ABSTRACT
Research on the abuse of a coach’s power over an athlete and the consequences of this abuse for athletes is robust in the critical sociocultural study of sport coaching. However, research on care and caring in sport, including a sport coach’s responsibility to care, is less well established. Drawing on feminist philosophical writings on the ethics of care (EoC), this chapter aims to address this gap by exploring the relationship between welfare and care and puts forth the arguments that shame and shaming articulate as practices that emphasise the lack of athlete care and welfare and as social phenomenon intimately connected to hierarchies of power in sport coaching. The chapter concludes by advancing the position that sport coaching is a caring profession, one that is responsible for the care of athletes within the complex institution of competitive sport, and that more research on care in sport is necessary.
