all for a piece of wood wrote:
Hot take, the current situation is primarily the Rowan coaching staff's fault.
In my opinion, they cared more about the team points SC was worth and a team title than the wellbeing of this athlete. He is a kid who very obviously made some big mistakes, yes. The coaches made it so much worse by enabling this and not coming out in a meaningful way to protect their athlete(s), program, and reputation whether or not the allegations are true. Their vow of silence while continuing to race him in the face of the entire sport (and now mainstream media) calling for transparency was irresponsible and made everything so much worse for him and the school, not to mention the competitors.
Through negligence, greed, or both these coaches and school(s) played a big role in creating this situation. While they technically didn't break any rules, Dimit and whoever else on their coaching staff who enabled this should also be held accountable and responsible for allowing someone to become the most notorious name in the sport for the sake of a couple points. I hope it was worth the trophy.
Bumping this to remind everyone what this situation is about.
Dimit and the Rowan coaching staff enabled this situation. In my opinion, the way they are handling this situation continues to prioritize their own self-interest and does not take proper steps to prioritize athlete wellbeing and mental health, especially the athlete at the crux of it. They were irresponsible by being silent and continued to make their program and
athlete(s) more notorious. Rowan is now trying to save face by hiding behind legal threats to stop people from seeking transparency. Too little too late; if they cared to protect their athletes, they would have put a stop to this a long time ago before it got this big.
Every time this pops up on my feed, or I see another news story about this, it makes me sad. It makes me sad for the athletes on Rowan’s team who had nothing to do with this and all alums who proudly represented them, and some who feel called to defend the decisions of the Rowan coaching staff. I’m most saddened by the decisions of the coaching staff than anyone else and I wish more people shared that opinion. Week after week, this story has been gaining more negative attention while they fail to properly stand up for their program or do the right thing by their athletes.
I’d encourage people to move past interacting with bad faith arguments or posters who are weaponizing willful ignorance in this thread. The past deflections and homophobic / ableist comments spoke for themselves, and they were rightfully removed shortly after they got posted. With all the evidence currently available, people have drawn their own conclusions. If nothing else, I’d bet most people here trust Gault and LR's reporting in addition to the fact that he's staked his journalistic integrity on this story.
In retrospect, my opinion from everything I've seen + what happened at the NCAA Indoor Championships is that Dimit leveraged a weak system of accountability in the NCAA and took advantage of this athlete and their situation all for a piece of wood.