Yesterday I tried to quantify the value of the new-found enthusiasm surrounding the Columbia football program.
But I failed to document at the hard results on the field that we've seen when new coaching regimes take over.
retired at the end of the 1956 season. The first year records of the 10 men in between is decidedly mixed.
Five of the coaches have put up the same exact record of the preceding coach's final season. Three have improved on their previous season, and two had worse records in their first years.
Interestingly enough, the three coaches who have brought the Lions a W-L improvement in their first years are the last three coaches,
But since Shoop suffered a massive loss to Brown in his final game of his first year, and Mangurian had the 69-0 late season loss to Harvard hanging around his neck like a millstone, I would say it Wilson, with his 5-5 2006 season punctuated with a dramatic win over Brown in week 10 that made his initial season the most promising over the almost 60-year period in question.
Wilson's train derailed the following year with a 1-9, 0-7 Ivy season. It took two more years before he was able to build the program back to a competitive level before it crashed back down again in 2011.
who took a 3-6 team he inherited from Little and barely got the Lions to 1-8 in 1957. But Donelli learned fast and he delivered Columbia's lone Ivy title four years later.
Most people are putting the under/over on Columbia wins this coming season at one. So if Bagnoli follows recent trends and get the Lions three wins they'll definitely call him a miracle worker.
But just getting a couple more wins this coming season is not the real goal or the real point of hiring Bagnoli. We're looking for a much more meaningful and long term result than that.
So it's important not to get too hung up on the "how many more wins are we gonna get in 2015?" question. Yes we will judge these teams by their wins and losses, but we want more wins over the next decade, not just the next seven months.
What happened to Traci Waites? Former Columbia
Basketball Coach was Forced Out for Surprising Reasons
On the morning of February 3, 2005, Columbia women’s basketball point guard Sue
Altman entered head coach Traci Waites’ office. Altman had planned to watch
some film with Waites one hour before a scheduled practice. The Lions were
preparing to face Yale in New Haven the next day, and then travel to Providence
to take on Brown a day later. It was a key road trip for a team that had
exceeded preseason expectations, sporting a 9-8 record overall, 2-2 in the Ivy
League.
Before Altman could turn on the television,
associate athletic director Merry Ormsby walked into the room.
“Dianne Murphy would like to see you now,”
Ormsby said.
Murphy was Columbia’s new athletic director
who had been hired over the previous summer, one month after Waites. She
officially started the position in December 2004.
Waites went up to Murphy’s office, and Altman
proceeded to watch film. Waites never came back downstairs. An hour later,
Altman went to Levien Gym for practice, and Murphy was there with assistant
coaches Tory Verdi and Tasha Pointer.
“Traci Waites has been indefinitely banned
from campus,” Murphy said to the entire Columbia women’s team. The players sat
in stunned silence.
Murphy proceeded to introduce Verdi as the
interim head coach. She referred to Verdi as an “honorable coach,” implying that
Waites had something dishonorable. Murphy also told players that they could not
discuss Waites’ departure with the media.
“I was shocked, confused, wanting answers, and
frustrated that we couldn’t get any,” Altman recalls. “I was also exhausted.
The team had been through a lot over the years.”
For years, many in the Columbia community
assumed Waites had done something horrible. Wild rumors were whispered around
campus as athletes and coaches guessed what could have forced Waites out so
suddenly.
To this day, Columbia will not discuss the
reasons for Waites’ departure. And for ten years, Waites was silent. Until now.
When reached at her home in Georgia, Waites provided a fairly surprising
explanation for her departure from Columbia.
“Excuse my language,” Waites said. “But it was an f—ing beer.”
Traci Waites’ Story
When Waites entered Murphy’s office, both the
athletic director and associate athletic director Al Carlson were seated
inside. Murphy pushed a two-sentence resignation letter across her desk.
“I can’t allow you to have a beer on the
road,” Waites recalls Murphy saying.
