Care and touch in trampoline gymnastics: Reflections and analysis from the UK

Introduction Interest in the phenomenon of child abuse in sport has gained significant prominence in the last twenty years, primarily due to a number of media driven high profile cases (Brackenridge, 2010; Donegan, 1995). This concern and attention, though borne out of good intentions, and because it triggers people’s sensibilities and emotions unequivocally, has also propagated a normative discourse remarkable for its narrow focus and degree of universal agreement. As a result, sports organisations, operating within a quasi-public social and political context, have become preoccupied with ‘defining the “correct” response to the problem and in cultivating a succession of practices as a means to govern the response of others’ (Piper, Garratt, & Taylor, 2013: 595). Sport coaches, who are on the policyto-practice front line, are enveloped by an institutionalised orthodoxy towards the phenomenon that leaves little space for a more enlightened discourse on the role of the coach conceived as ‘one-caring’ (Noddings, 2003: 8), and what this might mean in terms of best practice behaviours in caring for the children, young people and adults they coach.