The Black & White Vol. 60 Issue 2

Voices from Whitman Crew

by Jamie Forman

Content warning: This story includes explicit language that pertains to sexual abuse, verbal abuse, grooming and eating disorders.

I

At their best, coaches act as leaders and mentors to those who look up to them. Teams expect them to foster a positive environment, where athletes feel encouraged to develop their capabilities both physically and mentally. As occupants of positions of power, these trusted leaders have the potential to instill into their team values like cooperation, drive and commitment. The best coaches inspire the students they oversee; they become vital to cultivating a healthy and productive team environment. Every community deserves that kind of coach — not every community gets them.

For over 30 years, Whitman crew has offered students a chance to join a close-knit group and participate in a highly competitive sport. Crew has been one of the most successful teams in Whitman’s athletic history, with a long record of top placements in nationally recognized races. No matter the season, pressure is always on to perform, place and beat their previous records.

This past summer, rowers anticipated their return to the Potomac River. Riding fresh off of successful seasons on both the men’s and women’s teams — all of their boats had earned medals at Stotesbury, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious high school-rowing competitions, the men even reaching the B finals at Youth Nationals — the club was optimistic about its upcoming season. Former social studies teacher Kirkland Shipley was set to return for his 19th season as the club’s head coach.

Then on Aug. 24, D.C. police arrested Shipley on counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a secondary education student, and second- degree sexual abuse of a secondary education student. Shipley didn’t reply to an interview request through his attorney.

For Whitman rowers, the excitement for the upcoming season was gone, replaced by disgust, uncertainty and a sense of betrayal. The announcement of the arrest spread through the community quickly, and shortly after, the Whitman Crew Boosters officially suspended Whitman crew’s fall season.

As the affidavit that detailed Shipley’s alleged actions circulated among community members, the experiences, emotions and reactions from some of the women of crew were often overlooked. From both past and present members, here are the accounts those women wanted heard.

Voices

“When we were still children on the team, we didn’t quite have the language to describe the environment on the team and understand that he was grooming people. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was sort of weird to have a coach that’s incredibly flirty or takes people out for drinks at bars after they graduated.”

“He’d also pry into our love lives. I think that there’s probably an appropriate way to do it, and at the time it was helpful, because I was a 16-year-old who was navigating everything. As an older coach, [he] was a mentor and gave me advice. Looking back, he would pry and ask me uncomfortable personal questions.”

“It was sort of an unspoken trend that we all noticed that he would pick a student, a woman, from every class and groomed them or built this relationship with them.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘07)

“There was a moment of shock when I read the affidavit and read about how he would start the process of grooming these girls by allowing them to spend free periods in his classroom. He was doing that when I was at Whitman over 15 years ago. Thinking back, I can remember at least three girls who always had a free period in his room. I’m not sure if it started as having any sort of motivation behind it, but it sounds like it definitely turned into a way to manipulate people.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team, early 2000s

“My philosophy is, ‘Look, I didn’t do anything wrong here, this isn’t my fault that he’s a shitbag of a person.’ I’d like to see him in jail because what he did is wrong. I’m not going to give him more of my time because he doesn’t deserve it — at all. He doesn’t deserve to be on my mind every day. He’s that person I don’t want to think about.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“I want the Whitman community to know that we were all hurt by his actions. We’re all horrified. I know, for me personally, that I’ll be very hesitant to trust another teacher or coach for a while. I’ll avoid his room. I try to avoid talking about what’s happened as much as possible.”

“The past few weeks have been so hard. I feel like the whole team is being punished for the actions of one person. The blame can not and should not be put on us.”

- Current member of women’s crew team

“Some things that stood out during my three years on the varsity rowing team were that he called my teammates bitches, commented about our bodies — mostly our weight — and disregarded our worries about COVID safety. When we shifted practices to being indoors for winter training, many people were worried that they’d get COVID-19. One girl stood out as a spokesperson and contacted Shipley about their concerns. Shipley proceeded to separately text another athlete and me and said, ‘Are you actually concerned, or is [said girl] in her own head and looking for people to validate how she feels?’”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“I’m not going to lie, the team culture was fucking terrible. It was insanely intense, which it didn’t need to be. He made it seem like high school rowing was the shit, when it’s not. If you’re spending your entire day thinking about rowing, then you have a problem. I would give up any 2k PR, college offers or whatever medal to not go through that experience. Because of my time on the team, my college experience is so much harder. My senior spring, I lost 15 pounds and was miserable and hated the mean person I became.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

II

According to a 2021 review of research into sexual violence in sports published in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, the intense environment of competitive sports enables abusers.