According to Waites, Murphy explained that
there was a school policy that prohibited coaches from drinking alcohol on road
trips. Waites says that she was unaware of this policy, but she did acknowledge
having one beer while the team was staying at a hotel.
“We are going to escort you off campus, and
don’t contact anyone,” Murphy told Waites.
“I was escorted off campus as if I were a
criminal,” Waites says.
Waites cannot recall the exact road trip, but
a look at the schedule reveals it may have been a trip to Western Kentucky on
January 17, 2005. It might have also been a weekend trip to Dartmouth and
Harvard from January 28-29. A former Columbia athletic department employee who
regularly traveled with the team could only recall Waites drinking once on the
road – a celebratory drink on New Year’s Eve the day before the Lions were
playing at Eastern Michigan on January 1.
Waites says she had the beer in a coffee mug
and shared it with Ormsby at a hotel bar. At her table were two other Columbia
employees, including the one just mentioned previously. The coffee mug was used
just in case in players came downstairs after they had supposedly gone to bed
the night before a game.
“It was not unusual for Columbia coaches to
drink on the road,” the former employee said. “But it was an unwritten rule
that you’d generally try not to do it in front of students.”
The former employee also claimed to be unaware
of an official alcohol policy until our interview ten years later.
Prior to her final meeting with Murphy, Waites
says the athletic director had only spoken with her once. Waites said she was
initially enthusiastic about the Murphy hire. Murphy had been a women’s
basketball head coach at Florida State, Eastern Kentucky, and Shorter College,
and after moving into athletic administration, she had served on a number of
NCAA committees for women’s basketball. This included the NCAA Tournament
Selection Committee. The opportunity to work with an athletic director who
prioritized women’s basketball excited Waites. But that excitement quickly
dissipated.
In their first conversation, Murphy told her:
“If you don’t do well here, then you’ll never coach anywhere ever again.”
It turns out that Murphy was right about the last part, as she
has helped prevent Waites from receiving other coaching jobs to this day. More
on that later though.
Who is Traci Waites?
Traci Waites hit two game winning free throws for Rockdale High
School in the 1984 Georgia State Championship Game.
It’s worth knowing who Traci Waites is before
proceeding further. A native of Conyers, GA, Waites starred at Rockdale County
High School and led her team to a Georgia state title in 1984. She decided to
play college at the University of Georgia for Andy Landers, and as a freshman
she helped take the Bulldogs to the 1985 NCAA Championship Game.
Waites eventually transferred to Long Beach
State, and took coach Joan Bonvicini’s team to the 1988 Final Four. Waites is
the only player, man or woman, to have played in two Final Fours with two
different schools.
“She understood the game,” Bonvicini said. “A
lot of people are skilled and can play, but Traci really saw the game on many
different levels.”
After playing professionally in Italy, Waites
became an assistant coach at Santa Monica College, and was eventually promoted
to head coach. She later joined Bonvicini’s staff at the University of Arizona
as an assistant from 1994-98 before she received her first major head coaching
job at the University of Pittsburgh.
“Her background made her a little rough around
the edges,” says Avie Bridges, her friend and mentor who hired her at Santa
Monica College. Bridges was the former women’s basketball head coach at
Alabama-Birmingham, and she is now dean and athletic director at Santa Ana
College in California. “She was very good at mentoring student-athletes and
getting them to perform at a level beyond what they normally do.”
Waites in her first
season at Pitt
In her second season, Waites led the once
moribund Panthers program to a rare winning season and a berth in the WNIT.
Waites was named co-Big East Coach of the Year, and she seemed like a coach on
the rise. But the program suffered through three straight losing seasons, and
Waites was fired in 2003 by former interim athletic director Mark Boehm. Waites
says her firing was partially due to her use of profanity towards players.
Boehm is now an associate athletic director at
Nebraska. At first, he wouldn’t discuss Waites’ dismissal from Pittsburgh.
“It’s not all about wins and losses,” Boehm
said. “There were more things involved than just the record.”
