Fighting for his reputation
Ex-coach raised funding questions
FOND DU LAC Tom Lechnir couldn’t help but shake his head at the irony when the form letter from the UW-Oshkosh office of the chancellor arrived at his home last week.
The letter, addressed to Lechnir and signed by Chancellor Andrew J. Leavitt, was a plea for a donation to the UW Oshkosh Fund.
It would have been funny, had it not been such a cruel slap in the face.
Lechnir, the Titans’ longtime baseball coach, lost his job in 2013 after questioning why the university quietly diverted donations earmarked for a new baseball stadium to the $10.5 million Oshkosh Sports Complex.
The university countered that Lechnir was responsible for and failed to repay debt on the baseball stadium. The coach insisted there was no such debt and fought back. For having the temerity to stand up to then-Chancellor Richard Wells and his administration, Lechnir paid a heavy price.
He received the first substandard performance evaluation of his 31-year career (25 as head coach) and his contract was not renewed. To be fair, the Titans had failed to qualify
for the NCAA Division III regionals for the fifth consecutive year and some were starting to question Lechnir’s demanding coaching style.
“I thought the way we conducted the program when I was there was the right way to do things,” he said. “Was it tough? Absolutely. Was it hard? Absolutely. But we graduated all our players and had a fair amount of success on the field.”
Wells denied the coach’s appeal to regain his job. Lechnir took the fight all the way to federal court and lost.
The legal battle drained him financially. He moved his family to Kimberly. He looked for other jobs, but no one would hire the coach who led Oshkosh to the 1994 Division III national title, won 728 games and was named Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball co-coach of the century.
“There’s always that shadow of a doubt, right?” Lechnir said, referring to his reputation — if not damaged, then at least tinged in controversy.
Now the university had the nerve to ask him for money? Form letter or not, it had Lechnir seeing red.
“This is pathetic,” he said. “If it’s a joke, it’s a pathetic joke. This should tell everybody what is wrong at UW-Oshkosh. I mean, what are you guys doing?”
The story might have ended there, with one last insult for a man who’d gotten both his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Oshkosh, had served the university with distinction and had no plans to retire anytime soon.
“I’m a pretty young 56,” he said. “I wanted to coach for a long, long time. It’s been exhausting. Exhausting. It permeates your thoughts.”
But Lechnir’s dying hope for vindicaclaim tion took an unexpected turn Jan. 18, when the UW System filed a civil lawsuit against Wells and his former chief business officer, Tom Sonnleitner, alleging they illegally promised state money to back loans on several building projects — including the sports complex — if the university’s supporting foundation couldn’t make its loan payments.
Wells and Sonnleitner also allegedly made illegal transfers of money from the university to the foundation to help make those projects happen, the suit says.
To Lechnir, the suit validates his legal
that he lost his job because he blew the whistle on Wells. The coach wants a Winnebago County judge and a federal judge to reopen the lawsuits his lawyers filed.
“I don’t feel vindicated yet,” he said. “The Department of Justice and the UW System are suing the same people I was suing, for the same reasons. Well, why aren’t they supporting me? Nobody from UWO, nobody from the state system, nobody from the Department of Justice has contacted me — other than our chancellor, via letter, asking me for money.”
Lechnir said he has taped conversations and hundreds of documents that support his claim, but that no court has yet allowed discovery.
“What is the entity we can rely on? It should be the court system,” he said. “I hope to God those people take another look. I would think they’re looking through a different lens this time rather than saying, ‘The chancellor said it. It’s got to be gospel.’ ”
Lechnir was a hard-nosed competitor as a player, as an assistant coach and as the head coach of a successful program. There’s still plenty of fight left in him. Two runs down in the bottom of the ninth? Just get him to the batter’s box.
“When will I feel vindicated?” he said. “When I’m coaching baseball at Oshkosh again and standing on the field at a facility where I raised 100% of the money. When we put up a donor wall that honors all the people who gave their time, their resources and in some cases their money to our baseball program. When I’ve been compensated for what’s happened. Then I’ll feel vindicated. Not one second before that.
“When are they going to make it right? I’m not asking for anything more than that. Make it right.”