"A manipulative person who does not take into account the best interests of his athletes. No idea how he earned the position as head coach of this school."

"This coach may be a personal trainer, but he was grossly incompetent in fostering a positive team culture both on and off the field with young women. Our daughter ended being caught in the middle of the team's breakdown that grew over time under his lack of soft skills. Afterwards, we were no longer able to trust his judgement or behavior with our daughter, she is afraid to run into him on campus, he ruined her good name by twisting details and purposely lying about events, she has listened to her college administration tell her she is everything he alleged about her though he's never been made to produce a timeline of those allegations. The more we helped her list out a timeline via text and emails to be fully transparent, the more we discovered disturbing trends about this coach. The talented young women's xc relationships fell to a low during the height of covid tension - some may never be repaired due to his incompetence and lack of integrity and honesty. By the end of the fall 2021 xc season, a teammate scheduled a personal meeting with him in order to bring the issue up and problem solve how to restore a healthy, positive atmosphere within the team. She shared well-thought out notes via texts with our daughter beforehand. They were both hopeful that talking with coach would foster the change their team needed. Rather than having a "lightbulb moment" during this meeting, the coach became angry. He blamed her for being divisive and assigned fault for any poor team dynamic on her rather than assuming responsibility as their leader. Before she left, he berated her until she cried and then told her she needed mental health counseling. She walked out of that meeting feeling shocked, devastated and attacked by his unexpected turn on her in light of her willingness to not only to raise the issue, but to be part of the solution to better the team. She texted my daughter in tears immediately after, afraid to be left standing alone for bringing the issue to light, and needing teammates to stand up for her against his allegations. This is an important trend because it happened to our daughter next after nothing was done to facilitate change. At least one teammate resigned at the end of the season due in part to the negative atmosphere and she told her teammates so. A few weeks later during winter break, a post made by a teammate was seen by a teammate who brought it to my daughter's attention. Whatever that vague post was about, it was seen and felt as personally hurtful to her in part due to the team atmosphere which coach had never addressed. These young women were literally falling apart without wise, strong, calm, fair, supportive and positive, effective leadership, ie much needed soft skills. Although every young woman is responsible for her own actions, the overall atmosphere falls to a coach's incredibly important soft skills. After a month of her trying to ignore that post we told our daughter that she had to bring it to coach's attention so it could be dealt with. We assumed he had the skill set needed to accomplish this. Her teammate privately urged her not to because of what had happened at her own meeting with him. We decided to ask permission to attend the meeting with our daughter so no such thing would happen to her. The meeting was tense, he was not happy with our presence and later told our daughter that parents should not be allowed in meetings - and we wholeheartedly agree! The exception will always be that an advocate is needed when someone is fearful they may be verbally attacked by their coach, professor or boss. He made a statement meant to wound her during that meeting about how well the team did without her while she quarantined with covid for two weeks. We were shocked that he would say that out loud and she emailed him the next day about his statement along with the post's screenshots. We do not ever recommend that a team investigation is done by this coach again. An investigation and mediation via the Dean of students would have been the best choice in light of what our daughter went through and continues to go through. Halfway into his investigation, he asked a teammate at practice why our daughter was being "stand-offish." (He knew exactly why. There was no need to start drama with a whisper campaign.) By the last day of the investigation, without ever meeting with both girls together in his office, he told the athlete in question to "work it out" with our daughter, unbeknownst to her, during practice. An incident where one person feels bullied/ridiculed by another does not get "worked out" by telling the alleged person to confront the person who reported it without a mediator carefully facilitating that reconciliation! Two hours later at a personal meeting with him, he concluded "that neither athlete was at fault" after the teammate in question stated her post was a joke made about herself. Coach then took that opportunity to berate our daughter in his office until she cried, told her she wasn't a "good teammate" for wasting his and other people's time with this issue, shaking a stack of investigative paperwork at her, and asked her if she was now ready to "be a good teammate," then told her she needed mental health counseling. She walked out of that meeting feeling shocked and devastated and attacked by his erratic behavior as she called us and texted friends afterward in tears. If this is protocol for reporting incidents, investigations, and remediation, no athlete will ever feel safe with this coach. We immediately set up a meeting with the AD after learning he had taken an opportunity to berate her until she broke down into tears turning a "neither athlete found at fault" investigation into a tirade on her for being a "bad teammate" because she walked away from that teammate cornering her alone in the weight room before she knew the results of his investigation. Regardless