When asked if Waites was let go because of
both her record and the profanity, Boehm responded: “That’s accurate.”
Her former top assistant coach, Bill
Broderick, felt there was a double standard applied to Waites. Currently the
head coach of the women’s team at Christopher Newport University, Broderick has
decades of experience in college basketball.
“Ben Howland was the men’s coach [at
Pittsburgh] back then, and he used profanity all the time,” Broderick says.
“Mike Krzyzewski uses profanity in practice. All of the men’s coaches do.”
After leaving Pittsburgh, Waites took a break
from coaching for a while. She had gone through a difficult five-year stretch
that included the death of her brother James Waites from AIDS in 1998 and a car
accident that killed her sister Sharon in 2003.
In the meantime, Columbia was dealing with the
oddly-timed departure of its women’s basketball head coach Jay Butler in June
2004. While Butler hadn’t been successful at Columbia, his decision to become
an assistant coach at Centenary College in Louisiana came as a surprise.
Athletic Director John Reeves had retired from
Columbia at the end of the school year, and the school had yet to replace him.
Interim athletic director Paul Fernandes put Ormsby in charge of the search.
Traci’s sister Keisha Waites, who today represents the 60th district in the
Georgia House of Representatives, saw the opening and took it upon herself to
send Traci’s resume and bio to Ormsby.
“At the time I wasn’t looking at coaching. But
I came once and talked to Merry Ormsby candidly about my past. I came back the
second time and knew I wanted to be [at Columbia],” Waites said to me back in
2005 for a Columbia alumni magazine article that was never published.
During the interview process, Waites won over
players and athletic department officials with her commitment to discipline and
her knowledge of the game, and she was hired in July of 2004. Murphy was hired
as the new athletic director one month later, coming over from the University
of Denver.
Under Waites’ leadership, the Lions looked
like a much-improved team. Players also seemed to like their new coach.
“She had a lot of energy and she was
enthusiastic. She was a breath of fresh air for the program,” Altman said. “She
was pretty tough, but she got along well with the players.”
Waites also said she learned from her
experience at Pittsburgh.
“I didn’t do any cursing at Columbia,” Waites says. “I made a
conscious effort not to do that. I learned my lesson.”
Columbia’s Version
Part of what makes this story so unusual is
the lack of information provided by Columbia and nearly everyone who was part
of the athletic department. Columbia’s silence is still maintained to this day,
and most athletic officials claim to have no knowledge as to why Waites left.
Columbia Athletic
Director Dianne Murphy
Murphy is leaving as Columbia’s athletic
director on Monday, April 13, but she is still refusing to discuss the
departure. Through Columbia’s sports information department, she issued the
following statement:
“Traci Waites was hired as Columbia’s head
women’s basketball coach in July 2004, approximately one month before I
accepted the position of athletics director at Columbia University in August
2004. Traci resigned as Columbia’s head women’s basketball coach on February 5,
2005. Columbia is a private university. All personnel matters are confidential
between the University and its employees. We do not comment on personnel
matters to the media.”
Two things should be noted about this
statement. First, it’s probably a mistake, but Waites actually resigned on
February 3. Second, it’s interesting that Murphy feels the need to mention that
she didn’t hire Waites. It plays into a belief that Murphy never wanted Waites
hired as the head coach for a program she probably cared most about. More on
this later though.
In the meantime, other past and present
Columbia employees have been equally unhelpful. Most who were contacted refused
to respond to me. Others did have short statements either claiming ignorance,
or refusing to speak. Carlson is still at Columbia and he sent back a short
terse e-mail saying: “I think you know that I am not allowed to comment on personnel
issues.”
After serving as interim athletic director,
Fernandes went back to being an associate athletic director. He left Columbia
in 2008 for a job in the Ivy League office, and he’s now retired. Through
e-mail, he wrote:
“My recollection was that Traci left for
personal/family reasons. I believe she needed to be closer to her family and
that required relocation. Since she was reporting directly to [Ormsby] at the
time, I wasn’t in on exactly what was transpiring at the time.”