"Intense relationships between coaches and athletes seem to be a prerequisite for promoting young athletes’ success in sport. At the same time, such close relationships carry risks for negative dependencies, misuse of trust and commission of abuse … Some characteristics typical of elite sport may predispose coaches to commit abuse, such as gender and power relations, the need for physical touch, hierarchical structures in sport and trust and closeness between coaches and athletes."

Voices, contd.

“He’d text all of us one-on-one about practices, but there were times that it was clear that he had a lack of boundaries. After I learned that he got arrested, I reread and analyzed everything that he texted me, and it’s disturbing how he was so clearly looking for a way to get closer to these girls.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“I had him as a teacher for two years. I had him as my World History teacher and AP Human Geography teacher. On Zoom, he would ask me personal questions in front of the class — seeming to make sure that other students knew that we were closer ... There were also a few times that he texted me after a lecture asking if I was bored during class.”

“He would talk to athletes, so I would assume other coaches as well, about how bitchy one person was for calling him out, which was way out of line. He also texted me personally calling another teacher a dick.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“I‘d always heard little things, but it’d always been like cognitive dissonance for me. Either I could choose to believe something that somebody heard from a friend, who heard from a friend, who heard from a friend, or trust my judgment about this figure in my life who was a really important role model to me. Now it has made me question my entire life.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘17)

“He’d always pick favorites, and there was always this internal fight and questioning about why am I not the favorite? You have to foster a community where everyone feels valued, and that wasn’t the situation when I was on the team.”

“It got to a point that we’d see Shipley more than our parents. At one point, we’d have at least seven practices a week, with both morning and afternoon practices. I think the fact that he was a person of authority that we saw so often — he took advantage of that not only mentally, but also physically.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘13)

“It was a pattern for him — he always needed someone to put his attention to. I think that almost all of the people who didn’t go through that were almost completely oblivious to it because he was so charismatic and [rowers] feared being punished.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“[The team] would always spend a lot of time in his classroom. He would often encourage us to spend time in his room before school, after school and during lunch. While the athletes were in there, he would interrupt our personal conversations, often asking questions that somewhat forced us to confide in him. Once or twice, when I was there with multiple people, he encouraged them to leave, so that it was just the two of us alone in his classroom. I don’t know what to think about that now. Why would he let us spend that time in there? What were his intentions?”

- Current member of women’s crew team

III

Crew is a pure, team sport. Rowers work together with the other athletes in their boat as one unit to create a rhythm, pick up boat speed and eventually win medals. With six or more practices a week, high school rowing is no small commitment. If strong emotional, social and mental support for athletes is missing, there may be dangerous results.

In recent years, the varsity crew season has consisted of three main components: fall head-racing, winter conditioning and spring racing. During winter conditioning, the rowing team spends practices completing land workouts, which include running, weight training and indoor rowing on “ergs,” also known as rowing machines. Pieces on the erg are both physically and mentally draining — 2,000-kilometer tests, for instance, challenge athletes to reach, and sometimes exceed their limits. In addition to the physical struggle, there is an added level of competition between teammates to earn one of the limited spots on the boat.

Voices, contd.

“It’s common for coaches to know the weights of the athletes, but it’s not helpful for the coaches to post or put team emphasis on the weights — it just creates a competitive and unhealthy environment,” said former Division I Syracuse rower and crew parent Kristin Bidwell. “Erg scores don’t usually transfer directly to how fast someone will pull a boat because a heavier person will hold more weight behind them on the erg, which can make them seem faster than what they actually pull, so knowing weight can help the coach factor that in.”

