Al Cantello was the head United States Naval Academy men’s track and
cross-country coach from 1963 until his retirement in 2018. In 2013, he was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Coaches Hall of Fame.
Throughout his time as coach, over the span of decades, he engaged in physical, verbal, and emotional abuse against generations of male midshipmen cross country and track athletes, as well as direct verbal and emotional harassment against the women’s cross country and
track athletes, and creating an environment where such harassment was allowed
and encouraged.
Cantello did this under the guise of preparing his athletes to be better runners and midshipmen, and with a public facing image that represented this intention, however, he exhibited, time and
time again, a pattern of behavior that ran counter to not only the values of
the United States Naval Academy, but the United States Navy.
The Naval Academy administration, to include the athletic department and the authority figures within, was either unwilling or unable to address or change his behavior. The authority figures
who had direct knowledge of Cantello and his behavior include, but are not limited to: retired track coach Stephen Cooksey, retired cross country coach Karen Boyle, and acting athletic director Chet Gladchuk.
Coach Cantello served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and began coaching at the Naval
Academy when it operated under a different culture. However, he failed to adapt
to the evolving standards set by the Naval Academy Superintendents and Chiefs
of Naval Operations.
Just months before I began Plebe Summer in 2003, Superintendent Vice Adm. Richard Naughton was relieved of duties after improperly interfering with a Marine sentry at the Naval Academy by grabbing the sentry’s wrist. Vice Admiral Naughton was known to publicly berate and bully his subordinates in ways that were inappropriate. For his behavior, he was reprimanded and soon reduced in rank and forced to retire. Everyone at the Naval Academy would have been aware of this behavior, including Coach Cantello.
In the summer of 2003, at the very end my Plebe Summer, and right before the academic year began, I missed cross country practice after one of my upper class mistakenly told me that I wasn’t allowed to go to practice and had to stay on deck instead.
At the next practice, Coach Cantello asked me why I had missed practice. As I explained to him reason why, he rushed towards me, stuck his arm out in front of him, and struck me, knocking me to the ground. As he did this, he yelled at me that I should want to have to get to practice so bad that I would knock my own mother to the ground. There were other Midshipmen present, though I do not remember who they were.
At the time, I was shocked and afraid by Cantello’s behavior, and, because no one said that he had done anything wrong, I was convinced that I was in the wrong and that I better not be again. Looking back now, I am shocked at not only Cantello’s behavior, but the way he engaged in that behavior without hesitation or fear of repercussion. Looking back on it now, I don’t understand how Admiral Naughton could be held to a standard that Cantello openly flaunted. It doesn’t make sense that he would openly get away with that type of behavior for as long
as he did.
I only remember him physically striking me one time. The emotional and verbal abuse was much more prevalent and persistent. On the surface, this type of abuse might not appear to be as bad as physical abuse, but he was a physically menacing figure. He was especially vehement with his choice of words to discipline and humiliate his athletes. This behavior was undeniably
inappropriate.
It was commonplace for him to say that watching one of us run was like watching “downhill sodomy,” or that we didn’t deserve to wear the Naval Academy uniform(not the athletic uniform, but the actual uniform of a Midshipman), or that wewere “barnacles” hanging onto the team. It was understood that Cantello would often not cut athletes from his team. His acts of public humiliation would make athletes feel so bad about themselves that they would quit, or would create an atmosphere where the athlete’s teammates would carry on the emotional or verbal abuse in an effort to improve their performance or push them to quit.
While he seemed to enjoy focusing his ire on the slower runners, he berated the superstars as well. After an athlete underperformed at a 4 x 1500m relay at the University of Texas in Austin, Coach waited to berate him until the next practice when everyone was present. It should be noted that this athlete is of Latin, South American, or Hispanic descent. Coach had rolled up a pamphlet in his hand and swatted him on the head with it as he said that the athlete needed more “WASP blood” in him (WASP is a slang term for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). While
Cantello was trying to be funny, it was at the expense of this athlete and his ethnicity, and the intent was to ridicule him in front of the entire team in order to teach him a lesson.