When told of the story about Waites drinking a
beer, he responded:
“The info you have provided is new to me. I
don’t have any additional information to provide to you. Hope you are able to
sort it all out.”
Reached by phone at her home in New Jersey,
Ormsby claimed to have no knowledge as to why Waites left, and expressed
disbelief when she was told of the information previously reported.
“I had no idea that Traci Waites was going to
be resigning that day [February 3, 2005],” Ormsby said. “I thought Traci Waites
was a good hire and she was winning. I told her that I’d write her
recommendations.”
Ormsby admitted that she did write a letter of
recommendation for Waites on two separate occasions for jobs she would apply
for in later years. But it seems odd that she would do so while claiming to not
know why Waites resigned. Waites says that Ormsby knows why she left, and the
two discussed the situation.
Ormsby also left Columbia in 2005. Waites
suspects that it was related to her situation, and that would seem like a
reasonable explanation. When asked why she left, Ormsby angrily responded:
“That’s personal!”
Ormsby went on to compliment Murphy’s
leadership.
“Dianne Murphy really knew what she was
doing,” Ormsby said. “She really wanted to change the culture.”
Ormsby grew more angry throughout the
interview. When asked if she wanted my contact information should she remember
any more details, Ormsby shot back: “Absolutely not!”
She ended the phone call by repeatedly saying
the phrase: “Leave Traci alone! Leave Traci alone!” and didn’t respond when I
noted that Waites wanted her story told.
According to Waites, she receives a
notification from MyLife.com every few weeks stating that Ormsby is searching
for her personal information. The notifications increased to daily after Ormsby
was interviewed.
The only other time Ormsby was interviewed
about Waites post-2005 was by a reporter researching the story in 2007. Ormsby
refused to discuss Waites, and she immediately called Murphy, tipping off the
athletic director that the story was being investigated. No story ever ran.
Another odd wrinkle in this is Waites’
coaching staff at Columbia. Former Rutgers star Tasha Pointer got her start as
an assistant under Waites. Now an assistant coach at her alma mater, Pointer
was asked to speak about her former boss. Via e-mail, she wrote a bland
statement about her “awesome experience” at Columbia, completely ignoring my
request to interview her and not mentioning Waites at all.
When told of the story about Waites being let
go for drinking, Pointer eventually wrote back:
“In regards to Traci, there are no specifics I
can present that can shed any new light on her departure. I am unaware of any
of the circumstances referencing her dismissal. Thanks for the inquiry and have
a great day.”
The next big question is what role Verdi may have played.
Verdi’s Role
Tory Verdi was Waites’ top assistant Columbia. He is now the
head coach at Eastern Michigan.
Being hired in the summer of 2004 posed a
challenge for Waites in terms of putting together a coaching staff. Most
collegiate coaches were already entrenched in their positions and they were
preparing for the upcoming season. The normal spring window for coaching hires
had long closed.
Waites was visited in New York by former
Kentucky women’s basketball coach Bernadette Locke-Mattox, who had moved on to
become an assistant coach with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. Locke-Mattox was
also a Georgia alum, and she was an assistant for the Bulldogs when Waites
played there. Locke-Mattox came to Columbia’s campus with Verdi, who at the
time was a 31-year old lower level assistant with the Sun. At Locke-Mattox’s
recommendation, Waites hired Verdi to be her top assistant, but the two did not
get along.
According to Waites, Verdi had multiple “phone
calls that were inappropriate with a recruit.” When asked what she meant by
“inappropriate,” Waites said: “I know how a male coach is supposed to speak
with a player on the phone. This didn’t sit right. It sounded like he wanted a
date.”
Waites reported Verdi’s behavior to Ormsby,
who was her direct supervisor. Ormsby said she would talk to Verdi and address
the issue. However, in my interview with Ormsby, she claimed to have no
knowledge of this. Waites said she confronted Verdi about this as well, and she
planned to fire him after the season.
