than relying on a certificate on the wall or a line on a website. Credentials are easy to overstate and easy to fake.

Ask for references from previous programs and from families whose kids trained with this coach. Go beyond whether they win. Ask how the coach handles mistakes and losses, how they communicate with parents, how they respond when a parent raises a concern, and why they left their last program. Pay attention to vague answers, gaps in someone's coaching history, and frequent moves between programs or states. None of that proves anything on its own, but each is worth a follow-up question.

Step Two: Check the Public Databases Yourself

There are several free, public resources any parent can search.

The U.S. Center for SafeSport's Centralized Disciplinary Database lists people connected with Olympic and Paralympic sports who are under temporary restrictions during an investigation, or who have been sanctioned for violating the SafeSport Code. You can search by name, city, state, and sport. Keep in mind that the Center doesn't publish every decision, only the ones it considers a potential risk to the wider sport community.

Many national governing bodies, such as USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming, and USA Hockey, also publish their own lists of suspended or ineligible members.

For registered sex offenders, you can search the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's sexual offender and predator database. Search the Justice Department's national public registry at NSOPW.gov as well, since a coach may have lived in other states.

One important caution: confirm the identity carefully before drawing conclusions. A matching name isn't enough to say a record belongs to the person you're researching, especially with common names. Match on middle name, age, city, and any other identifying details. Getting this wrong can hurt an innocent person and your credibility along with them.

The Gap Most Parents Don't Know About

A SafeSport ban applies inside the Olympic and Paralympic system. Outside that system, it may mean nothing at all. A school team, a church league, a rec program, or an independent private coach may never check the database, and nothing requires them to.

This isn't a theoretical problem. SafeSport's own leadership has acknowledged that people banned from Olympic sports have gone on to coach at local schools or universities at least 20 times. A recent Washington Post and ProPublica investigation described a coach SafeSport found had engaged in sexual misconduct involving a minor, who kept coaching teenage girls through competitions and organizations outside the reach of the events that had barred him.

The takeaway is simple: don't assume someone else checked. Search the databases yourself, whatever kind of program your child is in.

Step Three: Understand What "Background Checked" Really Means

When a program says its coaches are "background checked," ask four questions: who runs the check, what it covers, when it was last done, and how often it's repeated.

Florida law does set a minimum for many youth sports programs. Under section 943.0438 of Florida Statutes, private organizations that run youth athletic teams must screen coaches who have direct contact with minors. For years that has meant at least a Level 1 check, which searches state and federal sex offender registries and is repeated every year. The legislature has been moving these organizations toward fingerprint-based Level 2 checks, which search FDLE and FBI records. Ask your program which level it currently runs.

Know the limits of the law, too. The statute applies to independent organizations running youth athletic teams, not teams affiliated with private schools. A private gym, a one-on-one lesson instructor, or a personal trainer may not be covered at all, so ask directly.

And remember what any background check actually does. It can tell you whether certain records exist. It can't tell you that someone has never behaved inappropriately, and a clear result is never a substitute for supervision and good boundaries. A well-run program should be able to explain its screening process to you without sharing another person's private report. Also ask whether assistant coaches, volunteers, substitutes, team parents who help with travel, and older athletes who help coach meet the same screening requirements. Those are the gaps people with bad intentions look for.

Step Four: Ask About the Rules Before You Enroll

Strong policies protect children, and they also protect good coaches from false accusations. The U.S. Center for SafeSport's Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies, known as MAAPP, set the standard. They're required for organizations in the Olympic and Paralympic Movement and recommended for everyone else. Under MAAPP, one-on-one interactions between adults and minor athletes must be observable and interruptible, parents must be allowed to watch their child's individual training sessions, and a parent, another family member, or another adult must be included on all electronic communications, including texts, emails, and social media. Adults also can't transport a minor athlete alone during program travel, and lodging must follow the same one-on-one rules.

Before enrolling, ask the program which policies it follows. Then ask more specific questions. Can parents watch practices and private lessons? How are one-on-one sessions kept visible to others? Are parents copied on all messages between coaches and athletes? What are the rules for transportation, locker rooms, changing areas, and overnight trips? And who handles a complaint if the concern is about the head coach or the owner? If the only person you can go to is the person you're worried about, that's a structural problem.

For gymnastics, cheer, and other sports that involve hands-on spotting, ask how coaches explain physical contact to athletes and how a child can say they're uncomfortable. Under MAAPP, a second adult must be present for any massage, rubdown, or athletic training treatment, and the child must be clothed, with private areas covered.

A good program will welcome these questions. A program that gets defensive or brushes them off has told you something important.

Step Five: Stay Involved After Enrollment

Vetting doesn't end after the first practice. The most effective protection for any child is an adult who shows up, pays attention, and keeps the lines of communication open.

People who harm children rarely start with an obvious act. They typically work gradually: singling out one child for special attention, gifts, or privileges; building trust with the family; creating reasons to be alone with the child; moving communication onto private channels; and slowly testing boundaries while encouraging secrecy. Each step on its own can look like kindness or extra mentoring. That's by design.

So pay attention to patterns. A coach who asks your child to keep things between them, messages your child privately without including you, keeps finding reasons for extra one-on-one time, or repeatedly works around program rules deserves your attention. These behaviors don't prove wrongdoing on their own, but they do warrant clear questions and a response from the program. Trust your instincts. You don't need proof to insist that the rules be followed.

Just as important, talk with your child regularly and in an age-appropriate way. Teach them the correct names for their body parts, that no adult should ask them to keep secrets from you, and that they'll never be in trouble for telling you something that made them uncomfortable. Children who know they'll be believed are much more likely to speak up.

If Your Child Tells You Something

If your child shares a concern, stay calm, listen, and let them tell it in their own words. Don't press with leading questions or suggest answers, because that can confuse the child and weaken a later investigation. Thank them for telling you and make sure they know they did the right thing.

Then act. If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. Suspected abuse should be reported promptly to the Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-96-ABUSE (1-800-962-2873) or to local law enforcement. In Florida, everyone is legally required to report suspected child abuse, not just teachers and doctors. If the coach is part of a sports program affiliated with the Olympic movement, you can also report to the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

Don't wait to gather more information, confront the coach, or hire a private investigator first. Reporting is law enforcement and child protective services' job, and they need to start right away.

How Oddfellow Investigations Can Help

Where we come in is before enrollment, or when something just doesn't add up. Oddfellow Investigations helps families in Pensacola and across the Emerald Coast verify a coach's identity and background, confirm claimed credentials and employment history, search the relevant public records and disciplinary databases across state lines, and look into inconsistencies in someone's story, all within a scope we agree on up front.

We'll tell you honestly what we confirmed, what we couldn't, and the limits of what the records show. No investigation can certify that someone is safe, and anyone who promises that isn't being straight with you. What we can do is give you verified facts so you can make a more informed decision about who spends time with your child.

As a father and a veteran, I started this agency to help people who can't help themselves. There's no one that describes better than a child. If you have questions about someone in your child's life, call us. The conversation is confidential.

Oddfellow Investigations LLC | Veteran-owned | Pensacola, FL | (850) 426-3901
Florida Agency License A 3500096

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; U.S. Center for SafeSport and its Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies (MAAPP) and Centralized Disciplinary Database; Florida Statutes s. 943.0438 and 2026 legislative amendments; Florida Youth Soccer Association; NBC News; Washington Post/ProPublica reporting..

Learn about our background and records investigations, or call (850) 426-3901 to discuss your concern.

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