of what he assumed a reconciliation looked like, she felt threatened and alone in his very poor decision to tell her teammate to do that. Along with questions about his investigation method and protocol we were told there would be no retribution for any of this because "neither athlete was found at fault." The AD told us she was continuing to mentor the coach because he was "young and still learning" and that we and our daughter would have to "trust him." The AD said that although she did not use social media, she was a good judge of character, and had spoken to the other teammate and it was clearly "all a misunderstanding" as stated in an email to us. On her own, our daughter made the first available appointment with the Dean of Students to talk about the issue and possible mediation with her teammate. Together they concluded that, now 11 days later, things had indeed seemed to settle down, and an email from the AD confirmed that by stating "both teammates were able to have good practices together" they were moving on. The best solution at that time seemed be to allow the relationship to continue healing naturally rather than asking both athletes into an artificial meeting in the Dean's office. We fully agreed with the Dean that this made sense, however, no one could have predicted what would occur weeks later because of the coach's continued erratic behavior and lack of leadership skills. Since our daughter had quarantined for two weeks she had fallen behind in all her classes and labs. She had also developed knee pain which intensified with an exercise leadership class in her major and daily weight room plus running mileage with her team. Having undergone hip surgery and six months of intensive rehab for a torn labrum in high school, she knew exactly what could happen when athletes don't listen to their bodies and try to push through pain. The professor wanted her to choose between the intensive exercise course (she would have to retake if she dropped) or her xctf team. Our daughter wanted to be able to continue both but hoped to work out some give and take on each side as she was exercising intensely daily/weekly for hours for both professor and coach. She navigated this situation the best she could with both of them on her own. No one suggested she use the Faculty Athletics Representative to help her facilitate how to resolve her injury between them as professor and coach are not ethically allowed to speak personally concerning student-athletes. She also scheduled a series of appointments with a campus counselor because coach told her to, (after he berated her until she cried), as well as a physical therapy appointment to get outside assistance with her knee; then made an appointment to talk with coach about whatever her decision was for spring track. She texted us 20 minutes before that meeting with coach to say that although she was disappointed, she realized she needed to take a break from spring track. The physical therapist told her to work on knee strength and rest from running for several weeks and the counselor encouraged her to take time for herself because she was literally running herself ragged. Between playing catch-up with missed labs and daily classwork, working part-time and team workouts, she maturely realized she simply had too much on her plate and needed to give herself a physical and mental break through the rest of the semester. This is what she told the coach during the meeting that she scheduled with him. When we, along with friends, checked in with her after the meeting she replied via text, "he said he would keep my name on the roster in case the knee pain cleared up and I could run anytime I wanted with them as my knee got stronger." She thanked him but said she needed to heal and continue catching up with classes. When a friend texted her to check in after the meeting with him, she responded that he was "surprisingly supportive, calm and understanding, he was like a different person." She texted her teammates in their private group chat later that week that she was taking a break from spring track and then dropped her clean jersey off at his office minutes before leaving for a spring break trip with CRU in Destin, FL. Coach has said she dropped it off to quit the team, but she dropped it off because she is a responsible teammate who turns her jersey in at the end of every season and caring because she believed a teammate may have needed to use it at their meet early the next morning. Her past actions concerning her team point to and support her responsible behavior. After spring break, she kept up with the team, randomly liking posts from their track and field meets. She continued to text coach about every two weeks after spring break. First, she texted about scheduling her classes for fall semester within xc practices. Coach replied with details for days and times she needed to keep available for fall semester. Two weeks following that text, she texted him again asking if she needed to schedule an "end of season meeting" with him and he replied, "no, those meetings are only for those participating in spring track." If he ever had any thoughts or questions regarding her "quitting," he never voiced them to her, nor did he suggest she make an appointment to come in and talk during her texts to him. Eighteen days later we moved her out of her dorm and she texted coach that she was starting to run again. She felt ready to slowly build up to her regular distance over the summer break after rehabbing her knee for weeks. He texted her back saying that he had "removed her from the program because she had quit the team." More erratic behavior and more words used to wound her that we literally could not comprehend. What more could this 20 year old student-athlete have done that she did not do in the midst of all that she had on her plate? She literally broke down into tears in front of us. We, along with our daughter were shocked and devastated by his outrageous and exhaustive erratic behavior that either made her feel like she