Creepy Gym Coach

Hey, coach! Leave them kids alone!

"Coach Carr, step away from the underage girls!"

— Mr. Duvall, Mean Girls

A common stereotype of coaches and school gym teachers is that they have a "special interest" in their students.

Some of the things they may do include staring intently at people while they exercise, getting all touchy-feely with them, making flirtatious comments, trying to peek at them changing/showering, stealing underwear (and sometimes sniffing them), or desperately trying to get into people's pants. Their intentions can range from plain creepy (staring and sexual comments, but not actively trying to hurt people) to downright villainous (e.g., molestation or out-and-out rape). If the coach is well respected (usually because they coach a famous sports team), then they might get away with their actions.

People who are victimized by a creepy coach can be any age, with people who are school-aged being the most common. It won't end well for them if the parents find out, however.

Due to the perception that All Men Are Perverts and that A Man Is Always Eager, the coach is usually male. A female coach who behaves like this is more likely to veer into Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female (unless she falls at the Psycho Lesbian end of Lesbian Jock) or Double Standard Rape: Female on Male (unless she's an Abhorrent Admirer in the case that No Guy Wants an Amazon—and even that is more likely to be played for laughs than if the genders were flipped). Related to Teacher/Student Romance, Sadist Teacher, and Evil Teacher. See Drill Sergeant Nasty for another stereotypical portrayal of coaches (even though it originated with drill sergeants).

This is Truth in Television, as there have been coaches and gym teachers in real life who have sexually harassed or even sexually assaulted the people they were coaching.

This trope is both a stereotype and unfortunately true, so No Real Life Examples, Please!.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Gantz: Mr. Nagao, a PE teacher, discovers his student Sakurai being cornered by bullies in a washroom and joins in on the bullying by forcing Sakurai to give him fellatio with the bullies' help.
• Great Teacher Onizuka: Mr. Fukuroda has an unhealthy attraction to his female students, taking every opportunity to ogle them in their gym clothes (or even feel them up). When he gets framed for being a Panty Thief instead of Onizuka, it's a case of Right for the Wrong Reasons.
• Inazuma Eleven: Shuuyou Meito's coach is implied to have pervert tendencies given he tasks all the female managers, including those from other teams, to dress in Meido outfits.
• Rosario + Vampire: Mizore's arc begins with her freezing the school's PE teacher. At first it seemed she had attacked him for no reason, until it's eventually revealed he'd tried to force himself on her.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The second-series anime, in its very loose adaptation of the manga's Burger World chapter, has Anzu getting blackmailed - and filmed - by a perverted gym teacher (rather than getting held at gunpoint by a jailbird).

Comic Books

• Anya's Ghost: Anya hates doing the beep test because she thinks the male gym teacher just likes seeing [the girls] run around in their "stupid skirts."

Fan Works

• Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: The gym coach that Goh Hanma used to be taught by not only egged on Goh's delinquent "friends" to rape several women, but actively participated in the crimes himself as well. When Goh found out, he turned him and his fellow students in because of his own conscience.
• In Proper Discipline, Mr. King, the soccer coach at West Falls Educational Building, is said to like kids "A little too much". Subverted in Chapter 15 where it's revealed that he's actually an FBI agent and that him being a pedophile was just a cover story.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Chicken Little was raped by King Candy, the assistant coach of the baseball team, when he tricked him into going into a storage room alone with him. Unfortunately, Candy was well respected, so no one believed him. When Candy was finally arrested, it was for his abuse of his children, the Sugar Rush racers, and not Chicken Little's rape. Aside from him and the Sugar Rushers, it's unknown if there were any other victims.