“Rowing is a sport that, in its core, relies on the team aspect, and if that’s absent or toxic, then that’s the recipe for disaster. Disaster is what my senior year on the team was. Shipley simply never cared about us as people, only our well-being as it related to our rowing performance. It made it so our self-worth was measured by erg scores.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“We periodically had meetings about what we could eat. I remember one year, they tracked and wrote down our heights and weights. This is obviously not good for high school girls, to weigh them and tell others what they weighed.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘13)

“I’d always thought that I brought my stress on myself. I didn’t get stressed about anything else like I did crew and so it definitely had to do with the environment that he created. He’d write down everyone’s scores and post them publicly. If you don’t get a personal record on an erg piece, then you don’t get to go on the water. If you did any other extracurriculars other than crew, then he didn’t see you as highly.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“I was miserable all the time during my sophomore year but senior and junior year were worse. Junior year, I remember being so stressed every day that I would cry for about two or three hours just thinking about the next practice. There was this intense constant feeling that if I didn’t hit a certain split on the erg then we couldn’t succeed. [Shipley] expected us to go to a point where we couldn’t breathe, and he encouraged us to push ourselves to throw up and pass out, and I went to therapy for it. December-ish of my junior year, I got a bad injury so I took a short break from crew. I remember being so happy because I had no need to see a therapist anymore [for my mental health]. I had time to do all of my homework, my grades improved — but at what cost? I couldn’t walk or stand for more than five minutes. I wasn’t doing my physical therapy because I didn’t want to return to crew. I never felt uncomfortable [on the team] — it was just a constant state of stress, which looking back can be attributed to him.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“There were instances where I was literally crying in pain during a workout, and [Shipley] would make it seem like not finishing wasn’t an option. I remember very vividly one erg piece during my sophomore year that put me out for a season and a half, because I had to go to physical therapy three times a week for my back. During that piece, every single stroke I took caused stabbing pains down my back and down my legs into my feet. After I told him, he harshly insisted that I had to finish the piece no matter what because I already started it, while also implying that I’d let the whole team down if I stopped. So I pushed my limits and finished the piece and after, I couldn’t walk for two days and spent them crying.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

“During the early spring of my senior year, we weren’t allowed to get on the water until every single person PRed on a 6k and a 2k on the erg. And for some people that comes easily, because you work all winter and that reflects positively on your erg scores. But for some people, that can be very, very difficult. He made people do five, six, seven or more 2ks in a row until they PRed — this fostered a toxic mindset.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘13)

IV

Coxswain Sophie Tursi, a senior at nearby McLean High School in Virginia, has been involved in rowing since 2016. Although she characterized high school rowing as a competitive environment, she described her team dynamic at McLean as a group of “close-knit girls, who at the end of the day are there to support each other.” Coaches commonly use seat racing to help decide who should be chosen for which boat. During seat races, coaches pick multiple athletes to race against each other to determine who moves the boat faster. Tursi noted that her coaches are transparent with the conclusions they draw from seat races and give in-depth feedback on how to improve. This practice, however, was inconsistent on Whitman crew.

Voices, contd.

“I know a couple of people who had really, really negative experiences with him, where he’d like to ostracize them. When you’re a favorite, it’s very easy to sort of not pay attention to the people that are getting left behind. I think there was a culture where if [you] went with the program and said ‘yes’ to the Shipley show and everything that entailed, you were in a better position to get on a boat.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘07)

“There is this weird dichotomy of ‘I love doing this, and I love my friends and getting exercise,’ but you also know that it might not be the most healthy situation mentally. At the time, you’re a kid and you don’t know mentally what you should be doing. We were always pitted against each other, especially with the competition between the boats.”

“The environment made it so people in the C and D boats felt like they were worthless and absolutely nothing.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘13)

“At Whitman, Shipley would make seat racing seem so important and place such emphasis on the results, then would change or hide the results based on what he wanted. He got people really worked up and invested in what happened — people would be really sad, or angry or bitter towards other rowers. I didn’t realize how not-normal the seat racing culture was till I came to college and our coaches were clear and direct about who was getting switched. They also emphasized that seat racing results weren’t everything and it shouldn’t cause tension between rowers, which was definitely not present at Whitman.”

- Alumna from women’s crew team (‘21)

Jamie Forman is a member of the Whitman women’s varsity crew team.