John Marshall said he never has been told why he was fired as head track coach at Villanova University.
But he has heard the rumors–including the one that had him involved in an inappropriate relationship with one of the women runners who attended the university.
Marshall, who denies any inappropriate relationship, has not been sued, or accused of this by the university or any student, but he says he has heard the rumor from friends, coaches and people within the Villanova administration.
And he says that nothing else he has heard about his June firing–that he paid too little attention to the men’s program, that he was recruiting sprinters over distance runners–is more threatening to his future.
“I’m in a no-win situation,” Marshall, a 1984 Olympian, said recently. “What am I to do? You deny, deny, deny, but these rumors keep circulating and I don’t want them to be circulated. It’s absurd. But it’s out there and where do I go?”
At other universities, there have been recent lawsuits filed against male coaches by female athletes. The most prominent case involves Anson Dorrance, the women’s soccer coach at North Carolina, who has been sued by two former players who claim they were sexually harassed and emotionally abused by the legendary coach. Dorrance, who has won 15 national championships in 19 seasons, denies the accusations.
Both Dorrance and Marshall hope to avoid forever being labeled as liabilities to major universities with reputations to protect. And in this age of heightened sensitivities and political correctness–an age in which a sexual harassment case could topple a presidency–they are just two examples of the issues that can develop when men coach women.
Less than 20 years ago, the NCAA didn’t sponsor championships in any women’s sport. Today the NCAA sponsors championships in 13 women’s sports and the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four is a guaranteed sellout.
Professionally, women’s sports have experienced a similar explosion. There are two professional women’s basketball leagues and a women’s professional softball league. Women earn six-figure incomes for playing beach volleyball. And the United States hosting the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup is expected to spawn a professional women’s soccer league.
But while the popularity of women’s sports continues to grow with athletes, fans and the media, the integration of female coaches has not kept pace. In the 1995-96 school year, there were 2,612 people coaching women’s collegiate sports on the Division I level; more than half of these coaches were men. The reason: The pool of female coaches simply isn’t large enough.
There are several theories on why this shortage exists. Ask Brown women’s hockey coach Digit Murphy and she’ll tell you that “until recently, coaching women’s sports hadn’t been lucrative enough for a lot of female athletes to consider coaching as a profession.” Ask Arizona Athletic Director Jim Livengood, the president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, and he’ll tell you there is not enough recruiting of potential coaches being done, that more young women should be encouraged to become interested in coaching.
For the moment, however, most women’s teams are coached by men, and therein lie the problems. Or, perhaps more precisely, the potential for problems.
Listen to Bob Bertucci, who coaches the women’s volleyball team at Temple:
“A football or basketball coach of guys can sometimes lay into them and the language might be a bit colorful. A female coach of women might be able to get away with the same thing. But don’t be a male coach doing that with female players.
“Is that fair? Probably not. But society finds some things acceptable and other things not acceptable.”
Listen to William “Speedy” Morris, the men’s basketball coach at La Salle, who coached La Salle’s women’s team for two seasons in the mid-1980s:
“When I took the (women’s) job at La Salle, I was a much more demonstrable coach than I am now. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to coach women that way.
“About two weeks in, the players came to me and said, `We know what kind of coach you were at Roman Catholic and we’re insulted that you aren’t coaching us the same way you coach guys. We can take it. We want you to coach us the best way you can to help us win.’
“After that I never worried about it anymore. I would yell at them or scold them. I patted them on the back and on the backside. I never thought anything of it and neither did they. It was just the way I coached.
“Today, with all the awareness of harassment and sexual harassment, I don’t know if I could coach women like that.
“Is getting in a player’s face or yelling at her sexual harassment? I don’t think so, but maybe it is. Most players can handle having a coach in their face when they mess up, as long as you pat them on the back later. That’s old-school coaching. Today parent calls an administrator and the coach is pulled into an office.
“It’s a lot harder to be a coach today.”
Few would disagree. While there is no evidence that there has been an increase in the number of harassment incidents involving male coaches and female athletes, the increased visibility of women’s sports is drawing a lot more attention to the cases that do occur.
The suit Dorrance is facing at Chapel Hill is the most prominent to become public since the University of Florida fired swimming coach Mitch Ivey five years ago after allegations surfaced that he had sexually harassed some of his female swimmers. Ivey, who denied the allegations, currently is coaching at the Trinity Prep School in Winter Park, Fla.
