Discussion of Deadspin's Article: The Sexual Harassment Claims That Brought Down Toledo’s XC Coach

rojo wrote:

http://deadspin.com/5983592/im-down-for-drinks-laughs-sex-the-sexual-harassment-claims-that-brought-down-toledos-running-coach

Moderators,

Have you guys lost it?

!

I actually did a spit take when I read this.

Another online article.

The moderators should have left up 1 thread. There were about 20 of them.

FYI any posts naming names of the athletes will be removed.

Here is the poster who deserves major credit for speaking out. They posted this on January 25th, so like 3 weeks before the Deadspin story. But all the hard evidence in the Deadspin piece backs up their assertions. So props to "IKNOWEVERYTHING" (And no, I have no connection to them or anyone at Toledo. I just like seeing credit given where it was due. I don't imagine it was easy to post that.)

It's a good reminder that sometimes people are telling the real story here (moderators take note).

1/25/13

IKNOWEVERYTHING

I actually do have the true story, and I'm going to tell it because I feel like the truth finally needs to come out. Coach Hadsell obviously helped build the women's team into something extraordinary. But as far as positive things go, that's it. Here's the facts. In the far past he had slept/dated one of his athletes and then cheated on her and slept with another athlete. Who knows how many of his athletes he has done this to in the past 15 years (I do not know, and honestly I'm not sure I want to know)He has also partied with his athletes on team trips, and many of these girls were underage. And yes he has bought the underage girls drinks. It is not uncommon for him to drop a lot of money at the bars on team trips with his athletes present at the bars. He also breeds eating disorders. The women on the Toledo team have gone through so much self esteem issues because of the comments Hadsell makes. He might not directly tell them "You're fat lose weight," but he is constantly on them all about their weight and points out girls on other teams and makes fun of them for their "muffin tops" when they are no more than 105 pounds. Comments like that makes the Toledo girls stare at their so called "muffin tops" a few extra moments in the mirror and feel terrible about themselves. But this isn't why he was forced into resignation. I won't use names in this scandal, however I'm sure most of you will figure it out within 30 seconds of reading this post. Coach Hadsell was having a sexual relationship with one of his athletes for approximately 2 years, basically his "mistress" (she has since graduated, but this was going on while she was running for him) Meanwhile, he had been sending inappropriate texts to another woman on the team (the mistresses roommate, actually), a woman that happens to be very VERY fast. These inappropriate texts were not welcome, but Hadsell just kept them coming (I'm talking over a span of years), so one roommate was being sexually harrassed by Hadsell while the other one was sleeping with him. Needless to say he turned his mistress against the fast girl and made her out to be the bad guy. (the mistress is still defending Coach Hadsell in all of this because he has manipulated her that much. ehem "Sleeping with the Enemy") And people will wonder "Why didn't fast girl rat him out years ago when this all started?" And I'll tell you that it's the same reason not one single girl over his entire coaching career at UT ratted him out... he is a powerful guy, he has a lot of pull in the running community, and they were all scared. If one of his athletes didn't agree with him, they might as well kiss their running career goodbye. Because if you wronged Hadsell you could say goodbye to him focusing on your training, caring how you raced, traveling you to meets, etc etc. So this very fast runner put up with it and kept it a secret for years because she just wanted to graduate and further her running career. But sometimes enough is enough. She knew this would continue long after she graduated and just couldn't let him do this to the future Toledo generations. This is not the fault of The University of Toledo. As soon as this huge scandal was brought to their attention they took action. So thank you, very fast runner, for speaking up not only for yourself, but for Toledo Cross Country, past, present, and future. So before you bloggers say he was a "good guy" or that "any male coach would have done it," please think about the emotional damage he has done.

THANK YOU rojo. Jeez, I though LetsRun was trying to cover up this sh*tbag by deleting all of the threads on it. I understand deleting unsubstantiated rumors but A REAL LINK TO A REAL STORY? WTF!!!!!

I see how it is, brojos.

Controversial threads are okay as long as YOU start them so you can get in the initial post + spin things in your direction.

You did the same thing with the meme thread, not to mention the Trayvon Martin trainwreck of last year.

Please let us discuss things openly on a public forum.

asdfadsdsf wrote:

THANK YOU rojo. Jeez, I though LetsRun was trying to cover up this sh*tbag by deleting all of the threads on it. I understand deleting unsubstantiated rumors but A REAL LINK TO A REAL STORY? WTF!!!!!

We can't win. We allow it to stay up initially and we get slammed. So we try to moderate it and end up deleting stuff that was apparently true.

Why was the expose a Deadspin story and not a Let's Run story?

You guys clearly had the information (some of it straight from Hadsell and other coaches on the team!) weeks ago. But you sat on it. More than that, by being very aggressive in deleting posts/threads about it, you reduced even the discussion of it here.

How is that anything other than facilitating a cover up, which is to say, facilitating this kind of harmful behavior by coaches?

You are outspoken on the drug issue because you realize the threat it poses to the sport and runners. I commend you for that.

But how many instances of coaches screwing athletes does it take before you realize that it is also a serious issue in the sport?

Yes, people's reputations are at stake, there are legal concerns about defamation, and some people in the running world might get upset if you covered these kinds of stories. But nobody said doing the right thing would be easy. And all those same risks apply for drugs, but there you have taken a stand for the good of the sport.

I'm asking you to be similarly courageous and aggressive in your reporting of school coaches who screw their athletes.

As is, it looks like Let's Run was eager to cover this up, a perception that I'd think would bother you, especially given the great work (and I mean that honestly) one of the founders did as a college coach himself.

