As she saw her former coach rise to prominence in the NWSL, she said she convinced herself that his success must have meant he was treating players differently. But when she read the NWSL players’ allegations against Dames last year, the player said, she realized he had not stopped.
She was especially struck by a former Red Stars player who described how Dames had pressed her to go out with him to dinner and lunch and texted her at all hours, commenting on her appearance and asking about her boyfriend.
“We didn’t have texts then, so for us, it was AOL instant messages,” she said. “He would IM girls at all hours of the day and night."
“It’s all recycled,” the woman said. “He was literally doing this 25 years ago. I thought, ‘In what world are we still living this?’ ”
Haley Leanna, 22, in Chicago. Leanna played for former youth and NWSL soccer coach Rory Dames, who she said verbally and emotionally abused her. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)
A field of fear
For Cnota and the woman who had a relationship with Dames, the sexual misconduct they say they endured was tied inextricably to Dames’s coaching — the same behavior that NWSL players would describe to U.S. Soccer decades later.
Dames’s volatility and anger, they said, made them terrified to disobey him; even a single misplaced pass could result in an order to run repeated sprints, sometimes until they collapsed, often as he screamed at them. Degrading nicknames such as “fat ass” wore away at their fragile teenage self-esteem, they said.
From the 1998 police report (Police report)
By the mid-2000s, some of Dames’s coaching methods had changed, players said, and he no longer made explicitly sexual comments. But several of Dames’s former youth players at Eclipse described verbal and emotional abuse and control that continued long after the police investigation.
“It was just all this belittlement,” said Haley Leanna, who played for Dames starting at age 13 in 2012. “We were always hoping he didn’t show up at practice so we could just have a day to breathe.”
Dames would mock their parents’ occupations, three former players said, or bring up their home lives when they made a mistake. During games and practices, the name-calling was constant: Players recalled Dames calling them “p---ies,” “donkeys,” “f---ing idiots” or “retarded.”
He often called his young players “fat,” several women said, sometimes appending vulgar words — “fat f--k,” “fat c--t,” “fat ass.” The body-shaming included girls as young as 10, two former players said. One recalled how in fifth grade, at a hot summer tournament, she and her teammates tied their shirts up, leaving some of their stomachs visible. Dames singled out the girl, who was heavier than some of her teammates, and said: “Put that down. That’s not a good look for you.” She began to cry, she said.
Bogart, Dames’s attorney, said he “did not and has not called players names.”
Hall, who began to play for Dames at Eclipse when she was 14, recalled a time when she was late to practice and jogged across the field to join a huddle. “Do you feel that?” Dames asked her teammates, as though the ground was shaking. “Hurricane Lauren’s coming in.”
Dames also subjected players to physical punishment, five players said, that went far beyond running sprints.
Lizzie Garrett-Currie, who said she played for Dames beginning in 2008, said he once punished her and her teammates after a loss by telling them to come to practice without wearing any Eclipse gear. When they arrived, she said, he made them don blank T-shirts on which he had written in black marker, “Know your place.” That day, she said, all they did was run sprints as he screamed. Humiliated and exhausted, some players cried as they ran, she said.
“I remember just sitting in the car after, and I felt like, if I tell my mom how I’m feeling, if I tell her what he’s doing to us, she might take me out of this,” Garrett-Currie said. “But I don’t want to be taken out of this, because this is what I have to do in order to get to the next level. If I quit, I’m a quitter — that’s what he tells you.
“I was so terrified. It’s so weird looking back — like, why didn’t I just quit, why didn’t I say something?”
But Dames’s influence in the soccer world — with college coaches, the NWSL and U.S. Soccer — kept players silent, they said.
At Eclipse and across the ECNL, nothing was more important than getting a scholarship to a Division I school. It was a pathway to the pros, but it was also a financial payoff for years of daily practices and, for some families, tens of thousands of dollars in club soccer and tournament fees.
Dames was usually the sole conduit between young players and college coaches, former Eclipse players said. He would recommend players to coaches, multiple former players recalled, but he also would warn coaches away from certain players. Dames dictated who played in the elite national tournaments where college scouts roamed, looking for players.