Verdi refused to be interviewed for this
story, but back in 2007, he told the same aforementioned reporter that the
Columbia staff “wasn’t always as professional as we could have been on
recruiting trips” without elaborating further.
Waites and Verdi only took one recruiting trip
together, and that was to Florida in the fall of 2004. While both were in a
rental car leaving the airport, Verdi called the recruit on his cell phone to
coordinate their meeting. Waites didn’t like Verdi’s tone and told him so,
right after the call.
“I admit that I may have gone overboard in
chastising him,” Waites said.
The recruit from Florida was reached for this
article and agreed to speak on the condition that her name would be withheld
from the story. She expressed surprise that anyone would believe Verdi was
inappropriate.
“From what I remembered, Tory Verdi was very
professional,” the recruit said.
Other Columbia players interviewed said Verdi
never spoke inappropriately to them as well.
When told of the comments from the Florida
recruit, Waites said: “That was my observation of their conversation. I can’t
dispute her thoughts.”
While there is no proof, Waites does believe
that Verdi reported her drink of beer to Murphy. Verdi served the rest of the
2004-05 season as interim head coach, and a dispirited Lions team finished 3-7
under his leadership. Verdi went on to become an assistant coach at Nebraska.
While it may or may not have been coincidence, the Nebraska athletic director
at the time was Steve Pederson, who had previously been the athletic director
at Pittsburgh when Waites coached there.
Verdi would stay in Lincoln for five seasons,
and then moved over to Kansas for two years. In 2012, he was hired to become
the head women’s basketball coach at Eastern Michigan.
Had Verdi been fired after one season at Columbia, then it’s
unclear where his career would have gone. But by taking over for Waites so
suddenly, Verdi won plaudits from the Columbia administration for coaching
under difficult circumstances. He was set on a career path to eventually become
a head coach.
Singled Out
Waites at Pitt
The motives for Murphy’s decision to dismiss
Waites are not entirely clear, but it may have had something to do with the
athletic director’s connections to Pittsburgh.
“[Murphy] had a close relationship with people
from Pitt,” a former Pitt athletic department employee said. “[Murphy] had it
out for [Waites] to have someone else coach.”
Another former Pittsburgh athletic department
employee said that Murphy knew former Pittsburgh associate athletic director
Carol Sprague. Both have served on multiple NCAA women’s basketball committees.
Sprague declined to be interviewed for this article.
By removing Waites for cause, Columbia did not
have to pay the rest of her four-year contract that provided a $130,000 annual
salary. With the budget savings, Murphy could then hire her own chosen coach for
the program. In 2005, Murphy hired Paul Nixon, who went on to have a
disappointing 70-153 record in eight seasons leading the Columbia women.
Murphy’s decision continues to follow Waites
and it has prevented her from receiving other coaching opportunities.
“This has ruined my life,” Waites said.
After Columbia, Waites applied for numerous
coaching jobs. Most schools were afraid to touch her, believing that she had
done something terrible to leave Columbia so suddenly. But a few schools were
interested.
One of them was Southwest Baptist, a Division
II school in Missouri. Dr. Renae Myles had been an academic advisor in the
Pittsburgh athletic department from 2000-04, and by 2007 she serving as
Southwest Baptist’s associate athletic director. She pushed for the school to
consider Waites.
“I’ve always admired what she’s brought,”
Myles said. “I’ve always thought she deserved another opportunity at running a
team.”
Waites had told Myles how she was dismissed at
Columbia, and about the beer incident. Myles called Murphy for confirmation.
Dr. Renae Myles
“[Murphy] said ‘Traci Waites worked at
Columbia from this date to that date’ and she wouldn’t say anything else,”
Myles says. “My bosses needed to know more and I couldn’t provide more. They
were quite impressed with Traci, but we couldn’t get any information from Dr.
Murphy.”
