Many normalized coaching behaviors are often abusive yet are seen by coaches and athletes as instrumental in achievement and competition. The current study was designed to extend past research and theory by subjectively exploring how and why former intercollegiate athletes identified their head coach as emotionally abusive. Twenty former intercollegiate student-athletes (  = 26.0 years) from nine sports participated in semi-structured interviews ranging from 65 to 189 min ( = 105.8,  = 58). Interpretive description methodology was used with reflexive thematic analysis to generate a coherent conceptual description of the themes and shared experiences that characterized emotionally abusive coaching. The themes that associated with an athlete labeling a coach as emotionally abusive fall under two aspects of Stirling and Kerr's 2008 definition: and the resulting experienced by the athletes. Non-contact behaviors were ones that , , and were . The harmful effects were the and experienced by athletes. Finally, participants felt that a coach's desire for over athletes explained the coach's behaviors generally. Based on these results, we put forth the conceptual claim that emotional abuse, and psychological violence more broadly. The athlete's cognitions, perceptions, emotions, and behaviors are critical in determining whether emotional abuse occurred, and these interpretations are shaped by an athlete's existing relationship with the coach.