was perfectly fine or that she was perfectly terrible and now he made her feel like she was half-crazy. She texted back that she had never quit the team and he replied that when she left her jersey on his office door she had effectively "quit" and that she could make an appointment herself with the AD, but that yes, she had "quit." She then texted her teammate and fall roommate, "I'm in tears, coach removed me from the team," but never received a reply from the teammate when she needed someone to stand up against allegations now made against her. (Months later our daughter was told secondhand that her teammate had either been so anxious of also being removed or associating with her, that she asked coach how to respond to the text and he told her to ignore it. I reached out twice to the mother whom I enjoyed team meets with our dogs and occasional dinner outings with, both also went unanswered. This created an awkward roommate situation rather than close friends who were excited about sharing an apartment off campus and carpools to practices. (I include this and clearly state that it is *secondhand information* because it follows the "trend" that our daughter has discovered with her former teammates on campus and in classrooms.) She made a meeting and we attended it with the AD and coach because we felt that from now on she needed us as advocates when dealing with this coach. He alleged that she walked away from her team and stated that no meeting had ever occurred between them after the investigation, which the AD supported. (Afterwards, she was able to pull up her text to him to set it up and texts shared with friends concerned with her well-being afterwards.) He suddenly told her that during spring track some of her teammates told him they wouldn't run if she was on the team. When we asked why, it was due to the private matter which had been dealt with months earlier. He told her he had no choice but to protect the "team dynamic" from her. So now, she hadn't quit her team, but her team had quit her due to his lack of leadership. We were shocked to hear a college coach state that team dynamics are static rather than fluid. Rather than having a growth mindset, he had a very fixed mindset. To this day, we wonder whether his statement was true or meant for more mental abuse. When we asked why he did not protect her privacy by telling her teammates that it was a private four month old matter that had been dealt with and was healing as per the AD's email, he replied that "it was out of my control, they gossip like girls do, and I have no control over that." We pressed the AD about why she had not protected our daughter's privacy by reminding her that neither young woman was found guilty of anything. The meeting was tense and near the end coach yelled at us that we were "trying to bully our way back on the team" because he was intensely frustrated that for every vague allegation he tossed out, we had a truthful answer supported by dated text, timeline or email. The AD continued telling our daughter she was "not a good teammate" who had disrupted her teammates with "divisive behavior" during the investigation. It's clearly retribution for a four month old issue that originally stemmed from the coach's loss of team control, and his lack of soft skills by his telling the athlete in question of her post to go "work it out" in a corner of the weight room during practice with the teammate who believed a post had been made about her, before she knew what his investigation results were? Indeed, she walked away because she felt threatened not knowing what was going on under his incompetence. The AD finally agreed that since those teammates had not been reminded that neither one of their teammates had been found at fault, she would do so herself at the start of the season. But ultimately, she said that even if our daughter could "prove that she was a good teammate, her teammates would ultimately decide whether or not she was allowed back on the team." When my daughter told the AD that she had spoken to the Dean on her own last spring about mediation and together they had decided to let time continue healing the situation, the AD said, "then let the Dean handle this" and ended our almost two hour long meeting. We had so many unanswered questions afterwards that we recreated a timeline based on texts and emails so that we could be as translucent as possible as we sought answers. Our daughter scheduled a follow-up meeting in July with the Dean who listened carefully and suggested our daughter contact her former teammate from the now 5 month old incident to see if they were indeed both moving on from the incident. She reached out to her teammate by text and then by phone conversation, both agreed that they had indeed moved on - her former teammate saying, "I never had a problem with you to begin with." At what point had this issue become refreshed? When had it suddenly become "on-going" rather than "both teammates were able to have good practices together and were moving on," ie the AD through communication with the coach? Our daughter scheduled a meeting with the VP to ask that all details concerning coach's allegations as to why she had been "removed" be shared with her. Being removed from any athletic team is a very serious issue, and the coach should be incredibly transparent as the ramifications have a long-term, far-reaching ripple effect. The VP stated that she had indeed quit her team due to the jersey, regardless of her meeting with the coach and texts. She stated that coach would share an official statement by email to "finally clear the matter up" within a few days. She also stated that "the AD would no longer remind the team that neither athlete was ever found at fault because new athletes would have no idea who our daughter was or what had happened last spring." The coach's email arrived and every paragraph was either twisted information that our daughter had originally shared to be fully transparent, restated allegations that had already cleared up with evidence