Jane Worthington

[Sae]

Long time listener, first time caller.

Been following this closely. Lot of stuff on social, hard to keep up with it all.

If you haven't read the full report, I strongly urge you to do so. The nuts and bolts of it is about 15 pages.

I never really believe anything 100%, but to me the EKU human resources department's likely main concern is to protect the university, not the athletic department, the AD or the coaches. So I would say I'm 85 to 90% confident in their work.

Here's some pieces I found interesting.

From the beginning, the most interesting part of this to me has been the accusation that food wasn't provided. Most of the rest of the allegations were hard to wrap your hands around. Everyone interprets things differently and has "their own truth". The real objective truth normally lies somewhere in between. The food accusations seemed to me to be something that could be proven with some objective certainty.

FROM THE REPORT: Multiple witnesses also reported that Witness 19 had overheard Respondent 1 [Jane Worthington] make the statement, “I’m tired of feeding these losers,” which they felt was evidence that the team’s food issues were deliberate. In her interview with Human Resources, however, Witness 19 denied overhearing the comment.

MY COMMENT: The "I'm tired of feeding these losers" comment gained a lot of attraction in the media and on social media. Turns out the comment was never made. Changes the whole dynamic.

FROM THE REPORT: Current and recently former players reported that food had not been an issue during the 2020-21 season, which discredits the allegation that Respondent 1 [Worthington] and/or Respondent 2 [Hayley Sims] routinely withheld food from players. Additional information also suggests that personnel changes may have led to some confusion among the coaching staff as to food supply responsibilities. By all accounts, once athletics staff was made aware of the issue, the situation was resolved relatively immediately in time for the next away game. Further, by all accounts, the issue may have been resolved earlier in the season had players made either their coaching staff or athletics staff aware that they had concerns pertaining to nutrition. No persons interviewed provided convincing evidence that either Respondent 1 [Worthington] or Respondent 2 [Sims] deliberately withheld food from the team. Further, athletics staff provided team expense reports for the 2020-21 season and the 2021-22 season, which show insignificant differences in food expenditures from year to year. This is an important fact to consider because generally witnesses corroborated that there were no food issues for the Softball team during the 2020-21 season.

MY COMMENT: Again, in my opinion the food issue was the most serious accusation. The investigation found only a short term period where there was a problem and it was corrected. Corroborated by witnesses.

The area of the report I found the most discouraging is that some number of years ago, Worthington did give a TUMS to a student-athlete who complained of a stomachache due to nerves and didn't tell the nature of the medication. Under no circumstances should a coach ever provide medication to an athlete. That is the athletic trainer's job. It appears this was a one time thing though.

In terms of mental health/mental abuse. I found this section most interesting ...

FROM THE REPORT: Witness 18 and Witness 23 each reported that when they played for Respondent 1 [Worthington], a fellow teammate (Witness 28) experienced severe emotional distress relating to her experiences with Softball. Witness 23 further reported that she tried to make University administration aware of this information in her exit interview, but that this went unheeded. Human Resources met with Witness 28, now a mental health professional, who acknowledged that she had experienced emotional distress as a Softball player, but that this emotional distress was unrelated to her Softball experience. Further, Witness 28 stated that Respondent 1 [Worthington] had been an emotional support person for her during her time as a Softball player through the present.
Regarding emotional support and mental health, multiple witnesses reported feeling that
Respondent 1 [Worthington] was a consistent source of emotional support not only during their time as a Softball player but also throughout their careers.

MY COMMENT: This pertains to an incident in the past, not recently. The player herself said her mental health issues were not caused by softball.


This is just a few of the sections that most interested me. Other people might find other sections more interesting.

If I put myself in the shoes of the HR folks, I can't see anything in the report that would lead me to fire Worthington.

I wouldn't be surprised, if after having been cleared by the report, she announces her retirement in the next couple of weeks.

Great post, welcome to the site. I agree with what he says, when I read the Register article that outlines what seem to be most of the allegations it seems like most things are blown up and to me seem to be fairly normal in an athletic team. On every team out there, some players love a coach and some hate the same one, I've never known one to be universally loved, I think this is alot of what we are seeing.

[Colonel Mike]

So Colonel Mike how can you easily throw away the accusations when players from the 90's came out and said they had similar issues when they played?

Also heard on the Sports Stove podcast of former players that wanted to participate and EKU rejected them. Why would you reject willing witnesses during an investigation?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the first question. I don't throw away accusations from any years, and neither did the investigation. They interviewed athletes, coaches, trainers and administration from different periods.

I listened to the Sports Stove that had Nathan Hutchinson on as a guest, I don't recall that being mentioned in that episode. If you can direct me to the episode where that is discussed, I'd definitely like to hear it. By rough count, I see about 10 former softball players interviewed during the investigation. So if they interviewed 10, I find it hard to believe they refused to interview others. Seems like if they were going to refuse to interview, that would come after 2 or 3.

Again, I encourage anyone who hasn't read it, to read the report. Don't rely on me, or others, to do it for you. I pulled out the pieces that were most interesting to me. Colonel12 might find other piece more interesting.