“The reason why all of these cases are coming to light is the issue of sexual harassment,” said Donna Lopiano, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation in New York. “What you see in sports is merely a reflection of the education of the American public on the issue of sexual harassment. I suspect that because there are more educated people, more is coming to the surface. This is not an isolated sports occurrence.”
Nor is it new.
“This has always been around in sports, Lopiano said. “Some coaches take advantage of the power they have over kids and do the wrong thing. The reason why schools do the quiet firing, the mutually-agreed-upon departure, is because they’re worried about their image.”
Last month Marshall filed notification in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court that he intended to file a wrongful-termination suit against Villanova and would be seeking damages for invasion of privacy, breach of contact and defamation of character. Villanova Athletic Director Tim Hofferth and university legal counsel Kimberly Woodie both declined comment.
Marshall said he believes his lawsuit eventually will uncover the real reasons he was fired and end the stories he said are being repeated about him. But even if that happens, he said he is not sure he ever will completely shake the one about his involvement with an athlete.
“There’s no defense, Marshall said. “Even when you prove the accusations are unfounded, you’re never really exonerated.”
When Stephanie Gaitley hears about these kinds of situations involving male coaches and female athletes, she only has to look at Harry Perretta to see what effect they are having.
Before Gaitley established a national reputation as the women’s basketball coach at St. Joseph’s University, the former Stephanie Vanderslice had a Big Five and Villanova Hall of Fame career playing for Perretta.
“I can only speak about Harry since I played for him,” Gaitley said, “and there’s no question he’s not as close to his players as he used to be.
“The things we joked about then, someone might sue a coach for now. When Harry screamed in our faces when I played for him, no one cared. Now if someone saw him do that, they would freak.
“Harry is such a caring person, and a lot of that is being lost with his players today because the rules have changed and he has to act differently. Times have changed.”
Perretta has won 366 games in 20 seasons on the Main Line and is married to one of his ex-players and coaching assistants, the former Helen Koskinen. He freely acknowledges what Gaitely says she observed in him.
“I did talk to Stephanie about that,” he said, “because there was a time when I did feel I couldn’t be as close to my players as I had been. For a while, I felt it was because of a change in society.
“But over the last couple of years, I’ve felt as close to my teams as I did 15 years ago. I think it runs in cycles. I think for a while there was a change in my personality that didn’t allow me to feel as close to my players. Over the last few years, I feel I’ve been able to get that same rapport back.”
And he’s been fortunate. For there are no clear answers on how to keep a situation from going bad. Lopiano wants formal guidelines. She offers a set of her own standards for coaches–don’t be alone with players one-on-one, don’t be in equipment rooms with them, don’t be in social situations, maintain a teacher-student distance–but she still believes national guidelines need to be set in writing.
“So much of this is swept under the rug,” Lopiano said. “We in sports have not done a very good job of professionalizing our coaches. We need a clearly stated policy that it is absolutely inappropriate to have a relationship with one of your students. We also have to have educational programs for kids. In these situations, kids feel that they have nowhere to turn, no one to talk to about it.”
Others want less formal guidelines, combined with training. “The whole landscape has changed so much in the last three years,” said Betty Jaynes, an officer at the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. “There’s been so much attention to sexual harassment in the office that we probably need to be alerting our coaches on issues that they should be more sensitive to.
“You should,” Jaynes continued, “never touch them. Coaches do a lot of high-fives, clasp hands. If you watch the manners now, it’s not as much touching anymore.
“I think the times I have (as a coach) that are the hardest are when (the athletes)) are crying and need consultation. You don’t see that.
“It’s touching, being alone and socializing I would recommend coaches staying away from.
Others believe sports should look to the business world for guidance.
“Being a coach is like being a boss,” said Anne Gunderson, founder and president of the National Women’s Coaches Association. “If a boss is talking about sexual issues with his employees, he can be sued. It’s the same. If you want a general guideline: If it doesn’t involve sport, don’t talk about it.
“It comes down to respecting your athletes. A coach who feels it’s OK to make lewd comments or talk about (sexual things) around athletes is not respecting them and probably shouldn’t be coaching.”
Some believe the issue already has been adequately addressed.
“Men have coached women in America since 1903,” said John Leonard, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association. “There have always been a small number of problems. In 1992 our association formulated a code of ethics that basically outlaws sexual contact between athletes and coaches, regardless of age or anything else.”
Still others believe there is no widespread problem facing college sports, that the people who coach, both men and women, are dedicated professionals who just have to be more careful in the way they interact with their athletes.
