‘Nobody believed those teenagers’

Soccer

Last fall, when players in the National Women’s Soccer League publicly accused prominent coach Rory Dames of verbal and emotional abuse, Megan Cnota was immediately transported to two decades before, when she was a teenager playing for Dames in suburban Chicago.

Yes, she recognized the behavior the players described, she said. But she also recognized something else: The NWSL players said they had twice before raised alarms about Dames, only to see him continue coaching.

Cnota and her teammates tried to do the same, she said. In 1998, a police officer in Arlington Heights, Ill., investigated after a former player complained that Dames had touched her inappropriately on her upper thigh…