Cantello would often ridicule his athletes for about their weight, having no hesitation
while he publicly called them “fat.” This ridicule could be about any of his athletes. While weight is an important factor in the sport of distance running, and many coaches in distance programs weight their runners on a regular basis, there didn’t seem to be a healthy, standardized method to Cantello’s focus on his athlete’s weight, and he took it to extremes that didn’t seem to follow a healthy logic.
One time, before the first home cross country meet of the season, Cantello sat us down, and the proceeded to scream at us at the top of his lungs that if any of us toed the line for the race, and then thought about a Snickers bar we ate weeks earlier, our race was already “done.” Another time, while a Plebe, I was sitting in the locker room with my teammates. Cantello stopped by, pointed at three of my teammates, and said that the only thing separating them from each
other “was a glass of water.” He never commented on eating better food, only less food. This could be, in part, perhaps, of the limited dining options at King Hall.
Either way, his focus on weight could often be obsessive, and created an environment where the athletes would have conversations with each other about improving their performance by eating less food, or by losing weight. At team tables, the dessert was often covered with mustard, and it was a point of pride, if, after a hard workout, the top athletes only ate one bowl of pasta and one bowl of salad.
Throughout my Plebe Year, while undiagnosed, I believe I had a borderline eating disorder, and often didn’t have the energy to run or think to potential. Beginning my 3/C year, I stopped going to Team Tables, and began eating an amount that felt healthy. But not going to Team Tables ostracized me from the team, as well as not being able to tell them why I wasn’t gonig
anymore, which I didn’t feel comfortable doing so.
For some athletes, if they ran a bad race or a bad performance, Cantello would wait until the beginning of the next practice when all of the athletes were present to yell at this specific athlete to go weigh himself and to come back and tell him how much he weighed. Whatever the number was, it was always “too much.”
Once, a runner and soon to be Navy SEAL who had previously quit the team, and
who Cantello had constantly called fat, missed a practice or a home track meet
to administer a Navy SEAL screener. On Monday, Coach publicly humiliated him
and told him he was too fat and to weigh himself.
These comments about weight were not only punitive, but persistent. Sometimes, if
Cantello just thought one of his athletes looked too fat, due to their body type,
he would tell them so, on a regular basis. One classmate of mine, a varsity runner, and future Marine Corps Officer, was at the Naval Academy for summer school to get ahead on his studies before 2/C year.
One day he came back to his room to find Cantello waiting with a scale and demanding
the runner weigh himself. He quit on the spot.
While many Midshipmen quit because they weren’t fast enough or they didn’t want to
run on a Division 1 program, just as many, if not more quit specifically because of Coach Cantello. Two of my classmates, who both ran in the Army/Navy cross country meet as Plebes (a
great accomplishment), quit the team before their 2/C years, specifically
because of Cantello. These two were extremely talented athletes who would go on
to excel academically and professionally.
Cantello’s toxic coaching style denied them, and many others, the opportunity of collegiate competition. It robbed Naval Academy Athletics of many top student athletes over the years.
Coach Cantello didn’t seem concerned that he drove athletes off the team. In fact, he seemed to relish the thought.
He would sometimes brag to the team that there were “people with stars on their
shoulders who I say I ruined their running career,” referring to former runners
of his who had negative experiences as a direct result of his behavior and who
had gone on to become admirals or generals.
Cantello’s behavior extended beyond the men’s team. He was overheard making disparaging
comments about the women’s team to Naval academy administration, his peers, and
his athletes on the lines of calling the team a bunch of “fat clowns” and
“useless”. His attempts to discredit and insult both the coach and athletes was
pervasive and led to extreme challenges for the women’s team despite results
and performances that would otherwise receive accolade and commendation.