“He could single-handedly take your future in soccer away if he wanted to,” Leanna said. “No one wanted to risk that.”
A 2014 New York Times article recounted how, unlike many other coaches, Dames generally refused to connect colleges with his players before their sophomore year of high school, chiding coaches who reached out directly to parents or players without going through him. Those players, he said, were too young to make decisions about where they wanted to go to college.
Dames “kept a watchful eye on his players between games, at the pool at the Marriott where they were staying,” the article said. “As the 14- and 15-year-old girls went down the waterslide, he listed the colleges that had called him to express interest in each one.”
Dames’s control of his players also discouraged them from speaking up about him to one another or to adults, four players said. Hall recalled a time around 2011 when she and her teammates had been texting one another about Dames in a private group. When they arrived at practice the next day, she said, he had gotten screenshots of their messages. “He ran us the entire practice,” she said. “We never trusted each other again.”
The message from Dames, she said, was clear: “You’re not safe anywhere, and Rory knows everything. No matter what you do, he knows.”
‘Rory’s way’
As Dames shaped Eclipse Select into a dominant youth club, he also created a culture where other coaches sometimes mistreated young players, according to interviews with players, parents and former employees of the club.
Three other parents, whose children played under other coaches at Eclipse in the past five years, described behavior similar to Dames’s: male coaches who belittled girls for small mistakes and cursed at them from the sidelines during games. And two former Eclipse employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about professional repercussions, said they had seen other coaches at the club treat young players with disrespect.
“Sometimes the other young male coaches [at Eclipse] would almost be mimicking or modeling some of Rory’s way of coaching from the sideline,” one former employee said.
One Eclipse coach would call players “a bunch of retards,” said Kate Stanley, whose daughter played for an Eclipse team starting at 11. “We would just hear him screaming at them. One time, it was, ‘Go apologize to your parents; they pay all this money and you play like crap.’ She was 12.
“It changed her whole personality,” Stanley said. “She was so worried she’d do one thing wrong. She showed signs of being in an abusive relationship.” She eventually pulled her daughter from Eclipse because of the coach, she said.
Nesci, Eclipse’s president, called the allegations of abusive coaching at Eclipse “unsubstantiated.”
She was especially struck by a former Red Stars player who described how Dames had pressed her to go out with him to dinner and lunch and texted her at all hours, commenting on her appearance and asking about her boyfriend.
“We didn’t have texts then, so for us, it was AOL instant messages,” she said. “He would IM girls at all hours of the day and night."
“It’s all recycled,” the woman said. “He was literally doing this 25 years ago. I thought, ‘In what world are we still living this?’ ”
Haley Leanna, 22, in Chicago. Leanna played for former youth and NWSL soccer coach Rory Dames, who she said verbally and emotionally abused her. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)
A field of fear
For Cnota and the woman who had a relationship with Dames, the sexual misconduct they say they endured was tied inextricably to Dames’s coaching — the same behavior that NWSL players would describe to U.S. Soccer decades later.
Dames’s volatility and anger, they said, made them terrified to disobey him; even a single misplaced pass could result in an order to run repeated sprints, sometimes until they collapsed, often as he screamed at them. Degrading nicknames such as “fat ass” wore away at their fragile teenage self-esteem, they said.
From the 1998 police report (Police report)
By the mid-2000s, some of Dames’s coaching methods had changed, players said, and he no longer made explicitly sexual comments. But several of Dames’s former youth players at Eclipse described verbal and emotional abuse and control that continued long after the police investigation.
“It was just all this belittlement,” said Haley Leanna, who played for Dames starting at age 13 in 2012. “We were always hoping he didn’t show up at practice so we could just have a day to breathe.”
Dames would mock their parents’ occupations, three former players said, or bring up their home lives when they made a mistake. During games and practices, the name-calling was constant: Players recalled Dames calling them “p---ies,” “donkeys,” “f---ing idiots” or “retarded.”
He often called his young players “fat,” several women said, sometimes appending vulgar words — “fat f--k,” “fat c--t,” “fat ass.” The body-shaming included girls as young as 10, two former players said. One recalled how in fifth grade, at a hot summer tournament, she and her teammates tied their shirts up, leaving some of their stomachs visible. Dames singled out the girl, who was heavier than some of her teammates, and said: “Put that down. That’s not a good look for you.” She began to cry, she said.