Myles is now an associate athletic director at
Alabama A&M. She said that Waites’ name was put forward for a coaching
vacancy there, but again said that questions about her Columbia departure
prevented her from becoming a finalist for the role.
“As long as I’m an administrator in athletics,
Traci is on my radar,” Myles says. “I believe she deserves another shot.”
If Waites was in fact let go for drinking a
beer, then she was unfairly singled out. As noted earlier, a former Columbia
athletic department employee said it was not uncommon for coaches to drink on
the road. Having covered multiple Columbia sports teams myself for the
Spectator and WKCR Radio from 2000-04, I also saw several coaches have beers on
the road. Other reporters say the trend continued into Murphy’s tenure.
Furthermore, Waites did not have a drinking
problem.
“I spent seven years of my life with her,
working very closely, and I never saw her take a drug,” said Broderick, who
also worked with her at Arizona. “She was just a social drinker.”
The next question is why Waites stayed silent
for so long about her dismissal. Waites only told a handful of people who were
close to her.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to talk to anyone,”
Waites said. “It’s because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
“She’s extremely spiritual and felt it was
meant to be,” Broderick says. “She wasn’t going to win that battle. And she
didn’t want to be somewhere she wasn’t wanted.”
Waites said she considered filing a wrongful
termination lawsuit against Columbia. She consulted a lawyer in Pittsburgh who
thought she had a case, but he said he couldn’t practice law in New York. Her
sister Keisha pushed her to fight, but she wound up not pursuing any action,
deciding to do her best to move on.
“Why would a university say that you can’t
talk about something? What are they trying to hide?” Waites asks. “Everyone
thinks that I’ve done something because they won’t talk about it.”
“I find it pretty appalling that Columbia won’t say if Traci’s
story is true,” Altman says. “We deserved a better explanation. This would
never happen at another program. They couldn’t get away with it.”
Traci Today
After losing her job at Columbia, Waites went
back to Georgia, completely devastated.
“I stayed in my bedroom for six months
straight,” Waites says. “What I did next was pick myself back up.”
In October of 2005, Waites began volunteering
with Chris Kids, an Atlanta-based charity that primarily helps youths ages 16-21
who have been physically or mentally abused. She was eventually hired as a
full-time program coordinator until state funding for the organization dried up
in 2008.
“Helping those kids … that was like my
therapy,” Waites says.
In the summer of 2008, at the urging of
Keisha, Waites ran in the Democratic primary for the Georgia state House of
Representatives 93rd district. Waites raised virtually no money and barely
campaigned, but she still finished in fourth in a six-person race, missing a
runoff by less than 1,000 votes.
In 2009, Waites took a part-time job as the
head coach of Atlanta Metropolitan College as a favor to a friend. Waites was
asked to launch the women’s basketball program for the junior college, but the
position only paid $5,000 a year. She left in 2011 and took on a sales manager
role with Mattress Firm.
“It wasn’t for me. I was searching to find my
niche,” Waites says. “I did pretty well there, but I just didn’t want to do
it.”
Today, Waites works as an executive assistant
for external requisitions at Robert Bosch, LLC. She recently started in the
role full-time.
“I love what I’m doing now. I’m working with
great people and I’m learning,” Waites says.
Still, the question of whether Waites will
return to coaching remains. Keisha has urged her sister to get back into the
business.
“I think that there’s a void in Traci’s life,
and I encourage her to seek coaching opportunities,” Keisha says.
Waites says she is done coaching though, and
she has been focused on the next chapter in her life.
“I feel like I can breathe now because finally
my voice was heard. It was time for me to move forward in my life because it
had been sitting in the pit of my stomach forever,” Waites said. “I feel like
no matter what I do, I’ll be scrutinized for the rest of my life. I’m not the
same person anymore. It’s damaged me so much. I don’t want to go through it
[coaching] again. It would have to be something really special.”
“I’m not interested in anything else besides
clearing my name. Nothing else,” Waites added. “I’m proud of myself that I got
through it. It has taught me a lot about myself.”
.jpg)
