The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite
youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of
a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical
framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous
situations, may give additional insights into the continuation of
emotionally abusive coaching practices. The purpose of this study
was to apply the seven properties of sense-making to explore how
athletes and parents made sense of coaching practices in elite
women’s gymnastics. We interviewed 14 elite women gymnasts and
their parents to examine how they made sense of what occurred
during practices. The results show how the sense-making of athletes
and parents was an ongoing activity that resulted in a code of silence
and a normalization of abusive coaching practices.
