PERSONAL FOULS
Loyola women’s coach Swoopes’ methods have cost her most of the team — and they may cost her the job next
For Loyola, it started out as a slam dunk — or at least a full-tilt breakaway layup — when the university hired Sheryl Swoopes as its women’s basketball coach three years ago.
Swoopes, now 45, was one of the greatest female basketball players ever. Some have even called her the best ever, the Michael Jordan of the WNBA.
Her playing credentials are stunning: 1993 NCAA champ at Texas Tech (she scored a record 47 points in the titlegame victory over Ohio State), Naismith National Player of the Year, three-time WNBA most valuable player, three-time WNBA defensive player of the year, three-time Olympic gold medalist, four-time WNBA champion and just-named Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee.
The official date for that ceremony is Sept. 11 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
But you have to wonder how Swoopes will be feeling just then. Indeed, you have to wonder if she’ll even be employed by Loyola then. Or by anybody.
That is because she came to Loyola with virtually no coaching experience (she was the assistant girls basketball coach at a small high school near Seattle in 2010), and all she has done is make a mess of a program that is normally off the radar (plenty of seats available!) unless something extraordinary happens that gets your attention. And it has. Ten of the 12 players on her team have quit the program or have put in requests to leave. Five players transferred last year. One who left in 2014, Cate Soane, who transferred to UIC, recently said that Swoopes was abusive and hostile, stating, “What I can say is, she’s an amazing player. . . . But just because you can play doesn’t mean you’re a great coach.’’
Other players have indicated that not only was Swoopes not a great coach, she was not even an average one, and she is a terrible person to be around, someone who turned teammate on teammate and nearly made the athletic department come unglued.
Swoopes’ record at Loyola is 31-62, a perfect one-stepforward/two-steps-back résumé. We should never gauge a coach simply by his or her record. And I won’t.
Nor do we live and die by the words of disgruntled athletes. There is not enough playing time or back-patting or psychologically mandated comforting and parentsoothing in the whole world to keep all players and their families in any program happy.
We live in a PC world where a holler can be perceived as a threat, a curse an attack, a nasty stare an assault. Throw in cameras and the instant judgment of social media, and it’s a wonder any tough boss survives in any job anywhere.
But when almost all your employees (let’s call them NCAA-approved ‘‘studentathletes’’) want to get away from you and your organization, something is badly out of whack.
“I don’t think anyone should have to go through what I went through at Loyola,” Soane said. ‘‘I was humiliated, belittled.’’
And this is a gray area, terrain that Loyola has said it is now investigating after all the complaints and defections.
I can tell you this. Back in the old days, Division I athletes took whatever their coaches threw at them, suffered through all kinds of crap and mistreatment, not because they were tougher than current players, but because there was no recourse for any of the abused but to quit. And most of the players in most sports already had suffered through at least a couple of terrible coaches at the high school or lower level before even making it to the college level.
And those who were sick of the abuse and stupidity already had quit. In many cases, they were the stronger people, the ones with principles. And even though the coaches called them quitters and said over and over that quitters never amounted to anything but pitiful life losers (their favorite threat), a lot of those quitters turned out to be successes at many other ventures.
So part of me wants to say, Buck up and take it! I did.
But the sensible part of me shouts, why, once again, did a school hire a high-profile, very bad coach, one who teaches nothing but the lowest of human emotions and actions — anger, sadness, cruelty, pettiness and vindictiveness?
I don’t know. Loyola didn’t need this.
There are women’s programs all over the country going through turmoil just like Loyola’s, and maybe it’s because modern female athletes want to be treated with respect and dignity.
I sure hope it’s not just because they don’t want to work hard and have never pushed themselves to the limit.
I don’t think that’s the problem with Swoopes and Loyola hoops. I think it’s only with the person who’s in charge.
She needs to change or get out.
Follow me on Twitter @ricktelander.