Film — Live-Action

• While he isn't actually a teacher (he's the proprietor of a chain of gyms), White Goodman from DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story definitely comes across as this, mostly in his unwanted affection for Kate, as well as his dealings with his craving for junk food (as he was Formerly Fat) — he's shown shocking himself with wires attached to his nipples to prevent himself from eating a donut, and later his Dragon walks in on White stuffing a slice of pizza down his pants. Eugh.
• The Faculty: Subverted with Coach Willis, the first member of the faculty to be infected with the Puppeteer Parasites. He approaches the female principal in her office late at night, commenting on how "pretty" she looks in what's set up to look like a drunken rape attempt. It becomes obvious that he has very different plans when he stabs her through the hand with a pencil.
• In Fresh Meat, Glenn kidnaps his cricket coach Mr. Upjohn and brings him back to his Cannibal Clan as their next meal; explaining that the Updike is a pedophile who has been preying on young boys for years. It is mentioned that as well as coaching cricket, he is also a swim coach and a scoutmaster.
• Mean Girls: Coach Carr, source of page quote, the gym teacher/athletic coach/sex-ed teacher at North Shore High School, is eventually revealed to have made out with at least two of his female students. When this is exposed by Regina leaking the Burn Book that prompts the iconic all-out hallway brawl near the end of the film, he flees the premises amidst the chaos from Principal Duvall, who looks ready to beat him to a pulp once he catches Coach Carr trying to break up a catfight between said two girls. Later on in the film, Ms. Norbury, whom Cady had written a rumor about her selling drugs in the Burn Book, has to be investigated by the police because the rumor about Coach Carr turned out to be true and is implied that he is now a fugitive (though, unlike Coach Carr, the rumor about Ms. Norbury is false).
• Mysterious Skin: A pedophilic Little League coach took advantage of Neil's crush on him to sexually abuse him and Brian.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge: Coach Schneider, Jesse's jerkass gym teacher, is revealed to be one of these when Jesse finds him in an S&M bar and he brings him to the gym and makes him run laps before hitting the shower. It's heavily implied he intends to sexually abuse Jesse before Freddy possesses Jesse and kills him.
• Scary Movie: The high school coach is a man pretending to be a woman (played by a roided female bodybuilder) who's apparently just using the job to spy on teenage girls. Cindy only realizes this when she goes to the coach's office for advice and sees a pair of balls hanging from "her" skirt.
• Teachers (1984): The high school gym teacher regularly has sex with one of his students in the locker room and eventually gets her pregnant.

Literature

• In Skippy Dies, various characters make jokes about swim coach Tom Roche having a prurient interest in his boys. It turns out that Tom raped Skippy, contributing to his suicide.
• In Smaller & Smaller Circles, the killer Alex and his classmates were raped and sexually abused by their gym teacher.