To be clear: my concern is NOT really that Let's Run was deleting random posts on the subject. I'm sure there were a bunch of posts that were crazy (though at least one was spot on).

My concern is that Rojo had firsthand information from Hadsell and at least one other coach. But instead of doing anything with that information (like a journalist would) he instead assured the Toledo folks that Let's Run would moderate the threads to the best of their ability.

Maybe there were good reasons for it. Maybe the BroJos tipped Deadspin to the story. I don't claim to know what went down or why.

So I'm just asking the question of whether, in effect if not intent, Let's Run was helping cover this issue up.

I believe this person was likely the source for deadspin as well.

wejo wrote:

The moderators should have left up 1 thread. There were about 20 of them.

FYI any posts naming names of the athletes will be removed.

Well it looks like I spoke to soon:

The school did not black out names in responding to the FOI request and Emma Kertesz is named in the Toledo Blade article above as the one who turned over texts to the school that brought about Hadsell's resignation. She openly talks about this in the article.

Presumably Deadspin agreed to keep her name anonymous when she turned over the texts to them. Now that her name is public we won't delete posts with them in it.

Just going to drop this and leave it here: https://twitter.com/KerzRuns4Fun/status/299221425385000960

SomeActualData wrote:

Why was the expose a Deadspin story and not a Let's Run story?

You guys clearly had the information (some of it straight from Hadsell and other coaches on the team!) weeks ago. But you sat on it. More than that, by being very aggressive in deleting posts/threads about it, you reduced even the discussion of it here.

Moderating these threads is easier said than done.

The information we had was a) coach Hadsall admitting to a past relationship with a former athlete (and this was public info as he had lived with her according to posts on here). and b) an email from a coach still at the team asking that the posts be removed.

So I don't think we had much of a story. For example, Heather Burroughs is a former athlete of Mark Wetmore. Mark Wetmore has a relationship with her.

The thread was left up with individual posts removed. Many of those posts removed were naming names.

Some would say remove the thread entirely as there wasn't proof and it is anonymous allegations. Others have written saying to leave similar threads up as it will at least open up the possibility such a coach gets asked about what happened in future job interviews or does not get hired (even from anonymous allegations).

So moderating such threads isn't easy. We don't have a truth detector on here and the deadspin story shows there are legitimate reasons people would remain anonymous. There aren't easy rules for moderating. Generally, the less something is about running the more likely it is to be removed. If it is about doping it's more likely to stay. The more prominent the person the more they should also be able to withstand public discussion.

A single guy coaching college age women... man that is bound to end up really bad.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Wejo. And thanks for clarifying about what information you did/did not have.

I appreciate the difficulty in moderating posts/threads, especially on this topic.

Even so, I would encourage Let's Run to put on its journalism hat and pursue stories like this more aggressively, especially when they land in your lap. Your site is more than the message boards. And surely with your connections, and the stature of Let's Run in the running community, you could have broken this story. This time it didn't ultimately matter because Deadspin got the information out there, but what about all the running stories they don't bother with?

SomeActualData wrote:

Why was the expose a Deadspin story and not a Let's Run story?

Maybe because Deadspin is in the dirty-laundry business and Letsrun is, in theory at least, in the business of covering running (if you ignore all of the Armstrong stuff, anyway).

You can argue that the Hadsell story is in fact a running story, but that is only nominally true. Clamoring to know every salacious detail goes well beyond the bounds of that. It's one thing for the public to know the general reason(s) a prominent athlete or coach quits or is canned, but this doesn't mean every schadenfreude-craving observer needs to know just when, where and how every bee-jay occurred. A lot of students were unwittingly dragged into this and it's their business, not ours.

SomeActualData wrote:

it looks like Let's Run was eager to cover this up

[quote]asdfadsdsf wrote:

LetsRun was trying to cover up this sh*tbag by deleting all of the threads on it./quote]

No. If you can't understand what the real reason was, you're not thinking very hard.

Nobody has been "Clamoring to know every salacious detail." I certainly wasn't, at least.

But prior to the Deadspin report, the only solid information was that Hadsell had resigned due to an unspecified violation of university policy.

As you pointed out yourself at the time: "Obviously, a violation of university policy could be anything from parking too many times in the provost's reserved space to forcing his athletes to sell weed to underage prostitutes ...."

So knowing that it was inappropriate relationships with his athletes (as you had guessed) is important.

And if Let's Run is in the business of covering running, then the conduct of running coaches *with their athletes* is definitely within their scope. This was not something Hadsell was doing away from the team, like if he was secretly robbing banks on the side. This was part and parcel of his role as a coach, and it was something you had to deal with if you wanted to run for him.

Are the details salacious? Maybe (not so much in this case, but that's subjective).

Are the details useful? YES! People can see how this happened and learned from it. I'll bet anything that runners on at least one other team would, if they read this story, go "holy crap, that's what is happening here!" And coaches can see how you can go off the rails step by step by getting too personally involved with athletes (note that the whistleblower never had a physical relationship at all with the coach, but his texts and whatnot were still too invasive and inappropriate).

Reading the Deadspin article is probably more useful to a would-be coach (or an athlete for that matter) than any sexual harrassment prevention seminar, because of the details.

I like to party as well, but I also have read the first page of The Playas Guide where it says:

"Don't s#^* where you eat!".

Actually, I consider his drunk driving with students on board the van as at least equal in his list of transgressions with the other manipulative crap, but since it isn't as titillating it will get brushed over.

Largo wrote:

Actually, I consider his drunk driving with students on board the van as at least equal in his list of transgressions with the other manipulative crap, but since it isn't as titillating it will get brushed over.

No kidding. That is worthy of being fired on its own.