contrary to what he said with text screenshots of their meetings and conversations, and brand new allegations. There was no longer any statement about teammates who refused to run with her, but suddenly she was not a good teammate "during the previous XC season" and that she had been reprimanded for being "divisive, disruptive, and immature" at a still undated December 2021 meeting. He had effectively twisted her teammate's November meeting with him, (as previously mentioned), into the undated December meeting that our daughter never had with him. In fact, he had given our daughter a school-wide leadership award from his school-wide social media account just before their last xc meet in October. Now he was taking away that hard-earned accomplishment from her as well, which equates to more mentally abusive behavior. He twisted our own details that we had shared with the school in order to be transparent, and used them to smear her good name. He also stepped over another line with this new allegation: we had been through a family crisis during November and into December when the humanitarian aid organization our son worked for was trying to evacuate him during the bombings in Ethiopia where he lived and worked, but had suddenly lost contact with him. Their phone call brought us to our knees. Even our daughter's professors showed care and concern for her during that time. After replying to coach that he was dragging us back into a traumatic and private family time, we clearly wanted to understand how he had given her a school-wide leadership award while simultaneously reprimanding her in a December meeting when the last day of class was December 1. That date has never been made available to us. Instead, he replied by email that her "grievance process was now complete." I called and scheduled a meeting with the college president before Thanksgiving. We hoped for transparency from the school about coach's alleged meeting date along with clarification about when she was divisive, disruptive, or immature to prove it was retribution being used against her for a problem caused by this coach's lack of integrity, honesty, leadership and soft skills. To us it was about getting to the heart of the truth from an abusive coach bent on pulling the rug out from under our daughter at every turn. When the president asked what our daughter was seeking, she stated she wanted details of his allegations so she could prove her good name. The president told her that his statements were in fact true about her, that she had walked away from her team, (regardless of contrary evidence against his statements), and that coach's decision concerning her was final. The president explained that they "do not keep calendars so meeting dates could not be checked and they dealt in "trends" not in "details," as details would be too difficult to recall." We were shocked. She reminded my daughter that it was a "privilege for her attend this school" after my husband stated that we were shocked to be the "customers" paying $100k for her education only to be treated like this. She angrily demanded several times that this was a "private personnel issue" and we just needed to "trust her." But how can there be any trust when she had already stated she believed the coach's vague allegations for a desired outcome, over our daughter with thick file folder of screenshots and timeline evidence contrary to his ever-changing story? We have never been treated so poorly by anyone, ever. To hear a college president say two former friends who were once teammates (and current roommates) should ditch their relationship rather than repair it was shocking. At the end of our meeting, we had been told to "get out" of the president's office three or four different times simply because we asked for concrete details concerning our daughter so that she could prove her good name. That was how our meeting ended. I have shared this very private experience in detail so this does not occur with future XCTF athletes under this coach's incredibly poor but also mentally abusive management of young women. This lengthy description shows how one coach can have incredibly far-reaching ripple effects that are devastating. In his inability to understand women's relationships, he has done far more to wreck them rather than protect and keep them intact. He has instilled fear into young women at this school, to stifle their newfound voices within their college campus, and mentored them to use words that tear down rather than build up. Past history is important. Both the trends and the details have shown him to be mentally abusive, unethical, manipulative and dishonest with young women. The president told us we were "right-sayers." That we "just always have to be right." But she couldn't be more wrong. We're "truth-seekers" and we simply want transparency for our daughter first and for future young women to be treated with honesty, integrity and yes, care for their mental health as well as their present and future relationships. Young women deserve to be coached as unique individuals beyond the field, differently than men are coached, with thought and care that involve building and nurturing enduring team relationships that move into both their personal and professional lives. Coaching also requires mentoring effective problem-solving skills that are important in the working world; teaching talented athletes to reach for their personal goals while protecting, appreciating and caring for their teammates alongside them; motivating their healthy competitive side, while striving to point them towards being moral and ethical professional future leaders. Coaches are not perfect, but they lead by example and take full responsibility for their actions or inactions. We have kept a complete file folder of information for any athlete who may need it so they know there are others who have been through it and who will stand alongside them so they aren't alone or afraid in the present or in the future."

"Disappointed with this coach and the program"