Live-Action TV

• American Vandal: The coach, Mr. Rafferty, appears to be extremely genial and popular, but it's hinted that he's abused his position from time to time; one student believes he "roofied people" and Peter learns that there's a mention on his file of showing "inappropriate conduct with a student. And there's whatever he said to Christa after knocking her down and injuring her, but it's never explicitly confirmed how sinister he is.
• Beautiful People: Debbie mentions that she had a female coach named Pat Majacksie who once pat her jacksie.
• The Big Bang Theory: In one episode, Penny off handily mentions passing gym due to the affections of her (female) coach. In another, Sheldon mentions running from his own coach who was obsessed with taking his temperature with a rectal thermometer.
• Blindspot: Revealed to be the crux of "In the Comet of Us", Coach Mike Jones seemingly a caring and supportive figure at Agent Reed's Alma Matar is secretly a sexual predator who has been preying on his students for decades. However, cause his football program brought the school millions the corrupt board covered up his crimes and silenced his victims, this causes two of them to snap and go on a shooting spree. As Edgar realises whilst trying to build a case against him in season two, Jones also abused him and he'd been suppressing the memory all these years. In the end, one of Jones 'former victims kills him, and Reed helps him escape.
• Cold Case often portrays its gym teachers as very perverted:
  • "The Plan": The victim - a swim coach at a military academy - is revealed to have sexually abused his students.
  • "Family": The coach had raped one of his students in the locker room and seemed to be about to molest her daughter (who he may have actually thought was his own daughter from the rape, but she wasn't) when he was arrested.
  • Played with in "Stand Up And Holler". Although the coach in this case wasn't explicitly abusive, he was a slimy, pathetic loser who was far too invested in his students' lives and wanted to be viewed as one of them, so he covered up the rapes perpetrated by the football players.
• CSI: Miami: "At Risk" revolves around a tennis coach who is revealed to have been molesting his male students for years.
• CSI: NY: In "Rush to Judgement," the murder victim Coach Nelson was believed to have emailed several members of the wrestling team child porn, although it is eventually revealed that he was framed by the killer's son, who was mad that Nelson moved him up a weight class that caused him to lose a scholarship.
• Desperate Housewives: Art Sheperd in Season 3 is a swim teacher and, after happening to go into his house, Lynette learns that he has pictures of half-naked boys. However, Art claims they're just his students who he's proud of, but a Pædo Hunt kicks off which kills Art's sister Rebecca and drives him out of town. Before he leaves, though, he confirms that he's a pedophile who has never acted on his urges before because he needed to take care of Rebecca, but now that she's dead, nothing needs to hold him back. However, there is a possibility that he's just trying to scare Lynette to punish her.
• A subversion occurs in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Charlie Got Molested"; Despite what the title of the episode says, Charlie didn't get molested by his elementary school gym coach Chris Murray, although the others thought he was because he got nervous when he heard Chris was being sued by the McPoyle brothers, with Mac getting jealous because he didn't get molested. It turns out the McPoyles were lying about being molested because they could get a fortune from suing the school board, and the reason for Charlie's odd behavior is that he accidentally suggested the idea when he got drunk at a New Years party, and he tries to get the brothers to drop the suit.
• Key & Peele have a sketch starring Doug Duggart, a non-pedophile martial arts variant. He runs a Brazilian Jiu Jutsu dojo made up near-exclusively of blonde white women (and The One Guy), who he suggestively tackles and grapples with and gives "hands-on training" (except The One Guy, who he tries to interact with as little as possible). He never outright tries anything unambiguously pervy, though.
  Doug: Special discounts for college students.
• A Law & Order: Special Victims Unit staple:
  • Cassidy reveals in "Chasing Demons" that he was molested by his little league baseball coach when he was a kid.
  • Zig-zagged in "Pixies": the victim's sexual relationship with her gymnastics team's sponsor was consensual (although the power differential makes the whole thing a little iffy), but other girls on the team describe creepy behavior from him, such as one girl who says he gave her body lotion and told her to think of him when she used it.
  • In "Quarry", the Serial Killer pedophile on Death Row was also a serial rapist and a coach who kept the red baseball hats of all his victims.
  • Downplayed in "Lessons Learned". The gym teacher is mentioned to have raped his pupils, but it occurred as part of a culture of sexual abuse at the school, which also included an English teacher.
  • In "Personal Fouls", a highly-respected basketball coach is revealed to have sexually abused numerous players over the years, including his star pupil.
  • In "Monster's Legacy", a coach raped at least one of his players in the past and blackmailed him with the video of them "having sex", which then triggered the guy when he saw another coach (innocently) touch a student and led to him stabbing the innocent teachers.
  • In "Catfishing Teacher", a gym teacher/wrestling coach catfished a player by pretending to be the (female) teacher that two other boys were sleeping with, then drugging, kidnapping, and raping him. During the investigation, it's revealed that he's been using his coaching position to abuse kids for decades.
  • In "Contagious", it's believed that a young girl was sexually abused by her gym teacher based on a picture she drew of herself on a sports field with a scary man standing off to the side. However, it's subverted when it's revealed that the man in the drawing, the girl's actual abuser, is a high school student on the coach's lacrosse team.
• Orange Is the New Black: In Barb and Carol's flashbacks, their younger sister Debbie, a gymnast, tells them that she heard her new Texan coach likes to give his performers "rubdowns... everywhere."
• Seinfeld: Offhandedly implied by Jerry at one point when he mentions that a gym teacher once told him something along the lines of someone only being gay if they get an erection as a result of contact with another man, not simple attraction to them. However, the only gym teacher actually physically seen in the series was a vicious bully, but not a pervert.
• Meadow's soccer coach in The Sopranos is revealed to have started a relationship with one of the girls on her team. The girl even tries to commit suicide after learning the coach could be moving schools.
• Titans (2018): As a child and teenager, Hank was sexually abused by his wrestling coach.
• Unforgotten: In Season 2, Colin Osborne was sexually abused by his football coach, who was also a family friend, as a child.
• Veronica Mars: Woody Goodman, who owns the baseball team the Sharks used his position as the Little League coach to abuse multiple kids over the years, including Marcos Oliveras, Peter Ferrer, and Cassidy Casablancas. The fact that Peter and Marcos were going to go to the police to stop Woody from abusing anyone else is what leads to the bus crash.

Music

• The Pixies' "I'm Amazed", from the Surfer Rosa album, opens with Studio Chatter of bassist Kim Deal recounting a story of a teacher who was rumored to be "into field hockey players" and suddenly disappeared when allegations of having sex with them at school emerged.
• In a similar vein to the previous example, it was confirmed by frontman Kelly Jones of Stereophonics that this was the subject of the song "A Thousand Trees". Allegations had arisen that a locally-respected football coach, whose name had been enshrined on the gates of his town's pitch, had sexually assaulted a teenage girl, thus burning down the reputation he had built up to that point.