Bogart, Dames’s attorney, said he “did not and has not called players names.”
Hall, who began to play for Dames at Eclipse when she was 14, recalled a time when she was late to practice and jogged across the field to join a huddle. “Do you feel that?” Dames asked her teammates, as though the ground was shaking. “Hurricane Lauren’s coming in.”
Dames also subjected players to physical punishment, five players said, that went far beyond running sprints.
Lizzie Garrett-Currie, who said she played for Dames beginning in 2008, said he once punished her and her teammates after a loss by telling them to come to practice without wearing any Eclipse gear. When they arrived, she said, he made them don blank T-shirts on which he had written in black marker, “Know your place.” That day, she said, all they did was run sprints as he screamed. Humiliated and exhausted, some players cried as they ran, she said.
“I remember just sitting in the car after, and I felt like, if I tell my mom how I’m feeling, if I tell her what he’s doing to us, she might take me out of this,” Garrett-Currie said. “But I don’t want to be taken out of this, because this is what I have to do in order to get to the next level. If I quit, I’m a quitter — that’s what he tells you.
“I was so terrified. It’s so weird looking back — like, why didn’t I just quit, why didn’t I say something?”
But Dames’s influence in the soccer world — with college coaches, the NWSL and U.S. Soccer — kept players silent, they said.
At Eclipse and across the ECNL, nothing was more important than getting a scholarship to a Division I school. It was a pathway to the pros, but it was also a financial payoff for years of daily practices and, for some families, tens of thousands of dollars in club soccer and tournament fees.
Dames was usually the sole conduit between young players and college coaches, former Eclipse players said. He would recommend players to coaches, multiple former players recalled, but he also would warn coaches away from certain players. Dames dictated who played in the elite national tournaments where college scouts roamed, looking for players.
“He could single-handedly take your future in soccer away if he wanted to,” Leanna said. “No one wanted to risk that.”
A 2014 New York Times article recounted how, unlike many other coaches, Dames generally refused to connect colleges with his players before their sophomore year of high school, chiding coaches who reached out directly to parents or players without going through him. Those players, he said, were too young to make decisions about where they wanted to go to college.
Dames “kept a watchful eye on his players between games, at the pool at the Marriott where they were staying,” the article said. “As the 14- and 15-year-old girls went down the waterslide, he listed the colleges that had called him to express interest in each one.”
Dames’s control of his players also discouraged them from speaking up about him to one another or to adults, four players said. Hall recalled a time around 2011 when she and her teammates had been texting one another about Dames in a private group. When they arrived at practice the next day, she said, he had gotten screenshots of their messages. “He ran us the entire practice,” she said. “We never trusted each other again.”
The message from Dames, she said, was clear: “You’re not safe anywhere, and Rory knows everything. No matter what you do, he knows.”
‘Rory’s way’
As Dames shaped Eclipse Select into a dominant youth club, he also created a culture where other coaches sometimes mistreated young players, according to interviews with players, parents and former employees of the club.
Three other parents, whose children played under other coaches at Eclipse in the past five years, described behavior similar to Dames’s: male coaches who belittled girls for small mistakes and cursed at them from the sidelines during games. And two former Eclipse employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about professional repercussions, said they had seen other coaches at the club treat young players with disrespect.
“Sometimes the other young male coaches [at Eclipse] would almost be mimicking or modeling some of Rory’s way of coaching from the sideline,” one former employee said.
One Eclipse coach would call players “a bunch of retards,” said Kate Stanley, whose daughter played for an Eclipse team starting at 11. “We would just hear him screaming at them. One time, it was, ‘Go apologize to your parents; they pay all this money and you play like crap.’ She was 12.
“It changed her whole personality,” Stanley said. “She was so worried she’d do one thing wrong. She showed signs of being in an abusive relationship.” She eventually pulled her daughter from Eclipse because of the coach, she said.
Nesci, Eclipse’s president, called the allegations of abusive coaching at Eclipse “unsubstantiated.”