[Colonel Mike]

This is all you need to know about the "investigation"

"The report on several occasions indicates, because of Worthington's position and the level of competition of the EKU softball program, those regulations outlined by the university may not apply to her or her staff."

https://www.richmondregister.com/news/e ... ium=social

Honest question for everyone. If you replace "Worthington's position" with "Kidd's position", "Hope's position", "Neubauer's position" or "Hamilton's position" would you feel differently? Would you have wanted Roy Kidd to be held to the same classroom regulations as a professor when it came to coaching his team? This has nothing to do with Worthington specifically, any coach would be granted the same exception.

This touches on one of the things that has really bothered me about this situation. I feel like if this was a mens team, especially football or men's basketball, it would be blown off as just tough coaching. I think it is a real insult to women that people act like they have to be babied and coddled, but men can be treated rougher. If there was a picture of Walt Wells spraying football players with water in the sand, what level of outrage do you think there would be on a scale of 1-10? Do you think that pic makes the newspaper?


Now, if you want to make the argument that every employee, regardless of coach, professor, custodian, be held to the same standards. I'm willing to get behind that. As long as it is everyone - coaches of womens teams and mens teams.

[RollKerns]

I honestly have found this entire event to be interesting in so many ways. And honestly if you’ll bear with me almost a perfect example of the dichotomy in America and just society as a whole right now. It’s our inability to see issues as anything other than black and white but only grey.

For starters, I don’t really buy into the “disgruntled player” argument for a variety of reasons. The single one being that dozens of players spanning generations have had opinions on Jane Worthington. Sure some have been good, but also they’ve had a lot bad. One player may be upset, but this has become what appears to be serial…”mismanagement”? I’m not even sure what to call it. You don’t see coaches at other schools or even other sports claiming over generations of players to have a coach who may have crossed the line. I’m a firm believer in if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. It appears that Jane Worthington may not really be the best leader of young women, unfortunately. At least that’s what it looks like to me even after reading the report since the fact multiple players over several years have seem to make that point.

Now, that being said. I need to heed my own point. Issues can be grey. Even though I personally believe from how it appears that Jane Worthington should not have been retained as head softball coach because frankly why should they keep her? But I also understand that tons of players have said the coverage and writings have come off disingenuous. That they only have positive things to say about their coach. And that perhaps we shouldn’t have knee jerk reactions and I hope to have the same due process awarded Coach had someone accused me of things I felt were untrue.

But here we are at a classic impasse just like our nation, fanbase, and forum seem to always come to. We just factionalize and think the others against us are absolutely wrong and we must oppose them, sometimes even with frustration or knee jerk reactions. I just find this point to be incredibly interesting to me because it’s almost like a case study into humanity over a softball coach. We must fight those opposite of us. Thankfully Colonel athletics doesn’t have the same importance as political and social decisions that we also debate nearly every day. I think it leaves me with a weird sense of hope yet confusion to know there is never going to be a “grey” area. Simply indignation.

I’m not sure the right answer. But at the end of the day I think you always just support people. You take care of them, and you be kind. And I can’t help but feel like this decision leaves a bad taste in my mouth of not necessarily putting people first. Which also increases my “grey” area discussion. Jane Worthington appears to have a lot of grey in her softball program. Maybe not abusive, but certainly not always welcoming.

Perhaps this is too long or just too much. Maybe it’s just the grey area in between.

[Colonel Mike]

excellent point RollKerns.

Two things can be true at the same time. In our society, I think that is forgotten. "Jane Worthington is the most caring coach I've ever played for" and "Jane Worthington made my life miserable" can both be true.

[dljordaneku]

One thing that I have always heard about situations about this and we need to remember is that there are three sides to every story. In this case, it is the player's side, the coach's side and somewhere in the middle lies the truth. That was the role of HR so far in all of this.

dj

[Steve 82]

One thing that I have always heard about situations about this and we need to remember is that there are three sides to every story. In this case, it is the player's side, the coach's side and somewhere in the middle lies the truth. That was the role of HR so far in all of this.

dj

Nailed it.

[Sae]

it is impossible to know the entire story from every kid. I have been a player and a coach, some coaches I had were Very hard to deal with, some kids would fight to the death for those coaches, some would not help if they were on fire. As a coach, I have kids who speak to me years after playing and I'm sure there are some out there who probably are not fans of me. Once again, looking at almost all of the allegations listed in news stories, I have not really seen much that is abnormal in my opinion, some things handled differently maybe, but without knowing the ENTIRE situation, it's tough to judge.

[EKU05]

One possibility is that they let her finish out her contract and then move on. They probably didn't find enough to legal hold up as a "for-cause" firing and are trying to avoid paying out on her deal while also need to hire a new coach. But that is ONLY a hypothesis...nothing more.

But I also want to say this. What exactly is their motivation to keep her at the moment if that isn't what the evidence led them to?

They're coming off a pretty rough season (albeit with some pretty good ones right before that). It's not like softball carries the publicity weight that football or basketball does. It's also not like Roan and McFaddin are protecting "their" coach. She's been there almost three decades longer than either of them. They probably just looked at what came out of the investigation and made the call. I was surprised, but I just can't see the motivation to do anything else. If anything, they'd be motivated to let her go with so much on the line in terms of PR with conference realignment. The fact that they didn't cave to public pressure feels like it could be telling us something in and of itself.

But finally, I also don't want to discount the allegations that were there. What those young women experienced was their own personal reality as they experienced it. These are difficult situations, and I'm truly sorry that they had that experience as a student-athlete at EKU. We need to make sure that's never the case in the future.