Video Games

• Bully: Bullworth Academy's gym teacher, Mr. Burton, sexually harasses the female high school students, and in one mission, he asks Jimmy to steal panties from the girls' dorm for him. Prior to the events of the game, Zoe Taylor tried to complain about his behavior to the school, but no one believed her and she was expelled. Thankfully, Jimmy manages to get Burton fired at the end of the game.
• In Criminal Case: The Conspiracy, Case 5, Coach Kirk peeps on his students in the locker room. One student, Vicky Lopez, caught him doing this, resulting in Kirk throwing acid in her face and strangling her with a computer cable when she refused to keep quiet about it.
• The Karaoke: Mira and Moeka's basketball coach finds them practicing after school hours. While he asks Moeka to stay behind, Mira heads to the karaoke alone. However, Mira realizes that the coach did something terrible to Moeka and hides in the karaoke as he arrives to get her. As the other endings revealed, the coach is a pedophile who had a hidden camera inside the girls' lockers and photos of his victims in his truck's compartment. It's up to Mira to report the coach to the authorities to put a stop to his terror.
• In Persona 5, the Starter Villain is Suguru Kamoshida, the gym teacher and volleyball coach at Shujin Academy who physically assaults the male students and sexually harasses the female students. However, he has a special interest in Ann Takamaki, forcing her to go out with him in order to let her best friend Shiho Suzui stay on the team and sexually assaulting Shiho when Ann refuses to have sex with him. His Shadow in the Metaverse even represents the sin of Lust, complete with a licking attack that only targets Ann.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: Coach Z's character evolution has made him creepier and creepier, from multiple jokes about his hygiene issues and "anatomy" to his crush on Marzipan turning into a borderline obsession. He's even famed in-universe for "butt patting".
  • Teen Girl Squad: A nervous and apathetic coach seems so eager to Defy this that he fails to do any teaching.
    Coach: Okie dokie ladygals. Your physical education final exam consists of me not making any misinterpreted remarks about the length of your shorts [holds out the stopwatch] and you doing a single push-up.
    Cheerleader, The Ugly One, and What's-Her-Face: NO!!!
    Coach: [shaken, holding up his hands] Hey, great work! You all get A's!!

Webcomics

• Ennui GO!: Coach Bobert is a slovenly, moronic pervert who forces his students to partake in inappropriate activities just so he can watch and get his rocks off. Needless to say, he is often a target of well-deserved abuse from Max.

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In "The Wrestler", Principal Lewis states that Coach Keegan was fired as the wrestling coach for teaching wrestling methods that would "be more at home in a prison". He went on to coach the baseball team and is seen wrapping his arms around two players, as shown in the page image. Also, in "Naked to the Limit, One More Time", he stares at Toshi's butt while he's climbing the rope.
  • Snot has alluded to numerous instances where his gym coach has given him some "helpful tips" during private times. For example, when he tussles with Steve in "Moon Over Isla Island", Steve asks why he's not immediately getting back up off the ground. Snot mentions that his coach told him about wrestling boners during a private session and he was waiting for the rager to fade.
  • When Stan wins an award for seducing a North Korean spy, he thanks his elementary school gym coach for teaching him everything he knew about seduction.
• In the Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Wet Behind the Rears," Butt-head asks Buzzcut if he's one of these when he tells them to take a shower.
• In Clone High, a clone of Eleanor Roosevelt works at the school as a gym teacher, and she seems to be overly interested in the teenage girl clones.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Eight Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", Meg's female gym teacher makes the girls strip down, get in the shower, and bounce around for her.
    Gym Teacher: All right, ladies. Enough chit-chat. Take it off, get in the shower, and bounce around for me!
  • In the episode "Leggo My Meg-o", Meg's male gym teacher makes the girls kiss him on the lips before leaving at the end of class.
• In the Paradise PD episode "What Happens in Tawtemala", Kevin admits that when he was a kid his gym teacher did "mutual masturbation" with him.
• South Park: Played with in "W.T.F.". The boys' wrestling coach tries to teach them traditional wrestling positions, but since the boys are only familiar with professional wrestling, they think the teacher is putting them into gay sexual positions. The coach gets fired because the school board thinks he was teaching the kids inappropriate things, and they assume his wrestling videos are gay porn.

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